This isn’t precisely true. If you have low light and don’t push the ISO, the camera will use the same shutter speed regardless of IS. If it needs to keep the shutter open for 1/15th of a second, it will so. Without IS, that will be a blurry image due to camera shake. With IS, you will have a more stable platform, but if you are taking pictures of people at 1/15 there will be some movement of your subject. It’s OK for small snapshots, not good for big detailed images of people. Flash will freeze things, but small cameras tend to have poor flashes that create harsh contrasts. I’m mainly talking about natural light shots.
IMO, for most low light situations, clean high ISO is actually more beneficial then IS. It allows you to keep your shutter speed up above 1/100 and truly freeze the action. You may get 2 f-stops improvement with IS; you’ll get much more with ISO 1600. The place where IS really shines is when shooting at full zoom on a camera with a longer lens. Long zooms amplify camera shake, IS really calms things down.
Don’t get me wrong, IS is great and I have it on both my cameras. But it’s not a panacea and it will disappoint you if you think that it will allow you to take perfect low light shots of people without a flash. The two features work in conjunction and knowing the features and limitations of your camera is the best way to capture the shots you want.
OK, I agree, in theory that should be the case. It just wasn’t in the case of the two cameras I compared (Fujifilm F20 and Canon SD800) but I shouldn’t have presented it as SuperCCD vs. OIS issue.
Then again, Fujifilm is the only company making SuperCCD cameras, and I don’t think they are very good cameras. Image quality is mediocre at ISO 100, so it’s not much consolation that it doesn’t get much worse at ISO 1600. I also found the interface to be very awkward and unrefined.
I’ll give another shout-out to B&H. I have used them from time to time for years and they’ve always been good. They were also able to help me out when the hotshoe on my 20+ year old film camera crapped out - found a replacement for me within a day, and sent it to me quickly at a reasonable price.
I have a Blackberry with a 2 MP camera. The picture quality is better than any camera phone I’ve ever had, but it still sucks. It’s good for when I need to take a picture right at that moment, but as far as travel photos and such . . not so much. For instance, here is a picture I took of myself before a concert with my Blackberry. Here is another at the concert with my Blackberry.
To contrast, this is a picture taken the same night with my Casio digital camera. Hell, even after my camera got wet and became permanently damaged , it took better pictures than my Blackberry: cite
Anywho, I actually enjoy photography when I’m on vacations and stuff. I’m far from professional, but I love taking nice pictures, printing them, and posting them around my house. Camera phone pictures wont be nice enough quality for my needs. Plus, like I said above, it’s nice having different settings and such to play around with.
, it took better pictures than my Blackberry: 
