Here we are yet again, with another silly Bruce question
I came across a post in another thread (regarding User Modes that people have configured/set up) and I thought one comment was interesting, in that the member stated he used just two User modes, one for having IS on and the other for having off.
It got me thinking... 'off'?! isn't that heresy!? Surely it's now just a necessary feature unless shooting from a tripod, no?
And so I went reading a little more about IS (or SR, Shake Reduction as it's known elsewhere), and came across a few articles that were stating some things that I wasn't really aware of.
I think we have all heard the general rule about focal lengths and shutter speeds, that you shouldn't really shoot lower than the focal length, for example 1/50th of a second for 50mm focal lengths, 1/100th of a second for 100mm focal and 1/300th for 300mm etc, but I always took this rule to meaning
with IS/SR on. An article I found was suggesting that these generic rules were actually for situations where IS/SR was turned off, and that when toggling IS/SR on you can safely shoot a
fair bit lower than that. I guess it all depends on the skill, situation, body position etc of the shooter, but the whole article really got me wondering about IS/SR and if I should really have it on, have I contributed to the degradation of picture quality when shooting in those instances where it was simply not necessary at all (such as HSS on a bright day, shooting wide open and therefore commanding upwards of 1/2000th of a second etc).
Furthermore, I was interested to hear that when tripoding a camera, lift that mirror up can also increase quality, yet again another benefit of the K-1 I am not exploiting properly. IS/SR off is a given when tripoding for sure, but how many of us lift the mirror up for the shot? Are there any users here that shoot handheld with the mirror up?
I guess I'm just intrigued as to how many shooters here on Pentax Forums shoot with IS on or off? Being from the land of Oz I am blessed with bright sunshine days, perhaps my norm really should be to have IS off, especially when I shoot wide open (which I like). I guess part of becoming an accomplished photographer is always gaining experience and knowledge to know that when you walk into a certain environment you can assess quickly the amount of light available and make the right decisions to your shots.
This isn't so much a question post but rather just a starter for a discussion, please feel free to throw your 2 cents in with your opinions of IS/SR and Mirror Up, especially seeing as the Pentax world has this feature based 'in camera' rather than onboard lens.
Cheers,
Bruce
Last edited by BruceBanner; 09-04-2017 at 10:21 PM.