F200EXR versus F31fd -- battle of the giants MKII

My last blog entry analyzed the noise characteristics of the F200EXR and the F31fd in response to some pretty rampant speculation that the F200EXR was either less noisy or had "better" noise, whatever that might mean.

Since then, DPReview finally published their review of the F200EXR and directly compared the two cameras at 800 ISO. The reviewer concluded that the F200EXR was not in fact better than the F31fd in this area, but was definitely still the class leader:

The F31fd was, for a long time, probably the best performing compact camera we'd encountered for shooting at ISO 800. Fujifilm promised the F200 EXR would improve on that performance, but doesn't appear to have quite delivered the goods. The F31fd is clearly producing a cleaner image and one that does a slightly better job of retaining fine detail. There's not a lot in it, though, so we'll now look at how the F200 EXR stacks up against a modern camera.

Of course, this is serious pixel peeping, but so be it.

Interestingly, this comment only served to harden the resolve of certain fans of the camera. They continue to push the mantra that the F200EXR has less chroma noise and retains details better. And they continue to push the rather elusive "better" noise theory, especially chroma noise. But the word "smoother" is making an appearance now and again.

So I thought I'd analyze the images from DPReview. After all, the last set of images I analyzed perfectly agreed with the reviewer at DPReview. The F200EXR has not improved on the F31fd, and in fact does not even quite tie it at higher ISO. So let's see what 800 ISO in good light produces ...

Here are the two images from DPReview ... note that I did not process the noise at all, but I did try to equalize tone and color ....

F31fd


F200EXR

And here are crops from the two of them ... F31fd on top ...


Although there is a bit of chroma noise on the dark parts, it's not rampant and is pretty hard to see at web and small print sizes. I can't see it, but others with better eyes might be able to.

Note, though, that if your monitor has not been hardware calibrated, you may have a wacky white point and be seeing far more than is visible in a print or on a properly calibrated monitor. I.e. more than what is really there ... this has come up a lot recently on the Fuji Talk Forum, and there isn't much we can do about the fact that some people are quite opinionated about noise and tone yet clearly have crappy monitors ...

Now I'll run Topaz Denoise on the two images (same settings) and see what it produces. Topaz Denoise is a very modern noise reducer that tends to produce magnificent results but takes at least 10 times as long to do it as Neat Image. I use Neat Image for most images, but when I want a really great result, I use Denoise. One thing it is really good at is restoring edge integrity.

The crops after Denoise ...


And after equalizing the sharpening of the F200EXR half (in the bottom) ...


So ... what do I see? The color blotches are gone in the F21fd (top) half ... and the edge integrity is excellent. The F200EXR has some trouble maintaining edge integrity because of the high (and strange) luminance noise it generates. After sharpening, the problem is actually worse, indicating that one will have to be careful with the F200EXR images in post processing.

And finally ... after NR ...

F31fd

F200EXR

There is noth much between these two ... I think either one does a fine job. Those who would put the F200EXR on a pedestal for its noise characteristics should try printing both large to see what they get from them. I haven't done that, but I would bet that the F31fd is easily as good, and probably better where edge detail is concerned.