As time passed my hands got tired from holding the camera and my stable grip was not as stable anymore. Unfortunately I did not bring a tripod ??and probably I would have not used it even if I had it since it is hard to track airplanes flying above using one especially when you are with thousands of people walking around you. When I looked at the photos that evening I saw the results of my tired grip ??the later digital photos were not as sharp and steady as the earlier ones.

When I saw the results of my work my reaction was to go and get those fancy lenses with an image stabilizer built-in them. There are two types of image stabilizer one that moves the sensor and one that actually uses gyroscopes in the lens to move a floating optical element that compensates for shakings. The latter is more expensive and provides better results. I saw some people walking around with the Canon image stabilizing zoom lens I am not sure how effective it was for them but it sure did look impressive.

There are also drawbacks to using image stabilizers and actually some of these drawbacks are very relevant to my air show photo shooting. Moving the camera erratically to track an acrobatic airplane can confuse the image stabilizer that can detect that movement as being unwanted shakings and try to compensate for it. If I had an image stabilizer I would have had to use different practices when shooting my photos like trying to pan the camera on one axis and at a more or less constant speed.