zoom and no tripod

[djb]

there was an old "rule of thumb" thast figured a decent exposure with a shutter speed equal or greater than the focal length of the lense. in other words if you are shooting at 400 mm then a shutter speed of 1/400 second or less should work. but, as others have stated it depends on how shakey you are at the time.

dennis

[normc]

No matter how good you are at hand holding, Image Stabilization will make you even better...as long as the shutter speeds are reasonable.

[pianoplayer88key]

I ran a test with my camera recently - put the camera on shutter priority, zoomed in all the way, and took shots, adjusting the shutter speed by about 1/3 stop in between shots. With IS on, I was able to take fully-zoomed shots at about 1/15 to 1/20", and with IS off, it went to about 1/50" or so on my Canon S1 IS.

[ed33]

Thanks for all your replies. i got the idear now. I'l just have to wait for the pentax optio mx revieuws and than ... decide. As I won't buy anything bigger that that it'll be that or the nikon coolpix 3700 which also has a good movie function but...not much zoom.

Ed