How do you take advantage of Lens stabilisation ?

photonius wrote:

Michel Gomez wrote:

Hi DP fellows, here is a question for lens experts...
I eventually found out that I can take advantage of lens stabilisation with my EF 16-35 F/4 IS USM. I can easily increase exposure time to 1/10s and still avoid movement blur. Benefit is obviously a much lower ISO.

My question is: how do I know (with this lens or any other stabilised lens) the maximum exposure time I can reach by using stabilisation ? Of course, I will eventuellu find out by trial and error, but is there a rational number-based method to use this great feature ?

Thank you very much in advance for any advice.--
Michel
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gomezmi2013/

Well, you know probably that one can hand-hold a shutter speed of about 1 / focal length. I.e. a 100mm lens can yield good images with 1/100 shutter speed. A 50mm lens with 1/50, etc. However, it also depends on your technique. Sometimes you get more sometimes less. Now, with IS, each lens is rated for a certain improvement, modern lenses usually around 3-4 stops. What you actually can achieve again depends on your technique.

You can also look at the lens tests here on dpreview. Some have IS tests. From this you will see it's not an all or nothing at a particular shutter speed. Some shots will be bad, some decent, some good. As shutter speed gets slower, the ratio of good shots will drop, but you still might get some good ones. Hence, in critical situations it's good to take multiple shots and select the best. For example in burst mode, the first few images may still have blur due to your pressing the shutter, but later ones may be better. Also using a 2 sec delay timer can help. Good stance, breathing technique etc. can help.

if you are using a hard a fast rule which I think is a good starting point you also have to include crop factor, if there is one.