This stupid woman came up to me yesterday and invited me to look at the
screen on her phone, which carried a picture of her dog. The dog was in the
distance and I was clearly expected to coo over it, yet it only occupied
about five pixels and could have been any brown quadruped or indeed a small
rock. It seems that a very large part of the appreciation of photographs is
to do with perception and memory rather than the image itself. I coo-ed.

Bill

It might be possible for subjects that doesn't turn, but only move
around. One simple idea would be to take two photos at a non-blurring
shutter speed, then determine what has been moved and add the sensor-
information for the moved pixels. I believe something like it is
already done for astronomy pictures, where it is called stacking?

As for turning objects, I don't see what could be done. But I would
love to be proved wrong on that one.

Nice feather detail.

I have to say I am now wiser WRT IS. I obviously hadn't given it much
thought. I suppose it's down to implementation as to whether I'd buy a
camera with it - it may be that there will come a time when you can't
buy a camera without it - if it added significantly to the size or
weight I'd be averse.

I shall read more posts about it when they come up and hope to
understand it further (I'm not interested enough to go looking for info
just yet).

Thanks Michael, and everyone else, for your replies.

I have four Canon IS lenses ranging over focal lengths from 18mm to
400mm, used on EOS 3, 30D and 5D bodies. As others have commented  they
allow you to get away with hand held shots at higher shutter speeds

I work for a national utility company as the heat of testing &
development and we have a helicopter that we use to patrol and survey
high voltage overhead lines. It is fitted with gyro stabilised infra
red, visible light and ultra-violet (used to detect corona discharge)
cameras for this purpose.

Recently I have started to use my 30D with the 100-400M Canon IS lens
to take detailed photographs of the lines, pylons, masts, insulators
and fittings and image stabilisation is absolutely essential for this
application as it reduces the vibration of the helicopter to an
absolute minimum. I tend to shoot at ISO 400 to ensure a reasonably
fast shutter speed. Image quality has been excellent with minimal blur.

Next month I will try the 5D for this application and see if the
additional pixel count improves the detail further, although being a
full frame sensor, the advantage of the 1.6x focal length
multiplication of the 30D will be lost. Time for a teleconverter
perhaps?

I know most subscribers to this group won't have the opportunity to
undertake aerial photography, but if you do, IS is a must. I presume
that it would be similarly useful when photographing from other moving
vehicles such as ships, cars etc.

Ray