does image stabilisation really help full in short focal lenses like 17-50mm or 16-50mm using flash?

Question

shooting weddings and social events

Answer 1

Image stabilization is only helpful with relatively slow shutter speeds and/or long lenses. Flash photography implies a fast shutter speed. For social events, IS can actually be counter productive: this feature requires a brief moment to activate, during which time you might miss the shot.
For weddings, IS can be usefull during church cerimonies, when flash photograhy is not permitted.
The Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 doesn't have vibration reduction and I don't think anybody misses it. I use this lens myself and I never missed it. Then again, I don't shoot weddings. When Canon introduced their own 17-55mm f/2.8 WITH image stabilization, everybody wondered why.

Answer 2

There is a cheap way to avoid camera shake.
If you know your focal length in 35mm terms (will depend on your camera, most are 1.5x times, so that an 18-55 becomes a 28-90 approx) If you keep the number for the shutter speed higher than the number for the focal length then you should be able to hand hold without camera shake. Juggle your ISO and aperture to best suit.

If you are having problems with a wide angle lens then you might want to ask, is it motion blur rather than camera shake? Although wide angle lenses have greater depth of focus and are less prone to camera shake they are not entirely immune. If you are using a flash then your shutter speed is likely to be at least 1/60th of a second or most probably faster, therefore anything less tele than a 60mm 35mm equivalent shouldn't cause problems.

If the subject is very fast, or if your exposure is slower than the correct synch speed for your given model of camera (slow synchro) then you will get trails either before, after or before and after your subject. Some cameras have the facility to select a front or rear curtain synch for the flash, which helps to control this effect.

Answer 3

These above answers are right...

However, if we are shooting a night landscape, it's a good idea to have IS (VR,OS) :). Why? When we use a slow shutter speed, everything we need to be in detail need to be in focus, say, the houses and buldings must no collapse or tilt in our night's, at this case, IS is really helpful.

Imagine we are at a night club, and need to take the picture of the night activity, of course we used Wide, not tele (u can't find a night club whhich is 100km long), and IS is really helpful at this time.

However, it is not nessesary to have IS in your lens in that range. If u have it, excellent, if not, dont worries so much. Because hardly we take night landscape without a tripod and hardly we are supposed to take pictures in a night club :)

Hope this will help u :)
Cheers bro

Answer 4

Hand-shake is less noticeable in wide angle shots because of the low magnification, so it's less important unless you're cropping the picture a lot.

Answer 5

it helps in long lengths
and only with hand shake