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Originally Posted by Scott Merryfield
If you haven't tried image stabilization, Man-Fai, you are missing a nice feature. Monopods and tripods are useful tools, but there are times they are just not practical. With IS, you are always sort of carrying a monopod/tripod. I hike a lot on vacation and do not like to carry a tripod then, so IS is quite useful.
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Oh, I have no doubt that IS will often be more practical. I was mainly just suggesting the alternative of monopod as better than nothing at all since Bryan already owns the 70-200 f/4L.
Bryan,
RE: IS working better than monopod (when the latter is useable). Since you went w/ a lens that offers larger aperture than the IS option, I suspect the effectiveness of the combo of lens + monopod will be very close, if not the same. Of course, this assumes that you don't need the extra DoF of a particular aperture you'd otherwise use on the IS lens. OTOH, it's not like IS will help you stop action like the extra stop that the non-IS f/4 telezoom would.
Anyway, for myself, I prefer to go w/ the better/faster glass first before going for IS even though I hate to lug a tripod and would also prefer to leave the monopod at home as well. I guess if I could afford it, I'd add something like the Nikon 18-200mm VR on top of better glass to cover the same range for travel-lite IS-enabled shooting.
OTOH, I'd probably want to upgrade to the 70-200mm f/2.8 VR first before doing something like that.
_Man_