The lowly GF3 gets little respect in my stable. Always the last one to be used unless compact is the primary goal, I shot a few high ISO images the other day just to see how it handled dark subjects. And I was rewarded with a bit of noise, as the 12mp MFT (micro four thirds) sensor is wont to do.
Panasonic GF3 & Olympus 45mm 1.8 1600iso f/1.8 1/30
Click through to see the noise that is present in the surfaces and the background. A subtle grain that makes it clear that this is high ISO.
I always process my high ISO images to show a bit of grain because that guarantees that I have not pushed the image so far that fine low contrast details have been sacrificed. Yet JPEG engines do this all the time and people go ooooh and aaaaaah over the results, so I thought I would see if that is really ok when shooting for the web.
The next version pushes the luminance slider to about half way in Lightroom 4.2. And the result is actually really nice. I was quite surprised that the important details were preserved while the background was rendered almost buttery smooth. Hmmmmm …
If you still see a lot of grain in the background then I would suggest that you look at the black point on your monitor. If you do not calibrate and use a TN panel then I would ask that you never judge tone or color on your monitor :-)
So anyway … pushing NR a bit further on some subjects does not hurt at all, and can render a very smooth result with a decent sensor. And this is not a low light sensor by any stretch …
A couple more shots from my desk top …
The Tascam DR-05 …
Note also that these are lit by my blue LED keyboard lamp, so aggressive white balance correction was applied. All the more reason to celebrate the smooth result.
