Question - Wide Angle Lenses with VR/IS?

Question
------------------
Hey,

Are there any wide angle lenses with VR or IS available on the market?

Answer
------------------
I'll answer from the Nikon perspective as I have a Nikon Camera but the answer is relevant to both.

Well besides the 17-55 f2.8 VR, nothing! Generally speaking companies don't
really see a demand for VR or IS on the wide angle lenses. Wide angle being
anything lower than a 18 mm on a dslr (equivalent to 27mm on full frame).
The reason being that VR is generally attributed (at least in the minds of
the companies) to taking shots of people with low light or long telescopic
zooms so that you don't get camera shake when you are at 70mm plus (To get
no camera shake introduced in your photos with telephotos or the zoom end
of your lenses, you have to shoot at a shutter speed of at least 1/zoom mm
i.e. 1/200mm which really means 1/300mm on a full frame camera, so shutter
speed on dslr with a zoom of 200mm will have to be 1/300). Adding the VR
allows you to reduce that by a few stops depending on lighting conditions.
I.e. you could get away with a 200 mm zoom at a shutter speed of 1/250 or
even 1/200 and still have sharp images.

So why not the wide angle? Wide angles distort people's faces so bad that
the people shots don't make sense. You're not zooming so VR isn't need
there. Photographers are generally taking pics of still life i.e.
buildings, landscapes, and cardinal rule of photography when taking these
shots is to use a tripod for crisp photos.

So long answer short, nothing yet!

As a side note,

For point and shoot cameras the widest angle you can get equivalent to dslr lenses is generally 27, 28 mm. You can buy wide angle attachments for the fancier cameras such as the Canon G9.