Thursday, April 8, 2010

F80EXR – SN Mode ISO Ladder

Altruisto from the Fuji Talk Forum on DPReview.com suggested that I perform the ISO ladder again, but this time using SN mode. SInce SN mode is Fuji’s recommended high ISO mode for EXR cameras, that made perfect sense. After all, since Fuji snuck in the stabilization behavior change, would it be a surprise if they also snuck in an EXR binning change?

So here’s the bad news … the result is the same. I even improved the light by half a stop to no avail.

I left all settings at default (i.e. out of camera) in ACR5, then added fill light and tweaked exposure for each image to basically match all the others and to be “correct” … that is, as good a histogram as I could achieve.

So … the results:

f80_f70_sn_ladder[1]Of course, if you want to see the real dirt, click through this image to the full sized one. And don’t forget to click again if you browser is one of those that sizes to the window first.

The bottom line …  heavy blue channel chroma noise hits starting at 400 ISO … whereas it *never* hits with the F70EXR. This reinforces my suggestion that the F70EXR is about 3 stops ahead in high ISO image quality.

And that is a tragedy … all for a completely meaningless 2M pixels …

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Thank you Kim! Great work!
Regards,
Valentin aka georgievv at DPR

Unknown said...

Seems like Fuji took step forward and three steps backward :/

Kim Letkeman said...

You are welcome, val.

Kim Letkeman said...

Yeah, I'm a bit disappointed to say the least, archish.

Unknown said...

I'm disappointed too kim. Surely keeping my F70. And for the extra MP needed, I'll wait for a rangefinder, mirrorless concept or F300exr with bigger EXR sensor, and at least 14 MP, to get gorgeous 7 MP EXR modes. Dreams don't kill you!
Anyway, thank you for all this testing. Such a help for all of us.

Altruisto

Kim Letkeman said...

Thanks Altruisto ... I surely wish it had been otherwise.