Peter Truman Photography

From Canon's press release dated 22nd July 2009:

Canon Inc. announced today the development of Hybrid Image Stabilizer (IS), the world’s first* optical Image Stabilizer which compensates for both angular camera shake and shift camera shake. The technology will be incorporated in an interchangeable single lens reflex (SLR) camera lens planned for commercial release before the end of 2009.

This is quite a significant development given that existing Canon IS lenses include technology first introduced in 1995. It has of course been refined significantly to sense shake more accurately and to be able to improve the level of stabilisation. This has helped us take clear, unblurred shots in lower light, use the camera handheld more often and, with the stabilisation now fitted to some of the bigger lenses, take clear pictures that just could not be taken of some sports and wildlife.

With higher and higher resolution sensors now prevalent even a tiny amount of shake is recorded faithfully when lower resolving power would have effectively ignored it (crudely, the amount of shake being less than the sensor resolution). So stabilisation techniques evolve and it is great to hear that Canon are further evolving the technology. The downside, of course, is that I may be tempted at some point to upgrade some lenses. But I'm also hopeful that image stabilisation will eventually be introduced in the macro lenses. This has been a rumour for some time, or maybe just wishful thinking, but if anyone from Canon does read this - please add IS to the longer macro lenses! For some of the close up flower photographs I like to take this would be a huge benefit.

As for what lenses Canon are about to introduce with the new IS, we do not yet know although rumours are rife so we await further developments. Further information can be found on Canon's website.