Is this digital noise?

[Alois]

My post is not about Fuji but about photography in general.

 

I was wonderling if someone could explain to me why the guy's face is so grainy:

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/streetfusion/28827239815/in/pool-2924826@N25/

 

The picture is shot in broad daylight but at ISO 1250. Even so, there shouldn't be such an excessive amount of grain as far as the guy's face is concerned.

 

Does someone here know for certain what causes this? 

 

 

 

 

[milandro]

I think that yes, it is, noise, but , as far as noise goes , in my judgement, it is not excessive under the circumstances.

 

If that bothers you however there are softwares which act as reducing noise, although possibly your settings could be adjusted ( but I am not sure that a much better results would be obtainable) to influence that outcome somewhat.

 

Patrick FR regularly posts on his blog things like these

 

http://www.fujirumors.com/expires-soon-save-72-on-denoise-pro-and-remove-all-forms-of-image-noise/

[frankinfuji]

Micro 4/3 sensor and ISO 1250, I would expect this level of noise. I limit iso to 800 with my Lumix if I want to retain fine detail.

 

With Fuji perhaps iso 3200 can be ok, unless you have the new medium format Fuji.

[Florian]

To me it looks like there's some bad jpeg compression exasperating things, which is very strange given that the image is 1.4MB.

[Alois]

Micro 4/3 sensor and ISO 1250, I would expect this level of noise. I limit iso to 800 with my Lumix if I want to retain fine detail.

With Fuji perhaps iso 3200 can be ok, unless you have the new medium format Fuji.

With Fuji I can extend the ISO to 6400 and still avoid this kind of noise. The GX80 is a superb camera in terms of specifications, so I was somewhat surprised at the level of 'blotchiness' merely at ISO 1250. There are people who have been telling me that m-4/3 sensors now deliver clean images at ISO 6400.

[frankinfuji]

I've heard the same claims, particularly from Olympus OMD users, but I changed from my Lumix GX to Fuji for the bigger sensor (less noise and better control over DOF).

 

Even just looking at the test shots on Dpreview shows noise issues over ISO 800 with micro 4/3. I'm sure one day micro 4/3 will have good high iso performance, but for now size matters.

[Aswald]

I've heard the same claims, particularly from Olympus OMD users, but I changed from my Lumix GX to Fuji for the bigger sensor (less noise and better control over DOF).

 

Even just looking at the test shots on Dpreview shows noise issues over ISO 800 with micro 4/3. I'm sure one day micro 4/3 will have good high iso performance, but for now size matters.

 

I'm relieved I'm not the only one who finds micro 4/3rd noisy past iso800.

 

Do you think the OMD-EM1 mk2 is any better? Loved everything about the mk1 except the noise.

[frankinfuji]

I don't think any micro 4/3 is going to be significantly better until there's a step change in sensor design. There will be incremental changes, mainly due to improvements in software, but for now size still matters.

[RadBadTad]

With Fuji I can extend the ISO to 6400 and still avoid this kind of noise. The GX80 is a superb camera in terms of specifications, so I was somewhat surprised at the level of 'blotchiness' merely at ISO 1250. There are people who have been telling me that m-4/3 sensors now deliver clean images at ISO 6400.

"With Fuji I can extend the ISO to 6400 and still avoid this kind of noise."

Then your Fuji is magic, because I absolutely can't with any of the 4 that I've used (Including the XPro2 and the X-T2)

 

"There are people who have been telling me that m-4/3 sensors now deliver clean images at ISO 6400."

They lied to you. The smaller your sensor and the higher your resolution, the more prevalent your noise will be at lower ISOs. Always. 

[Aswald]

Time to look at the GFX50s.