Olympus E-410 anti shake

Olympus is a strong believer in body-based stabilisation and has equipped the E-510 body with such facilities. This however comes as no consolation to existing owners of other Olympus DSLRs who need optically stabilised lenses in order to provide anti-shake facilities. Since Olympus won’t produce any stabilised DSLR optics though, it’s down to third parties to provide models like the E-410 with a solution.

To date there is in fact only one lens which has risen to the challenge: the Leica D 14-50mm, which originally came as part of a kit with either the Panasonic Lumix L1 or Leica’s own Digilux 3. Now it’s also sold separately, we thought we’d see how it performed on the E-410.

Below you’ll see crops taken from a close-up of a bottle, reproduced here at 50%. The shot was taken at the Leica D 14-50mm’s closest focusing distance using an exposure of just half a second. You can clearly see camera shake with the stabilisation deactivated on the lower left crop. This shake however is greatly reduced in the second example with optical stabilisation activated.

Olympus E-410 with Leica D 14-50mm OIS off		Olympus E-410 with Leica D 14-50mm OIS on
14-50mm at 50mm (100mm equiv), 0.5 sec, 100 ISO		14-50mm at 50mm (100mm equiv), 0.5 sec, 100 ISO

As our video illustrates, the Leica D 14-50mm’s optical stabilisation can be very effective in practice, and does indeed equip models like the E-410 with effective anti-shake facilities. However its relatively high price means most existing Olympus DSLR owners looking for a way to combat camera-shake will be better-off buying an E-510 kit for pretty much the same money.

Our demonstration does however bode well for the stabilisation facilities of Panasonic and Leica’s future 14-150mm lens for the Four Thirds fit. If the price is right on this lens, it could provide a long-overdue realistic stabilised option for owners of Four Thirds DSLRs.