You Say I Should Use Image Stabilisation — Then Why Oh Why Would I Ever Turn It Off?

Episode 241 of the Photography Explained Podcast, published Friday 11 September 2026.

Introduction Turn on image stabilisation, they said. It'll save your photos, they said. Nobody mentioned you'd need to turn it off again.

You've read the advice a hundred times. Turn on image stabilisation. It saves your photos when your camera moves, when you're in low light, any time you need to use a slower shutter speed handheld.

So you turn it on, you leave it on forever. Why would you ever turn off something that's meant to help you? Then you put your camera on a tripod. Somewhere online, someone tells you to turn it off. That makes no sense at all, does it? You haven't done anything wrong. Nothing about the camera is moving anymore. Your camera's firmly fixed to the tripod head, which is supported by three specially designed tripod legs. And yet the advice says switch it off.

So which is it? Is image stabilisation your best friend, or is it your worst enemy? The answer is, it's your friend, as long as you know when to use it and when not to use it. Yes, dear listener, it depends what you're doing with your camera at that exact moment, and how you're doing it. Let's sort this out properly.

Hello and welcome to episode 241 of the Photography Explained Podcast. This episode is titled: You Say I Should Use Image Stabilisation — Then Why Oh Why Would I Ever Turn It Off?

A very good morning, good afternoon, or good evening to you, wherever you are in the world and whatever time of day you find yourself listening to me. I'm your host, Rick, hi, and in each episode I try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 27 minutes (ish), without the irrelevant details. Yes, really. I'm a professionally qualified photographer based in England with a lifetime of photographic experience, which I share with you in my splendid podcast. And before I forget, you can text me from the podcast feed if you want to get in touch or if you've got any questions coming out of this episode. Let's get into this.

By the end of this episode, you'll know exactly what image stabilisation does. You'll know when to leave it on, and you'll know exactly when to turn it off, and why. No more guessing, no more contradictory advice. Let's get into the tips.

Tip 1: What Image Stabilisation Actually Does Image stabilisation does one thing. It counteracts, to a point, any movement when you take a photo with a slow shutter speed that may make the photo blurry.

When you take a photo handheld with your camera, there is a risk of movement. You can't always stop it. It might be minimal, but it might be just enough to blur a photo, especially in low light.

Image stabilisation detects that movement. It uses tiny sensors inside the lens or the camera body to cancel out that movement. Either a lens element shifts, or the camera's sensor shifts. Either way, the result is hopefully the same: the movement gets cancelled out before the shutter closes, and you've got a sharp photo.

It doesn't stop your subject moving. It doesn't fix a photo where you moved the camera on purpose, like a pan. It only fixes the movement of the camera itself, when you're using a shutter speed that isn't fast enough to deal with it. That's the one job it does, and it can do it very, very well.

Tip 2: How Many Extra Stops Image Stabilisation Buys You Camera people talk about stops when they describe image stabilisation. A stop is a doubling or a halving of light — going from one sixtieth of a second to one thirtieth of a second, or from f/4 to f/5.6, and any other numbers in either range. When we're talking about image stabilisation, one stop means your shutter speed can be half as fast, and the photo will still come out sharp.

Here's a practical example. Say you can normally take sharp photos handheld at one sixtieth of a second before you start to get a problem. Good image stabilisation might give you one, two, three, even four stops of slower shutter speed.

One stop gives you a shutter speed of one thirtieth of a second. Two stops gives you one fifteenth. Three stops gives you one eighth. Four stops gives you a quarter of a second. One sixtieth, one thirtieth, one fifteenth, one eighth, a quarter of a second — four stops of image stabilisation, and you can take a photo as sharp as one taken without image stabilisation at one sixtieth.

That's a genuinely useful benefit. It isn't extra light. It's less light needed for a sharp photo, because you can use a slower shutter speed without blur. It's the difference between bumping up your ISO and possibly adding noise to a photo, and getting a clean shot handheld in a dim room.

Tip 3: Why It Fights You On A Tripod This is the part that can trip people up. Image stabilisation is built to detect movement and cancel it out. On a tripod, there isn't any movement. There's nothing to cancel out. The camera should be completely still.

But the stabilisation system is still sat there, still looking for movement, because that's its job. With nothing to correct, it can — not will, can — introduce a tiny bit of movement itself. And that's all you need to get a blurry photo. That movement can cause you to take a blurry photo with your camera on a tripod, which isn't good, and it's a little confusing too. On a long exposure, on a tripod, that could be enough to ruin a photo.

This is why the advice says turn off image stabilisation when you're taking a photo with your camera on a tripod. Not because stabilisation is bad, but because it's got nothing to do, and it being on might do more harm than good.

