Blur is a bane and a boon to the photographer, depending on just what type of blur it is, and where it is found. Canon’s newly announced Hybrid Image Stabilizer aims to do a better job of removing the bad kind from your photos.
There are two kinds of blur: A shot can be out of focus, or moving too fast for the shutter to freeze. These can both be good. An out-of-focus background makes the subject pop out, and motion-blur, say by panning with a moving car, gives the impression of speed by blurring the background.
But the bad kind is the kind that makes your friends look all fuzzy when you can’t hold the camera steady. IS, or image stabilization, has been around for a while, and it uses a computer to analyze the scene and compensate for your wobbly hands by shifting either lens or sensor (or both). Up until now, this has worked with linear blur, movements left-to-right or up-and-down. Canon’s new IS also works with rotational blur.
The new tech gets information from an angular velocity sensor, kind of similar to the iPhone’s accelerometer. The extra dimension of shake-correction means that the system can be optimized for both normal and macro (close-up) photography, as different types of shake become more apparent at different distances. Tilting the lens when very close to a flower, for example, can have a large relative effect.
The oddest part of the announcement, though, is that “The technology will be incorporated in an interchangeable single lens reflex (SLR) camera lens planned for commercial release before the end of 2009”. It’s unusual to pre-announce something like that. On the other hand, we’re half way through the year already. We’re looking forward to seeing what this will do for low-light shooting. Right now is an amazing time to be a photographer — camera tech has caught up to film already, and now the boffins are bent on inventing all sorts of fancy new toys.
Press release [DP Review]
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