whats the deal with the Shake reduction

That's very interesting and nice to believe but hardly scientific or conclusive. The human element influences such tests making them virtually useless. You may have just been much steadier in your second shot.

definitely not scientific
it only took me about 3 minutes to conduct the entire test and upload the results. Try it yourself, I was amazed.
I never use SR, but I will now.

To Hazza. Are you saying that I am telling an untruth? I must admit it was a bright sunny day and that the results on a monopod can be better BUT I still have no problems with the right settings.
CHEERS Vic.

Vic, my comment was for the original poster.
Harry

SORRY Harry thought you meant me as your reply followed on after mine.
CHEERS Vic

I was in Edinburgh Castle a few weeks back, and walking round the Great Hall I was firing off shots, turned round and saw a Canon User watching me, and noting my camera. He wasn't taking photos. A little smugly, I thought, serves you right for not having Anti-Shake (I was using shutter speeds of around 1/3 - 1/6 second).

A few moments later, I realised mine wasn't switched on, and all the shots I'd taken should be blurry.

But when I checked them later on, only a couple were significantly blurred. Most were like this one, taken at 1/3s:




Detail:



Usable definitely, but the AS would have helped.

So a steady hand still comes into it.

Dan

This is not exactly true. All monitors have a refresh rate, most LCDs will have a rate of 60 Hz. The old analogue CRTs needed at leat 70 Hz to appear flicker-free.

I'll try and clarify.

The phosphor in CRT screens glows for a certain period of time after each frame. For PC monitor phosphor, this period is shorter than 1/60s, which is why if the frames come at 60Hz or less, there appears to be a darkening between frames. A 'refresh rate' of at least 75Hz should stop the flickering.

(The phosphor used in TV CRT screens glows for much longer: typically 1/24s, so the frames can come much less frequently.)

TFT screens don't darken, however, after each frame. The image stays put. But there's still a 'refresh rate', of course. It is more likely to be limited by maximum data flow to the screen than the physical properties of the screen.

Confusingly, they also have a 'response time', and this is the delay between a new frame's data arriving at the monitor, and the monitor exclusively displaying that frame. With overly long response times (eg. 100ms), 'ghosting' occurs, where the slow response of each pixel causes a kind of motion blur and visual features hang around in one place for too long as artifacts. This doesn't matter until you start playing games!

So far I've not found an LCD screen that I really like. We are about to look at flat screen TVs, but want to avoid the horrible excessive contrast that many exhibit.

Any tips for new and really good monitors and TV sets?

I have an LG1900R, which I am very impressed with.

It comes with very sophisticated softare that allows you to tweak it endlessly.

You can also have multiple settings saved in its memory, useful if your other half likes completely different settings.

On TV's my vote goes to my Sharp Aquos Titanium.

I worked with a specialist audio visual company this year that fits out superyachts costing £50 million upwards.

They reckon that Sharp makes the best TV monitors.

I have an LG Flatron L2000CE, which is better than most other screens I have seen. However, I have not seen a great many.

G

I see that in the manual it advises to turn anti shake off when using a tripod. Why is this, and can it cause damage if you leave it on. What about monopods?

It certainly won't do it any damage.

It's been alleged that leaving it switched on, on a tripod, fools it into shaking the sensor when the camera isn't being shaken, thus resulting in worse results than if it was switched off.

I've never seen any evidence for this myself, nor seen any presented. I must try a really long exposure sometime, on the tripod with SR on, and then again with SR off. It would have to be very long, in order for any shake introduced by the act of pressing the shutter release to die down and be insignificant compared with the rest of the exposure.

The camera switches the SR off automatically, in most of the circumstances you'd be using it on a tripod anyway (bottom of p4, so it's a little tricky to really test this.

So the "be sure to switch off SR on a tripod" advice, also on p48, is a complete mystery to me.

I've not seen the effect either but the concept appears sound, errors due to sensor/system noise could be readily translated into movements at the imaging sensor. It's muting in effect.

Sorry, SilverJON, I think you muddle the subject rather than clarify it.

All monitors have a fixed refresh rate, determined by the computer settings. This means that the computer is sending new frames to the monitor at a fixed rate (normally 60 Hz for an LCD, 70 Hz or more for a CRT). In analogue TV sets the normal refresh rate is 50 Hz, which makes the picture visibly flickering. High-grade analogue TVs have a 100 Hz rate, making the picture more stable.

It ti true, however, that the LCD monitors have a slower response, allowing for a stable picture at 60 Hz.

As for LCD monitor quality, I would highly recommend the Samsung SyncMaster series. But look out for the Viewing Angle specifications. Some LCD monitors have a rather low viewing angle, which makes it necessary to view the picture from a more or less fixed position.

The early laptop computers were notoriously bad in this respect, changing the screen angle slightly made a huge difference in picture brightness.

A good LCD monitor can have a viewing angle of up to 178x178 degrees. You can then move your view point quite a lot without noticing any change in the picture.