When Good I.S. Goes Bad

I was at an indoor birthday party yesterday here in cloudy
Pennsylvania. I have a Canon A710 and set the camera on Manual, to
shoot lots of old folks and also little kids and animules without a
flash. TMALSS (to make a long story short), only a third of the shots
came out at all. The rest were blurry even though they were in focus
when I shot them.

A friend who is a digital wizard said I shouldn't go complaining to
Canon just yet, and that I.S. does not work if the lighting conditions
and/or focus is out of synch. But I got no "BUSY" warning, and there
was no "fluttering hand" icon or low light warning. ISO was 400 or
200.

How do you know when good Image Stabilization is broken? (For the
record, I have it set on Continuous--whatever that means.)

Thanks.

On 29 Apr 2007 08:08:44 -0700, wrote:
I was at an indoor birthday party yesterday here in cloudy
Pennsylvania. I have a Canon A710 and set the camera on Manual, to
shoot lots of old folks and also little kids and animules without a
flash. TMALSS (to make a long story short), only a third of the shots
came out at all. The rest were blurry even though they were in focus
when I shot them.

A friend who is a digital wizard said I shouldn't go complaining to
Canon just yet, and that I.S. does not work if the lighting conditions
and/or focus is out of synch. But I got no "BUSY" warning, and there
was no "fluttering hand" icon or low light warning. ISO was 400 or
200.

That makes no sense. The IS system operates independently of the
focusing and metering system. There's a set of motion sensors buried
somewhere inside the camera, connected via a feedback loop to a lens
element which moves to null out vibration. The contents of the image,
including whether it's properly focused, are irrelevant. It should work
even if the lens cap is on (not that it'll do anything _useful_, but it
should still work).

How do you know when good Image Stabilization is broken? (For the
record, I have it set on Continuous--whatever that means.)

Take a picture of something static, in decent light. Turn off the IS and
take the same picture again. If the second picture is less blurry than
the first, your IS system has problems.

-dms

Daniel Silevitch wrote:

That makes no sense. The IS system operates independently of the
focusing and metering system. There's a set of motion sensors buried
somewhere inside the camera,

buried in the lens, actually.

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On 29 Apr 2007 08:08:44 -0700, wrote:

I was at an indoor birthday party yesterday here in cloudy
Pennsylvania. I have a Canon A710 and set the camera on Manual, to
shoot lots of old folks and also little kids and animules without a
flash. TMALSS (to make a long story short), only a third of the shots
came out at all. The rest were blurry even though they were in focus
when I shot them.

A friend who is a digital wizard said I shouldn't go complaining to
Canon just yet, and that I.S. does not work if the lighting conditions
and/or focus is out of synch. But I got no "BUSY" warning, and there
was no "fluttering hand" icon or low light warning. ISO was 400 or
200.

How do you know when good Image Stabilization is broken? (For the
record, I have it set on Continuous--whatever that means.)

Before assuming that the IS is broken, realize that IS can only
provide a certain amount of compensation, and it is helped
considerably by being able to hold the camera as steadily as
possible. If you assumed that IS would automatically do its magic
and didn't take enough care to hold the camera motionless, you'd
probably end up with many blurry shots. Canon's manual doesn't
indicate that there will be any "BUSY" or "fluttering hand" warning
if there's excessive camera movement. The only warning occurs in
the manual, not on the camera, where on Page 29 of the A710's manual
it says:

• If camera shake is too strong, it may not be fully corrected

The "BUSY..." warning indicates (p.99):

Image is being recorded to, or read from, memory card. The
playback mode is starting up.

I couldn't find any "fluttering hand" icon in the manual, but
perhaps what you're referring to is the camera icon that has 4
curved lines below it that indicate movement. They could be
mistaken for supporting hands. That's an indicator that warns that
a slow shutter speed has been selected and if you see that, Canon
suggests that you enable one of the IS modes, use a higher ISO
speed, use the flash or use a tripod. (p. 90).

Try taking some more test pictures under similar light conditions
and see if you can get better results.

wrote:
I was at an indoor birthday party yesterday here in cloudy
Pennsylvania. I have a Canon A710 and set the camera on Manual, to
shoot lots of old folks and also little kids and animules without a
flash. TMALSS (to make a long story short), only a third of the shots
came out at all. The rest were blurry even though they were in focus
when I shot them.

A friend who is a digital wizard said I shouldn't go complaining to
Canon just yet, and that I.S. does not work if the lighting conditions
and/or focus is out of synch. But I got no "BUSY" warning, and there
was no "fluttering hand" icon or low light warning. ISO was 400 or
200.

How do you know when good Image Stabilization is broken? (For the
record, I have it set on Continuous--whatever that means.)

IS isn't a magic wand, it will only do so much. What were your actual
shutter speeds, and are you sure it's motion blur and not just out of
focus (ie. AF locked on the wrong point)?

