owen farmer , Sep 04, 2010; 11:11 p.m.
My primary lens with my D90 is the Nikon 16-85mm VR. Is there any reason to not leave VR on all of the time? Thanks.
Owen
Mark B. 
, Sep 04, 2010; 11:52 p.m.
Maybe the battery will last longer. And if you are doing still life with a tripod, you won't need VR. I don't know if this is true, but one blogger said that autofocusing is faster without VR.
Dave Lee 
, Sep 05, 2010; 12:33 a.m.
Tests have shown that VR will slightly degrade image quality at shutter speeds that normally should not need VR (such as 1/125, etc). I never use VR unless I'm shooting below 1/60th.
Mark Drutz 
, Sep 05, 2010; 01:40 a.m.
I've never read that it affects autofocus or image quality, but it does use battery power. I use it all the time since I don't see a serious downside to using it. The exception is that you should not use it on a tripod.
John McCosh , Sep 05, 2010; 04:32 a.m.
Also if you have your camera on a tripod. The motion of the VR motor can cause a very slight movement. So turn VR off if you are using your camera on a tripod. Also as Mark has pointed out it does use extra power to operate. However the batteries on a D90 are good for 800 + shots with VR turned on.
Alvin Yap , Sep 05, 2010; 06:24 a.m.
Only shut mine off when on a tripod. Which is like. Rare. Can't think of a reason not too otherwise. I've experienced image degradation when using vr at high shutter speeds but that's on longer lenses (70-300vr, 70-200vr), and not always.
Oh, make sure you leave VR at "normal" mode, "active" vr does shake up the image slightly on regular shooting conditions, particularly observable on longer lenses as well :)
Peter Hamm 
, Sep 05, 2010; 07:07 a.m.
Wouter Willemse 
, Sep 05, 2010; 07:08 a.m.
[edit] Peter beat me on that link... so just my €0,02 on the article then:[/edit]
It makes sense to me (physics wise), though I'm certainly no expert on opticals.
And yes, VR eats up quite some battery so turning it off when not needed can be beneficial for that too.
Kevin Delson , Sep 05, 2010; 09:26 a.m.
VR eats battery life..and significantly.
100% agreement with the link..If you don't need it, shut it off.
John Tran , Sep 05, 2010; 09:37 a.m.
As Nikon said that VR effect differs by photographers. You'd better try and figure out yourself which cases you will benefit from VR and which cases you don't (no one else can tell you that). And in the cases that it doesn't do any better, turning it off can save battery too
