Canon 300 mm f4 IS & monopod?

The down side of leaving IS on for both of these lenses is the same. You can get an occasional blurry image because IS is trying to move a lens element around when it does not have to, and reduced battery life.

Why would you want to use IS for a football game anyway? Maybe in mode 2 for panning but that's about it. I would definitely not use Mode 1.

Depends on how stable you are.

I was using it with mirror lockup on a tripod and forgot to switch off IS. The pictures were horribly blurred.

I was using it with a 1.4x on a tripod last week, but didn't have the ballhead locked completely down. Tried IS on and off. IS on was fine. If there is no movement, you want IS turned off. It isn't smart enough to detect that, so it will try to stabilize an already still picture. And that results in blur.

Eric

My understanding is that for long exposures IS with a tripod can cause an error, but for normal exposure times I don't think it is an issue. IS tries to compensate for camera motion, and if there is no motion, maybe it gets confused after a long time. I think if you do get such an error, power cycling the camera will clear it. In other words, no permanent harm.

It is hard to be perfectly (i.e. tripod equivalent) steady with a monopod, so I would leave IS on. My guess is you are using fast exposures. The rule of thumb is maybe you can handhold 1/focal length on a full frame camera (1/300 of a sec) and get away with a steady shot. With a crop sensor, you need even faster exposure (1.6 crop factor means maybe 1/480 of a second as the slowest you can reasonably hope to hold steady). Even a tripod ("perfectly" steady) at these shutter speeds should not cause a problem if IS is on.

I have used two IS lenses with tripod and don't worry too much about turning IS off, and have never had an error. I suppose you use a little more battery than you need to.

If someone more knowledge answers this, I would like to also know if you can harm the lens by, for example, using IS from a moving car.

I always shoot with IS on with a monopod but with 300/2.8, not 300/4.
There is a Chuck Westfall's (from Canon USA) tech tip in the July issue of the Digital Journalist (http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0807/tech-tips.html) about IS on a tripod (might be useful with monopods, too) with various Canon IS lenses.

I have the300 f4 IS and have used it quite a bit on a monopod, with IS on, and have not seen any problems from it.

When I've used mine on a monopod I've left the IS on. The slight movements will keep the IS interested.

But the 300/f4 IS is such a light lens, compared with almost any other long lens, that you could hand hold for long periods without a problem.

P

I use mine with IS on on a monopod.

Yes you can, I found using Mode 2 gave the best results. The IS Mode 2 with a monopod gave some additional advantage over using it with IS off on a monopod.

You will find the results of this test here (link)

I agree. You should be fine leaving it on when working with a monopod, unless you are extremely good with one and hold the lens and camera rock steady.

To clarify, the IS on your 500 *does not* need to be turned off at all. It senses when it's on a tripod and turns itself off.

As you are aware, the 300/4 does not do this and is one of the few remaining IS lenses that you actually need to manually turn off IS when it's used on a tripod. (I think another is the 70-300 IS, but check the Canon site to be sure.)

I use 70-200, 300/2.8 and 500/4 IS, mostly for sports (work related) and wildlife. I've had these lenses for about seven years and I really can't recall the last time I turned IS off on any of them, whether using them handheld, on a monopod, on a beanbag/car windowsill/fence post, on a tripod with a gimbal head set "loose" to allow pans and tilts, or on a tripod with all the movements locked down tight. I will occasionally switch to Mode 1 or Mode 2 IS, but I really don't see a lot of difference between them.

I never quite get why some folks always seem to chime in to say "IS is of no use for sports shooting".

Of course it is!

I wonder if the folks who keep saying otherwise have ever stopped to ask themselves why it is that so many big sporting events have been dominated by Canon's big white lenses on the sidelines? Until the last couple years, they were the only ultra teles with IS. Do you think all those pros (or their employers) went to the trouble and expense of switching to Canon, if they didn't find IS extremely useful. IS was the only key the Canon lenses apart from some other very good lenses, until recently.

For one thing, IS helps at higher shutter speeds too.

And, personally I often deliberately use slower shutter speeds for sports shots, where IS is most definitely useful. I just get a bit bored with nothing but "frozen in mid air" shots using 1/500 and up.

Finally, would every other camera manufacturer in the world be scrambling to add IS of some sort to their system, if it weren't highly useful in a variety of different situations, including sports?

Go enjoy your new lens!. It'll work great I'm sure. Just remember to switch IS off if you put the lens on a tripod with all the movements locked down tight. If you forget, IS will probably remind you by jumping around in the viewfinder (a definite advantage over sensor-based methods of stabilization... you can see lens-based at work in the VF)!

This lens was what prompted me to get a monopod in the first place.

The issue with tripods and some IS implementations (including the 300/4, which was the second IS lens to be introduced and the oldest still in the lineup of current products) is that if IS can't detect any motion at all, it ends up making the image move around a bit. There's no danger of that on a monopod; there's still motion there for IS to detect and counteract, and the combination of IS and a monopod provides for a more stable image than either one alone (though certainly not as stable as a tripod).

As far as IS on a tripod, Canon has had two ways of dealing with it (three, if you count the 300/4's way, which is not to deal with it at all). A few of the big IS superteles leave IS enabled so that it can counteract mirror slap. Most of the others detect that there's no motion and they then lock the IS elements in place, just as they would if you'd turned IS off (but the motion sensors remain enabled, drawing power and reducing your battery life somewhat).