HV30 Image stabilizer remarks

[rufsiany]

Hi,
I'm a happy owner of HV30 for 2 weeks now and I'm very satisfied with this purchase. However, the way image stabilizer works annoys me a bit.
When image stabilizer is on, during slow panning the captured scenes are jerky.
It looks as if a stabilizer locks into the scene and tries to remove the slow panning movement as long as it can,
than releases the picture and immediately locks into another view. As a result, instead of a smooth panning there are series of visible steps.
Of course I can turn the stabilizer off, but than the whole footage is shaky.
Kind of all or nothing situation.

It reminds me my old Sony Hi8 camcorder, which also had an image stabilizer, Super Steady Shoot in Sony's nomeclature.
I almost never bothered to turn it off, even that it had easy accesible switch on a camera body.

I've read about the distinctive feature of the hv30 image stabilizer, that not only does it remove higher frequency vibrations,
but also low frequencies caused by e.g breathing. I guess, this is this feature, which is responsible for the stepping panning effect.
In other words: HV30 Image Stabilizer is too good

To make things worse, the access to it is deeply hidden inside options menu.
It's a pity Canon engineers didn't give us a better access to turn it on/off, or better yet, another option to turn on/off its detection of low frequency vibrations.
That would be the best of the two worlds.


What do you guys think?

Thanks.

[guru]

Do you have some footage upladed, I would like to see how that looks ? I'm waiting for my HV20 to arrive, and I will use it very often for car racing shoots, so I would need panning alot.