OIS Jiggling

[Remo Nonaz]

I put together a little video from a sailboat race last weekend, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtdSD6-QNvw&list=UUSlf1VOg6TmSplL9mu1WPqA&index=1&feature=plcp. Mind you, I'm not much of a videographer. Just a dabbler.

As I was shooting from the cockpit of a moving boat, and as I was a crewmember, shooting with a tripod or stabilzer rig were out of the question. My camera, a GH2, has optical image stabilization, but this yielded a jerking effect as the OIS tried - and failed - to keep the image stable. You can see this effect best in the first scene of the video. I noticed this effect while shooting and wondered if would show up in the video - it certainly does.

Would turning off the OIS assist in this kind of situation or would it just make it worse? There are no adjustments for the OIS that I am aware of. Comments are appreciated, I guess I just need to be more careful and brace as best I can. Of course I didn't want to interfere with my skipper; she was pretty tense. The tension!!!  

[Chris Sanderson]

The IS of your first shot successfully gets rid of most vertical movement. However the 'jerkiness' laterally is the same as you get when panning with IS on. The IS tries to control the lateral movement and then 'gives up' - resulting in a jerky horizontal movement.

Shooting from a moving platform is always a challenge. I find it best to turn IS off, brace the camera as much as possible to eliminate any hand-held shake, then allow the uncontrollable movement of the boat/camera to give a more natural motion.

[Remo Nonaz]

Chris:

Thank you for your comments. I shoot from boats frequently - both stills and video, but mostly stills. A few weeks ago I was shooting from a dinghy and noticed the tendancy for 'jerkyness' in the camera viewfinder due to the stabilizer struggling with the motion of my small boat. Between jerks, the stabilzer does a good job of steadying the image, so I am assuming that keeping the stabilizer on for stills would work best. An option with the GH2 would be to go to 'Mode 3' stabilization which is normally for panning - it stabilizes up and down only. (This is disabled with video.) What has been your experience and recommendation in these situations with stills?

[Chris Sanderson]

If you have dual mode IS, definitely switch on the mode that disables the horizontal movement correction.

When the weather is such that the boat is slamming, I have simply gone hand-held with full IS. Use a harness, keep the knees and elbows in 'flex' mode, and avoid the use of any viewfinder to the eye since the camera will simply bang on your face 

Sometimes suspending the camera with surgical tubing from a convenient overhead tie-off works pretty well - or use a helmet-cam!

[Remo Nonaz]

Chris:

I'll try the horizontal disable and see how it works. As for 'when the boat is slamming' the GH2 is not water resistant, so I suspect it will be safely put away!  Our water is saltier than yours.

[Bern Caughey]

...the GH2 is not water resistant, so I suspect it will be safely put away!

http://tinyurl.com/SLR-StormJacket