Yes, I was going to put “rock your world” in the headline, but that seemed a little unwise when I’m about to talk about an image stabilizer created to prevent that very thing. Canon has been doing lens-based image stabilization since 1995, when its first IS lens came out, the EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM. They’ve been improving the technology and have now added a second sensor to the bargain.

“Shift-based” jitter occurs when the camera moves along the plane of the photograph, as opposed to “angle-based,” which as you might imagine, has to do with the angle of the lens changing, but not the position of the camera. This handy little infographic shows it pretty well:

The new sensor (which will be placed in the lens — Canon has always been staunchly lens-based in their IS tech) is an accelerometer, which will detect movement and combine forces with the angular velocity sensor to get a more complete picture of camera movement.

I have a pretty steady hand and can take sharp pictures down to 1/20th of a second with a 50mm, but with a zoom lens that gets much, much harder. Hopefully I’ll be able to afford one of the lenses that comes out with this new hybrid IS technology.