Vibration reduction technology

I spent the day taking photos and video at the UNF women's soccer match against Davidson College. The Ospreys won their second game of the season with an overtime goal from Junior defenseman Laine Keating. Here's one of the shots I got of her in action against the Wildcats:

L. Keating UNF v DC Wsoc by Max Hochman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

I use a Nikon D-40 digital SLR camera with a 50-200mm VR lens. The vibration reduction lens makes all the difference, especially with action shots. I just wanted to take a moment to see how the vibration reduction technology works. And since I'm a visual learner, I decided to include a diagram:

So as you can see, the trick with the vibration reduction lens is the floating lens element. This lens is controlled by small gyroscopes and accelerometers that compensate for extra camera movement when snapping photos. This technology is becoming more common in camera optics, in fact the video camera I use also features vibration reduction technology. With the help of this technology I am able to shoot steady video without the use of a tripod. Check out this cool video for a closer look: