Re: Image stabilization silently increases ISO?

ASAAR <caught@xxxxxx> wrote in
news:nr9aa3l7am268vb21r3atcaeu1m6csrhhe@xxxxxxx:

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/compactcamerahighiso/

It clearly shows that Fuji's F30, while not the match of Canon's
EOS 30D, compares favorably, doing a far better job than all other
P&S cameras tested.

Better at what? It's better at removing the visibility of noise. The
images are still highly artifacted, though. They don't look real. The
same NR could probably be applied to the other compacts, with similar
results. Fuji may have a unique NR, but they haven't gotten rid of noise
without a cost. All the high-contrast edges in the Fuji F30 image are
ragged. It may not be a negative to you, but it is to me, and to many
other people. You don't get ragged edges like that from low camera
noise. You get it from high camera noise, and very aggressive noise-
reduction that flattens areas of similar color, while maintaining sharp
edges. If you look at the DPReview samples for this camera, look for the
one of the hymnal. Look what happens to the music notation in the darker
areas; it has almost no resemblence to the sheet music, it is so noise-
processed. And it looks very bad when the brighter notation looks
relatively more realistic.

And it did it without ending up with your
cartoon-like images with random, jagged edges.

That's exactly what I see in the F30 sample. Jagged cartoons.

Fuji didn't do it
using magicians, nor were any sacrifices offered to the deities.
Note that I didn't say that any P&S camera today has a great ISO
3200 sensor. I referred to a future, improved next generation
sensor.

It's never going to get more than a stop better than it is now. A very
limited number of photons fall on a tiny sensor area during a high ISO
exposure. Shot noise is always there, in great strength. You either
have to accept it, or hide it with NR, creating other artifacts. What
can be reasonably hoped for is better readout circuitry to reduce the
readout noise. Whether or not Fuji has done this is unclear. You really
need RAW mode to see what is shot noise and what is read noise.

But also note that this is only one stop better than the
F30's sensor, which did *very* well at ISO 1600, and ISO 3200 *was*
tested. Here, the F30's image noise is easily seen. But it still
has far better detail than the other two P&S cameras tested at this
ISO (Casio EX-Z100 and Panasonic FZ-50, both pixel binned).

The edges of the lettering are extremely deteriorated in the F30 ISO 3200
image; they are completely missing in some spots.

If I want to shoot 3200 on the FZ50, I shoot RAW and under-expose from a
lower ISO. It gives much better results.

This
can be easily seen in the images on page 4 of DPReview's article.
Barring a bad case of cognitive dissonance, you should be able to
read it and learn a thing or two.

I read it a few weeks ago when you first linked to it, and didn't learn
anything. I see varying amounts and styles of NR, from sensors easily in
the same league, noise-wise.

I have looked at the RAW data from one of Fuji's other low-noise cameras
(6500), and the RAW data looked as noisy as the FZ50 with the same EI.

The FZ50 has a fairly high quantum efficiency, and fairly low read noise.
Any noise it has is mainly from the sensor size, and can't be improved
upon much with sensors in the same size class. It has unpleasant NR, to
many people, hence its bad rep (amongst tiny sensor cameras).

--

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John P Sheehy <JPS@xxxxxxx>
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