B&H camera store, Manhattan!!!

[F8&Bthere]

With image stabilizers the way it was put to me is the ones in the lens are tuned to that lens, the ones in the body are a jack of all trades, masters of none. It's one more thing to fail, if it fails in your body a repair shuts you down, if one fails in your lens your down one lens for repair.

Yeah consensus is that the in lens stabilization is somewhat more effective as it is designed to that focal length or range, and the in body version loses efficiency at longer lengths, but let me give you another perspective:

I bought a Pentax K10D like new, factory refurbished, almost a year ago for US$399. And more recently I bought a DA* 50-135/2.8 (pro/weather sealed) zoom for US$649. Both of these are/were Pentax's top of the line gear. And it's not like I had to hunt very hard for it. It was just a quick search of eBay (and I guess a bit of good timing). Let's see anyone do that with Nikon or Canon.

By the way, I think Bambi meant Pentax instead of Canon with the in body stabilization. Canon is definitely in lens.

To continue with the Pentax example, pentax has like a gazillion lenses out there, and there are lots of great bargains in bodies and lenses because it is not Canikon brand power, and every one of those lenses- new or old- would instantly have some stabilization.

That "if something fails" line I've heard from so many salesmen over the years on many types of products (not just camera gear) and sometimes they may be right, but c'mon... it has to be put in perspective. Repair or Throw away a $500ish body or a $400ish (lower end of Nikon VR zooms, am I right?) IF something fails. A bummer either way, but I'd hope either one would still be useable without stabilization, so you go old school for a while. Bodies drop in price and become "obselete" so much quicker than lenses anyways.

I could throw away my whole rig and still not lose as much as the repair would probably cost on a Nikon 70-200/2.8VRII (that I wish I owned but can't afford) if the VR went kaput .