“It needs focal length and focal distance to provide the correct image stabilization,” [Sony's Mark] Weir said. “This is standard with everyone’s system as far as we understand it.”
However, the way that it works is totally different for lenses that can communicate with the camera and those that cannot.
“If the lens can communicate the information to the system and the system can understand it, then the system can provide all of the stabilization information,” said Mr. Weir. “In the case that the lens does not provide electronic communication, the user can manually enter in the focal length.”
But in that case, the camera can still only have the focal length input, and not the focal distance–which has to do with how far away from the sensor the lens is. From the focal length information, it can figure out the right amount of pitch and yaw to provide. However, roll compensation doesn’t require any information from the lens because it is always available. Roll compensation is all based on how the user moves the camera around as you can see in the graph above.
“The behavior of the system is largely dependent on the lens. The lens bears a responsibility if it’s going to enjoy five axis stabilization. It needs to provide focal length and focal distance to the system. But we put in a provision for you to manually put in the focal length. But you cannot put in focus distance. We thought that would be pretty cumbersome.”