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:

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 …