• Welcome to Photrio!
    Registration is fast and free. Join today to unlock search, see fewer ads, and access all forum features.
    Click here to sign up

Stabilized lenses?

waynecrider

Member
Allowing Ads
Joined
Feb 8, 2003
Messages
2,581
Location
Georgia
Format
35mm
I seem to remember that stabilized lenses came out during the last years of the heyday of film cameras. Can someone confirm that? If so, which bodies did they work with, any brand.
I ask as I'm thinking I'd like a stabilized lens since I'm just not that steady anymore.
Addendum: obviously for low lit shots
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Wayne, have you considered using, e.g., a Ken-Lab gyro stabilizer? Not inexpensive, but they don't limit you to stabilized lens/body combinations.
 
Any Canon EOS body should work with their IS lenses. I've used my Élan 7 with the 28-135 and 70-200 IS lenses.

Dan
 
Canon's much-trumpeted 75-300 IS f4.5-5.6 tele lens came out in 1995; I purchased it but later regretted it for the huge drain on a CR5 battery (with EOS1N, before I invested in the power drive booster E1), noise and tardiness, to say nothing of really mediocre optical performance. Now, whether the mid-1990s of the first IS/VR lenses can be described as the hey-day of film photography is open to conjecture; I would say it was much earlier than that — throught the 1980s to early-1990s. Modern era IS lenses have been much better designed but still command a lot of power and generally I view IS/VR as more of a gimmick. And optically, these IS/VR lenses have improved very dramatically — especially Canon's 70-200 f2.8 IS, but given my refined technique and experience I have never regretted my non-IS version of that lens.