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Many cameras now feature built-in stabilization, using a variety of operating principles. These stabilizers, while fine for shooting baby’s first steps, may not be fine at all for visual effects work.
Electronic stabilization uses additional rows and columns of pixels, then shifts the image in 2-D, just like the simple but flawed 2-D compositing approach. These are clearly problematic.
One type of optical stabilizer apparently works by putting the camera imaging CCD chip on a little platform with motors, zipping the camera chip around rapidly so it catches the right photons. As amazing as this is, it is clearly just the 2-D compositing approach.
Another optical stabilizer type adds a small moving lens in the middle of the collection of simple lens comprising the overall zoom lens. Most likely, the result is equivalent to a 2-D shift in the image plane.
A third type uses prismatic elements at the front of the lens. This is more likely to be equivalent to re-aiming the camera, and thus less hazardous to the image geometry.
Doubtless additional types are in use and will appear, and it is difficult to know their exact properties. Some stabilizers seem to have a tendency to intermittently jump when confronted with smooth motions. One mitigating factor for in-camera stabilizers, especially electronic, is that the total amount of offset they can accommodate is small— the less they can correct, the less they can mess up.
Recommendation: It is probably safest to keep camera stabilization off when possible, and keep the shutter time (angle) short to avoid blur, except when the amount of light is limited. Electronic stabilizers have trouble with limited light so that type might have to be off anyway. A caveat to this: stabilized video should require a lower bit rate, or admit a higher quality for the same bit rate.
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