Some modern lenses and camera bodies solve this problem for you automatically. They include tripod detection, which senses when the camera has been completely still for a sustained period of time, and quietly adjusts or switches off the stabilisation system without you touching a thing. If your lens has this feature, you may not need to switch anything off manually — check your lens manual to find out whether yours includes it. Mine doesn't, unfortunately.

Tip 4: Two Different Places Stabilisation Can Live You get image stabilisation in lenses and in camera bodies. In lenses, it's called IS, image stabilisation. In camera bodies, it's called IBIS, in-body image stabilisation. Yes, we need acronyms for all these things, don't we?

If you've got three stops of image stabilisation on your lens and three stops on your camera body, and you put the two together, do you get six stops? Probably not. Check your camera manufacturer's manual and your lens manufacturer's manual, put the two together, and see what you've actually got. Don't go with the assumption that you've got six stops, because you probably haven't. It doesn't work like that.

Tip 5: The Panning Exception There's one situation where image stabilisation genuinely helps, even though you're deliberately moving the camera, and that's panning. Panning is when you follow a moving subject with the camera, keeping them sharp while the background blurs behind them. I don't do it a lot photographing buildings, obviously, but I have done it in the past.

Some stabilisation systems have a dedicated panning mode. It recognises that you're moving in one direction on purpose, and it only corrects up and down movement, leaving your deliberate side-to-side movement alone. If your camera has this mode, use it for panning shots. If it doesn't, you may need to turn stabilisation off completely, so it doesn't fight your panning motion.

Tip 6: Video Needs More Help Than Stills Video and stills ask different things of image stabilisation. A photo only needs to be sharp for a fraction of a second. Video needs to look smooth for the entire clip, so every tiny movement shows up as a wobble on screen. Because of that, video stabilisation is often more aggressive than photo stabilisation.

Some cameras add extra digital stabilisation on top when you're filming, which is worth knowing if you switch between stills and video on the same camera. The settings that suit one won't always suit the other — it's part of why you'll find camera models with a 'V' in the name, designed more for video than stills.

As ever, the best thing to do is check your camera's manual, or go into the menus and see exactly what stabilisation options you have and how to switch between them for stills and video.

Tip 7: It Runs Your Battery Down Faster I'd never consciously thought about this, but it makes perfect sense. Image stabilisation needs power to run. Every time the system detects movement and moves a lens element or the sensor to counter it, that's using a little bit of battery power. It might be a tiny amount on its own, but if it's happening constantly the whole time the camera's switched on, it's going to draw power.

In-body stabilisation tends to use more power than stabilisation built into the lens, because it's shifting a heavier sensor rather than a small lens element. Either way, leaving stabilisation on all day adds up — you'll get fewer shots per battery than you would with it switched off.

That's another good reason to turn it off on a tripod, on top of the reasons in Tip 3. You're not fighting the hunting problem, and you're saving battery at the same time. If you're out for a long day of shooting and you know most of it will be tripod work, switching stabilisation off early is worth doing, not just at the moment you set up the tripod.

Or do what I do: have loads of batteries so you don't need to worry about it. I don't need that stress in my life. I've got plenty of fully charged spares safely secured in my camera bag. Problem solved.

Quick Recap ● Tip 1: Image stabilisation counteracts small movement, wherever it comes from, nothing else.

● Tip 2: It can buy you several extra stops of usable shutter speed.

● Tip 3: On a tripod it has nothing to correct, so turn it off, unless your lens has tripod detection.

● Tip 4: It can live in the lens, the body, or both.

● Tip 5: Use a panning mode if you have one, or switch off for pans without one.

● Tip 6: Video usually needs more stabilisation help than stills.

● Tip 7: It draws battery power constantly, so switch it off when you don't need it, or have loads of batteries.

A Quick Addition — The Reciprocal Rule Something that isn't in the script, but is worth going back to. Earlier I said you can take a photo handheld at one sixtieth of a second, and with four stops of image stabilisation get a photo as sharp with a shutter speed of a quarter of a second.

We need to remember the reciprocal rule here — the shutter speed should be faster than the reciprocal of the focal length. If you've got a 50mm focal length, your shutter speed should be faster than one over fifty, so one sixtieth of a second. If you're using a focal length of 200mm, the minimum shutter speed you should be using handheld is one two-hundred-and-fiftieth of a second.

That's the starting point you do the image stabilisation calculation from — your starting shutter speed, before you reduce it by however many stops your stabilisation gives you, should be the safe handheld shutter speed for that focal length.

What If I Use a Phone to Take My Photos? Phones handle this differently, and honestly, more simply. Most phones combine optical stabilisation — a tiny moving lens element — with digital stabilisation, which crops into the image slightly and shifts the frame to smooth things out. There's usually no switch. It's just on, all the time, doing its best in the background.

