Pentax K-7 & Lightroom 3 Beta noise reduction
I wanted to evaluate the noise reduction abilities of the upcoming Lightroom 3 release and to create profiles for my Pentax K-7. So I set up a small scene to photograph and used an AF540FGZ flash in wireless mode to light it. I increased the ISO from 200 to 6400 in one stop increments while adjusting the flash output. There was some variation in illumination however this is more of a preliminary test and I adjusted levels in Lightroom to somewhat compensate. You can click on an individual thumbnail to see the full resolution jpeg generated through Lightroom, however the files are limited to 2Mb.
ISO 200
ISO 400
ISO 800
ISO 1600
ISO 3200
ISO 6400
I make no claims about any of the products used but am merely sharing my own testing.
May 10th, 2010 at 11:40 am
Hallo,
thanks for the nice test. I would be interesting, if would also show the same picture as JPG right out of the cam.
May 10th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
I shoot mostly in RAW and consider post processing as much a part of the workflow as the darkroom was with film. I also had all noise reduction turned off so I would have to conduct a different test entirely to evaluate the jpeg processing of the camera, which is of little interest to me personally. Thank you for your interest though.
May 11th, 2010 at 11:47 am
Thanks for this Wallace. It is refreshing to see the data presented with no judgment attached.
I suppose this is one of those steps you are inclined to take to judge for yourself what the parameters of your tools.
I came across an interesting noise reduction software the other day, making bold claims about its efficiency. I am working on testing it myself.
But really, I don’t find the “issue” of noise to be particularly troubling, at least not with the K7. Except for certain extreme cases I rarely do more than apply a +20 in the luminance noise slider in lightroom (3 beta 2)