IS on tripod

Hi,

I went to film a Timelapse with my Canon 6D + EF24-70 F/4. I was on a fairly stable tripod 1 foot from the ground (concrete) with IS on at 24mm.

At 1/3s, half the pictures have motion blur (mostly vertical). It's a perfect pattern with S,B,S,B,S... (S=sharp, B=blurry). At 1/4, roughly one third of the picture are blurry and it looks more random.

I have an other timelapse with a shutter speed of 1s, IS off and all the frames are perfect.

I knew IS would cause the photos to be misaligned (LRtimelapse can align them easily) but i never expected to get motion blur. I have never had this problem before and I always kept the IS on when i was using a tripod.

Anyone else had a bad experience with IS on a tripod ??


Sharp


blurry

exilus said:

Anyone else had a bad experience with IS on a tripod ??

Click to expand...

no, because you're supposed to turn IS off when you mount your camera on a tripod in order to avoid drifting. the image will drift around because the IS is still doing loops inside your lens trying to detect and counteract camera shake and motion, although there is none. this causes blurriness instead of sharpness.

I suggest that the IS shouldn't be running unless there is actually a detectable vibration. While the IS may be tripod-aware and turn itself off, it may also be activating because it detects movement in the tripod. The IS is useful when there is a breeze or a surface vibration.

Never use IS on a tripod. Also, your camera has a 10 second delay option in the shutter drive mode. Take advantage of that. Set it up when you're on a tripod and are using a slow shutter speed to avoid camera shake when you take the shot. When set, you would push the shutter release button as usual and the camera would set the self timer to ten seconds. After it times out it will take the shot thus alleviating any movement from you hands on the camera. Works great.

i am not entirely sure about this , Canons 5Dm3 manual says - page 42 "

I guess if we want to start reading manuals we should really start with the one that came with his camera. It would probably say EOS 6D on the front of it and would be a bit different than the one that came with a 5D3. Furthermore we all know that IS will typically deteriorate the actual sharpness of a lens when turned on. If the question at hand is the fact that the images are blurry it's seems logical that we should question the usefulness and therefore effectiveness of the IS in this particular situation. Speaking from experience using very sweet lenses on tripods in numerous situations, I can tell you that camera shake (especially at the distance in the posted photos) is likely the cause and can be easily overcome by using a delayed shutter (or using a remote) and is definitely worth trying. He's tried the IS 'on' option and is unhappy with the result so we could either argue about the effectiveness of IS in this situation vs what a manual for another camera says OR we could let the delayed shutter option be played out and see if this approach will help the situation. That's all I'm asking. Let the op try it out and see if it get better results.

exilus said:

Hi,

I went to film a Timelapse with my Canon 6D + EF24-70 F/4. I was on a fairly stable tripod 1 foot from the ground (concrete) with IS on at 24mm.

At 1/3s, half the pictures have motion blur (mostly vertical). It's a perfect pattern with S,B,S,B,S... (S=sharp, B=blurry). At 1/4, roughly one third of the picture are blurry and it looks more random.

I have an other timelapse with a shutter speed of 1s, IS off and all the frames are perfect.

I knew IS would cause the photos to be misaligned (LRtimelapse can align them easily) but i never expected to get motion blur. I have never had this problem before and I always kept the IS on when i was using a tripod.

Anyone else had a bad experience with IS on a tripod ??

Click to expand...

While I don't own the 24-70 IS, from my experience IS on a tripod never was an issue for me with my long exposures. I usually keep IS on, but (as others had suggested) do use the 10sec timer to make sure everything is stable. I sometimes use exposures >30s, and this worked well. However this may be different for your setup (camera/lens combination).

If I was you, I would want to know it! So I would do a test series with 10s+. IS on, timer off, IS off, timer off, IS on, timer on, IS off, timer on ... and compare. Btw. Would be interested in your results as well ;-)