VR

Hummingbird 1/60 sec, 200mm f/5.6 VR (on) hand-held

I’ve never owned a VR lens before, but after experimenting with the one that I just bought, I think that I’m convinced! I used to own a camera that had anti-shake technology. My Minolta A1 had a sensor that was mounted on an anti-shake mount. If your hands moved, which they always do, the anti-shake mechanism would counter it. Honestly, I never used it much because I always had my camera on a tripod.

VR lenses work the same way, expect that the anti-shake component is inside of the lens. The cool thing about a VR lens is that you can see it working. If you press the shutter partially, you’ll see the lens shake smooth out and the image will become quite stable. Nikon claims that with VR, you can get an extra 3 stops of exposure. That said, using the rule of thumb for shooting for acceptably sharp pictures of 1/focal length, if I have a 200mm lens, I would have to shoot at 1/200 second or higher to get a reasonably sharp picture. Nikon says that I can shoot 3 stops less than that, or 1/25 of a second! We’ll see.

My Nikon 50-200mm f/4-5.6 arrived on the doorstep on Monday. I couldn’t wait to get it out into the field. I headed for my favorite shooting location, Reedy Creek. My intention was to shoot some flowers just to see how it worked. However, I found better material as the sun was heading below the treetops, very dense shadows began to fill most of the park. I set my ISO at 400 to ensure that I had some low shutter speeds. I was shooting with my D40. Yikes, it’s been a while since I’ve shot with my D2X Probably about a week!

Here is the result of one of my experiments. First the VR:

200mm f/5.6@ 1/13 second hand-held VR(on)

Now, the non-VR. This is the best that I could do under the same conditions, same lens, without VR turned on. I took about 6 shots and chose the best one.

200mm f/5.6@ 1/13 second hand-held VR (off)

As you can see, there is a marked difference in the shots. VR could mean the difference between getting the shot and not!

Heres another: 1/6 second @50mm f/5.6 hand held VR on.

Mind you, I’m not saying that you should go out and buy one, but … it is a worthwhile investment to spend an extra $80 to get the VR rather than the regular lens, if you can afford it. Your mileage may vary. The sharpness of the shot depends on how good is your technique and how much your hands shake. Mind shake a lot, but I have decent techniques including a soft shutter press and decent breathing. It’s not a cure-all and won’t work for all situations, but it sure gives you a lot more breathing room to shoot!

If you are interested in how the technology works, here is a link to an explanation.