ahh...charity work
Sorry, when I saw that you were still confused, I was on my way out the door for a
spectacular ride. Now that I'm back, I have time to help you out.
Right from the "horses mouth":
"Super SteadyShot® Picture Stabilization minimizes camcorder "jitter" and "shake" without any change to the quality of the image
Super SteadyShot® Picture Stabilization uses horizontal and vertical motion sensors located inside the lens assembly area. These sensors detect high frequency camcorder motion, like you might experience in a moving car, and an oversized CCD chip compensates for the movement.
The Super SteadyShot® system utilizes a Hyper Precision CCD chip with up to 3,300K pixels. Only 330K pixels are required to deliver an excellent picture, though Sony uses up to 690K. The extra pixels on the chip compensate for horizontal and vertical motion, minimizing camcorder shake without degrading the picture quality.
Different than most other digital image stabilization systems, Super SteadyShot® produces clear images even while zooming, shooting moving objects, or shooting in low light."
OK - so here's why it is "optical" image stabilization.
In the first "bold" section that I highlighted, you need to realize that this is a "mixed signal"
system - part analog, part digital. Certainly it can be argued that this is a digital image
stabilization system, but not in the same sense as the original/legacy, yet still employed
digital image stabilization systems. I'll explain that system in a moment. Focusing on the
Sony system, there are analog horizontal and vertical motion sensors that react to the
camera as it shakes. This signal is fed into a chip (a PIC - Programmable Integrated
Circuit). From that point on it is a digital signal that processes the information
available on the CCD (a Charged-Coupled Device; the image sensor chip). Now this too,
is digital information, but here's why it's better than the original/legacy, yet still employed
digital image stabilization systems. The information on the Sony CCD is there. Remember, as
Sony stated above, they have captured more than enough information by using a chip
that is physically larger (the second section that I highlighted). You can think of it this
way; there is a template that represents a "window" that is smaller than the CCD. This
window is the correct height and width (4:3 or 16:9, depending on user preference settings
) to capture images to the media This window is free to move around, to some extent, as
needed to correct shake and jitter. The movement of the window is indeed digital in nature,
but the information it "grabs" from the CCD is real. It was the actual image in the camera's
lens. Why does this make it better? Time for the primer on how the original/legacy, yet
still employed digital image stabilization systems.
Original/legacy, yet still employed digital image stabilization systems process in a completely
different way. The image is a fixed size and there is no other info available. From one
frame to the next, each pixel is analyzed. Each pixel contains the information that digitally
represents how the CCD was "excited" - there is information about the color, the brightness,
the white balance, the exposure, etc. So, as jitter is detected, each pixel of each frame is
compared to the information of the next frame that represents that same vector. Then,
digitally, a new, artificial pixel is created that is an average of these. Fake information.
I'm certain that you read the Sony page, so it must be that you didn't know how original/legacy,
yet still employed digital image stabilization systems operated.