Read what the maker publishes for that specific system, because the answer differs. Some detect a tripod and adjust; older designs can chase their own correction on a rigid support and soften the frame.
This is one of the few questions where the honest answer is to read the specific product, because makers differ and both behaviours are published.
Why the doubt exists
A stabilisation system senses movement and moves an element or the sensor to compensate. On a rigid support the movement is near zero, and a system without a tripod-detecting mode can end up acting on noise — which shows up as softness in exactly the situation that should have been sharpest.
What to look for
A stated tripod or panning mode, published per body or per lens. Where it exists, the maker has addressed the question; where the documentation is silent, switching off costs nothing and removes the variable.
What this catalogue publishes
Little: no title names a measurement protocol, the German word for image stabiliser appears in two, and an optical stabilisation abbreviation in three. A stop count without its protocol is a number rather than a measurement — comparable only with another bare number, which is to say not comparable.
The part that is not about stabilisation
If the frame is soft on a tripod with stabilisation off, look at the shutter release instead: mirror or shutter movement puts an impulse into the support, and damping is what absorbs it. Damping is not published by anyone.
Where this page and the maker’s own manual disagree, the manual decides. Every focal length, aperture, guide number, stop of stabilisation, load rating and sealing claim on this page is reported from the manufacturer’s own documentation, with its unit written as published, and named as such — none of it is measured here. An engraved figure is reported as the maker engraves it, and is never restated in another convention, because the two are not the same number. And for any figure quoted in stops: a stabilisation rating is a laboratory result obtained under a named protocol, not a promise about handheld work. Where a maker names the protocol and the focal length it was measured at, both are reported here beside the number. Where none is named, that absence is reported too, and no figure is inferred in its place.
What people ask before they commit
Why would stabilisation make a tripod shot worse?
Because the system is built to correct movement, and on a rigid support there is little to correct. A design without tripod detection can act on its own residual signal and introduce the motion it was meant to remove. Whether a given system does this is a published behaviour, not a rule of physics.
What about a monopod, or a tripod in wind?
Both are cases where movement genuinely remains, so stabilisation is usually doing useful work. A monopod removes the vertical component and leaves the rest; a tripod in wind is loaded dynamically, which no declared load figure describes.
Last reviewed 12 September 2026