That's mostly good news. You don't have to think about it for handheld shots — if you just take photos on a phone, you've probably never thought about this at all. But it does mean you lose some of the control a camera gives you. If you prop your phone on a tripod or a wall for a long exposure, you can't turn stabilisation off the same way you can on a camera, and it might cause you problems. There's so much going on computationally with phones these days that it probably won't, but it's something to be aware of.

Some phones let you switch to a dedicated night or tripod mode, which quietly disables digital stabilisation for you. If yours has one, use it whenever the phone is properly still. That one setting does the job the tripod switch does on a camera.

What Do I Do? Most of my work is architectural and real estate photography, and nearly all of it happens with my camera on a tripod. That means image stabilisation is off far more often than it's on for me.

When I say off, I don't have it on my Canon 6D or my Canon 17-40mm lens. So that's it — it's my tripod, and good technique, that's what I rely on.

But my Canon 70-200mm f/4 L IS lens does have four stops of image stabilisation, which I love to use. At a focal length of 200mm, my shutter speed should be a minimum of one two-hundred-and-fiftieth of a second to keep things sharp. With that image stabilisation, my shutter speed can be as low as one one-hundred-and-twenty-fifth, one sixtieth, one thirtieth, or one fifteenth of a second. A photo handheld on a full frame camera at 200mm at one fifteenth of a second — that's massive, isn't it? And again, that's instead of increasing the ISO, which could introduce noise and other digital bad stuff, as I like to call it.

My Canon R100, my other camera, my training camera which I train along with you guys using, doesn't have in-body image stabilisation, but the kit lens that comes with it does — four stops again, which I think is remarkable for a kit lens.

Did I turn it off when I was taking photos with my camera on a tripod? Yes, I did, thankfully. And did I remember to turn it back on afterwards? No. Writing this has reminded me I need to do that. See, we learn all the time, don't we?

When I'm working handheld, scouting a location or grabbing quick reference shots, I leave stabilisation switched on. But the moment the camera goes onto the tripod for the actual shot, I switch it off. It's become part of setting up the camera on the tripod itself, not a separate step I have to remember.

Something else, while I think about it. You'll hear plenty of photographers talk about 'shake' when they explain this. I don't use that word, because I don't like it — I think it's misleading. It suggests something big and obvious, like the whole camera visibly juddering, or you shaking all over the place. Most of the time it isn't that at all. It's small movements — tiny movements from breathing, from the weight of the camera, from simply being human — that cause blur. So I don't like the term camera shake, and I never have done. But if you hear the term, that's what it is: any movement of the camera which causes a blurry photo.

And as for my phone? I don't really know, to be honest. I need to look into that.

And that is what I do.

Here's Something for You to Do, Dear Listener Find the image stabilisation switch on your lens or camera body, if it has one. If you're not sure, check your manual or do a quick search for your exact lens and camera models — you might find it within the menus on your camera body, though not on your lens.

Make sure image stabilisation is on. Put your camera on a tripod, take a photo. Then turn it off, and take the same photo again. Compare the difference — see if there is one. And once you've done that, let me know how you get on. I'd love to hear. This should be a really interesting experiment.

Related Episodes Episode 235 — Do I Really Need a Tripod? Really? Why Rick, Why? Start here if you're still deciding whether a tripod is worth carrying at all, because today's episode about turning stabilisation off assumes you've got one — or it makes you aware, when you do get one, that it's something you need to do.

Episode 224 — Why Are My Photos Blurry? All the Reasons and How to Fix Them. Image stabilisation is only one piece of the blur puzzle, and this episode covers all the others.

Episode 234 — Oh No, Another Blurry Photo. Here's How to Stop It Right Now. A practical follow up if today's episode has you thinking harder about camera movement generally.

Next Episode Next time, I'm tackling the exposure triangle. Everyone teaches it, and I barely use it. In episode 242, I'm going to tell you why.

Sign-Off Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Photography Explained Podcast. I do hope you enjoyed it and found it useful. If you've got any questions or suggestions for a future episode, please let me know. And if you did love this episode, why not subscribe so you get every new episode straight to your listening device of choice? And if you could tell one person all about my splendid podcast, that would be greatly appreciated. For everything else — courses, resources, my weekly email and lots of other good stuff — check out my website, rickmcevoyphotography.com. And you can find me on YouTube — just put Rick McEvoy into the search and up I pop. And again, text me from the podcast feed if you want, how utterly splendid.

This episode was brought to you by, wait for it, a cheese and pickle sandwich, consumed before settling into my homemade, acoustically cushioned recording emporium. I've been Rick McEvoy. Thanks again very much for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast, and for giving me twenty-seven minutes-ish of your valuable time. I reckon this episode will be about 23 minutes long after editing out the mistakes and the other bad stuff. Thanks for listening. Take care. Stay safe. Cheers from me, Rick.