Are you sure you didn't misunderstand him when he said that "I.S. does not
work if the lighting conditions and/or focus is out of synch". Could he
have meant that IS will not prevent blurring if the light is too low (and
therefore the shutter speed is too low), and also that IS will be of no help
is the focus is incorrect?

What was the shutter speed of the blurry shots?


wrote in message
s.com...
I was at an indoor birthday party yesterday here in cloudy
Pennsylvania. I have a Canon A710 and set the camera on Manual, to
shoot lots of old folks and also little kids and animules without a
flash. TMALSS (to make a long story short), only a third of the shots
came out at all. The rest were blurry even though they were in focus
when I shot them.

A friend who is a digital wizard said I shouldn't go complaining to
Canon just yet, and that I.S. does not work if the lighting conditions
and/or focus is out of synch. But I got no "BUSY" warning, and there
was no "fluttering hand" icon or low light warning. ISO was 400 or
200.

How do you know when good Image Stabilization is broken? (For the
record, I have it set on Continuous--whatever that means.)

Thanks.

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 12:47:57 -0400, Alan Browne wrote:
Daniel Silevitch wrote:

That makes no sense. The IS system operates independently of the
focusing and metering system. There's a set of motion sensors buried
somewhere inside the camera,

buried in the lens, actually.

That's what I thought, but wasn't sure. Certainly for an SLR lens with
IS, the sensors have to be on the lens, but for a fixed lens camera like
the one under discussion, in principle the sensors could be somewhere
inside either the lens or the body. I'd imagine that you get more
accurate readings by putting them in the lens housing, but that's just a
guess.

-dms

wrote:
I was at an indoor birthday party yesterday here in cloudy
Pennsylvania. I have a Canon A710 and set the camera on Manual, to
shoot lots of old folks and also little kids and animules without a
flash. TMALSS (to make a long story short), only a third of the shots
came out at all. The rest were blurry even though they were in focus
when I shot them.

A friend who is a digital wizard said I shouldn't go complaining to
Canon just yet, and that I.S. does not work if the lighting conditions
and/or focus is out of synch. But I got no "BUSY" warning, and there
was no "fluttering hand" icon or low light warning. ISO was 400 or
200.

How do you know when good Image Stabilization is broken? (For the
record, I have it set on Continuous--whatever that means.)

Thanks.

Even blurry shots can appear "in focus" on a camera's tiny screen...
IS is not a cure-all for focus or motion blur. If you're moving the camera
while you shoot, IS can't work miracles... IS can only bail you out of a
couple stops of CAMERA shake involving minute hand-jitters, but it isn't
going to make up for large camera motions, or the tendency many have of
"following" a moving child/anumule with a camera. IS is to subdue
camera-shake on the order of a stop or two (maybe three) beyond the typical
rule of thumb for camera-shake.

--
Images (Plus Snaps & Grabs) by Mark² at:
www.pbase.com/markuson

Daniel Silevitch wrote:
On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 12:47:57 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:
Daniel Silevitch wrote:

That makes no sense. The IS system operates independently of the
focusing and metering system. There's a set of motion sensors buried
somewhere inside the camera,

buried in the lens, actually.

That's what I thought, but wasn't sure. Certainly for an SLR lens with
IS, the sensors have to be on the lens, but for a fixed lens camera
like
the one under discussion, in principle the sensors could be somewhere
inside either the lens or the body. I'd imagine that you get more
accurate readings by putting them in the lens housing, but that's
just a
guess.

In this case, the distinction isn't too significant, since the OP's camera
and lens are permanently attached to each other in this case. With
SLRs/DSLRs, the distinction is more significant, since the IS function is
entirely contained within the IS lens and is entirely gone when that lanes
is removed...
--
Images (Plus Snaps & Grabs) by Mark² at:
www.pbase.com/markuson

Mark² wrote:
Daniel Silevitch wrote:
On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 12:47:57 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:
Daniel Silevitch wrote:

That makes no sense. The IS system operates independently of the
focusing and metering system. There's a set of motion sensors
buried somewhere inside the camera,

buried in the lens, actually.

That's what I thought, but wasn't sure. Certainly for an SLR lens
with IS, the sensors have to be on the lens, but for a fixed lens
camera like
the one under discussion, in principle the sensors could be somewhere
inside either the lens or the body. I'd imagine that you get more
accurate readings by putting them in the lens housing, but that's
just a
guess.

In this case, the distinction isn't too significant, since the OP's
camera and lens are permanently attached to each other in this case. With
SLRs/DSLRs, the distinction is more significant, since the IS
function is entirely contained within the IS lens and is entirely
gone when that lanes is removed...

Oops... "lanes=lens"


--
Images (Plus Snaps & Grabs) by Mark² at:
www.pbase.com/markuson