Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/12/27
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Howard: Whenever I see high-ISO D700 shots, I want one. Except that I don't want to carry it around :-) Just for laughs, I ran the your M8 ISO 2500 and 1250 pictures through Neat Image. I did the kind of noise reduction I prefer--aggressive on chroma noise and sparing on luminance noise. I usually don't shoot my M8 above ISO 640, so this was an interesting exercise for me. Results here: http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/album170/M8_ISO_2500_filtered.jpg.html http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/album170/M8_ISO_1250_filtered.jpg.html Compare the filtered M8 file at 2500 with the your Nikon ISO 3200 file. The Nikon is still better, but now things are a bit closer than they were before, probably within 1 stop. If you view them both at 1:2 or 1:3, which is how they will look when printed, then you can see that while the Nikon is still better, the Leica is still usable for reasonable print size. Things stay pretty gritty in the low tones unless I really smear the detail, which I don't want to do. Whatever Nikon is doing with on-chip noise reduction is pretty darned impressive. Neat Image can do some pretty amazing things with the noise in the midtones and highlights. But the M8 does seem to fall off the digital cliff at 2500, especially in the darkest tones. At ISO 1250 (M8) vs. 1600 (D700), Neat Image on the M8 picture evens things out pretty well. I think the filtered M8 file is pretty comparable to the D700 file, even at 100%. After what I've seen, I think I will be less reluctant to use ISO 1250 when it's needed. I'll leave the two filtered files up up for a few days. Howard, if you want to grab the full-sized files and add them to your test folder, feel free. --Peter > I've uploaded a series of D700 photos, ISOs from 1600 to 25600, to the > Lumix ISO folder. It's practically jaw-dropping: the equivalent levels of > noise in these are seen in M8 photos of about 1/5 of the same ISO. E.g., > the D700 shot at 12800 compares well to the M8's 2500, and so on. Wow, > when is Leica gonna adopt the CMOS technology? Most of the difference I > think is due to this difference, and not the relatively small difference > in sensor sizes. > > http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/ > > ?howard >