Lawrence wrote: Actually, the reverse is true. Image stabilization in the lens require much smaller movement as you are rotating the lens. And you have the freedom to choose where to place the stabilization element for the optimal position. Whereas in Minolta approach, you need a very large movement of the CCD in the focal plane to accomplish the same thing (the larger the CCD, the larger the movement)- and it must have been quite a technological feat.
Lens image stabilization is tried and true. Minolta approach is innovative, but definitely a lot more complex. It remains to be seen if the reliability can match that of lens design. REPLY: I believe "in lens" IS is far more complex. Typically, an IS lens has twice the number of lens elements than comparable lenses without IS. All the glass is needed to compensate the various aberations introduced by the moving elements (incidentally the Pentax patents on IS lens design, refered to by both Canon and Nikon in their IS patents, explains this in detail). Hence an IS lens is optically compromised. Although some IS lenses are great the fact is that the same lens would have been even better without the IS feature. In addition the complexities means that the lenses are more delicate and will also display relatively large sample to sample variation. The later aspect is very common for eg. the Canon 100-400 and 400 DO lenses where several byuers have returned their lenses or exchanged them with better samples. Some have even given up on them completely. Pål
