Image stabilisation, in still photography, refers to a lens or camera’s ability to limit the effect that camera movement has while taking a picture. Unless on a tripod, if an exposure takes a long time (anything from 1/100^th of a second to longer than a second), then your hands will move the camera while it is taking the picture. Hey presto – unwanted camera shake!

Canon usually refers to the technology as Image Stabilisation, whereas Nikon usually refers to it as Vibration Reduction (but I prefer the acronym VR to be used for Virtual Reality). Canon and Nikon (as well as other camera manufacturers) have lenses that stabilise an image by moving a group of lens elements (this is optical image stabilisation – it can also be done by moving the image sensor, which some smaller cameras and phones do). Digital Image Stabilisation is mainly used to stabilise video, and is not really sited to still image capture. I shall refer to all shake-reduction technology as IS.

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