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Don’t Care About IBIS?

What if I don’t care about IBIS (in-body image stabilisation)?

I didn’t have it on my film cameras and it was the lack of ISO headroom that forced me to cut my shutter speed. With digital, I can increase the ISO, and that’s what I did with the Fuji X100s, the X100f, the X-E3 and several Nikons and didn’t think twice about IBIS.

Shutter speed was just something to think about – just don’t let it drop too low. It still is a consideration with IBIS; it’s just that there’s more headroom to which to drop shutter speed.

But there are other things that bug me more than any lack of IBIS.

Weight is still bugging me. My Canon EOS R6 weighs 680g with card and battery. I love it dearly, and after a couple of hours with the bag on my shoulder I don’t notice the weight. But as a carry-around camera it is too heavy if I am on holiday, because then I might be carrying a guide book, binoculars, and who knows what else. Only the Ricoh GRIII is light enough that I can forget about the weight.

But consider this shot I took with the GRIII, as an example. The sun was behind me and I couldn’t see a blessed thing in the LCD and I ended up cutting off the top of the tree. Maybe it doesn’t matter for the shot, but I want to make decisions like that consciously and not have a photo spring a surprise on me. That said, I still love the camera dearly for the right circumstances.

As an aside, why do Councils cut London Plane trees right back every year. They look good in full leaf, and they do look very graphic when they are cut back like this.

But getting back to IBIS, if I opt for a camera without it, what is a good balance between features and weight?

The X-T3 weighs 539g. That’s not much a saving over the weight of the Canon.

How about the X-T30 or the X-T30 II at 383g? Are they too small to handle well? Surely not when I don’t think the Ricoh is too small. Now a saving of 307g over the Canon is significant.

The X-T30 II is looking to be a possibility. Or rather, it was looking to be a possibility but it’s not what I ended up getting.

The Fuji X-T50

I ended up getting a Fuji X-T50, which comes in at 438g, which is pretty light considering that it has IBIS and a 40MP sensor.

I paired it with a 35mm f2 lens and took it to Amsterdam. This first shot is on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam and the next shot is a waterway in village of Edam.

Martin Parr

Talk and book signing at the V&A this evening Wednesday 3 September 2025. Ricoh GRIII for the first two shots and iPhone 16 for the next two.

Michaelangelo

X-T50 with 35mm f2 lens at f2.0, 1/120 of a second, and ISO 1600

This was after a photo walkabout, with about ten of us in a pub and Michaelangelo talking to Omar, whom I had never met before.

Heron with 55-200mm Fuji Lens

I bought a Fuji 55-200mm lens, really on the analysis done by Andy Mumford. This was my first time out with the lens and I used it on a Fuji x-T50.

Are More Pixels Better

First, let’s look at pixel counts on different size sensors.

Suppose we had a 40MP APS-C sensor – would that produce images as good as a 20MP full frame sensor?

Well, noise for a given ISO is lower on a bigger sensor because bigger sensors gather more light. So it is not automatic that a bigger APS-C sensor would outperform a more modest pixel count on a full frame sensor.

Small sensors also mean more depth of field for a given framing, so to get the same subject separation you would need a shorter focal length or you would need to move back further from the subject.

With those two points out of the way, the question is whether more pixels on a sensor is better than fewer pixels on the same size sensor. And by same size I mean that same physical dimensions, in this case APS-C.

On the principle that a picture is worth a thousand words, here is the full frame from the Fuji X-T50 with it 40MP APS-C sensor, and a crop of about 9% of the full frame.

The full frame is 7728 x 5152 px. I downscaled it to 1000 x 1500 px to display here. The crop is 1622 x 2433 px, also downscaled to 1000 x 1500 px

One thing I know is that the crop is much more detailed than I could get from a lower pixel camera with the same size sensor.

And to show you what that deterioration in quality actually means, here is a smaller crop upsized to 1000 x 1500 px.