Nikon Updates Vibration Reduction Stats to Comply With New Standard

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This month, the Consumer & Imaging Products Association (CIPA) released a new standard to help make better sense of the world of image stabilization. Theoretically, the standard will make sure that all manufacturers test and report image stabilization statistics the same way, so you can better compare between lens brands.

And although we haven’t heard anything from any other company, Nikon has already hopped aboard and released a list of CIPA-compliant numbers.

As Nikon explains in its announcement, this isn’t just a formality, some of the numbers will have changed:

This change means that VR performance figures (number of ‘stops’) provided in Nikkor lens product documentation and user manuals before 1st July 2013 may differ from the CIPA VR performance figures.

Here’s the full list of Nikon lenses and their image stabilization statistics taken from Nikon Europe:

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As you can see, the lenses (at least on the FX side) vary quite a bit. At the bottom end of the scale you have the Nikkor 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D ED, which will run you about $1,600 but only measures in at 2 stops of stabilization. On the other end is the $18,000 Nikkor 800mm f/5.6E FL ED, with an unmatched 4.5 stops.

Of course, you don’t have to spend large sums of money to get decent stabilization. DX lenses all provide between 3 and 3.5 stops, and the $600 Nikkor 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5G ED nearly matches the $18,000 monster mentioned above at 4 stops.

To learn more about the new VR numbers coming out of Nikon, or about the CIPA standard itself, head over to Nikon Europe’s website here or visit CIPA’s new IS guide here.

(via SLR Lounge)

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