Unfortunately I have an unfortunate conflation of two factors that negatively impact upon image quality.

 

The first is that because I do a lot of wildlife photography which mostly requires being out at dawn and dusk to capture the action I often use high ISOs. While in itself high ISO doesn’t cause noise in an image the use of them amplifies the signal coming off of the camera sensor and this makes it more visible leading to luminance noise (graininess) and chromatic noise (colour noise or speckles). Good articles on image noise can be found here and here.

 

The second factor is that I predominantly use the Micro Four Thirds system of cameras and lenses. This means that if I compare the image files from my 20Mp Olympus EM1x and my 20 Mp Canon EOS 6d – same ISO, same shutter speed, and same aperture – grain is more apparent on the M4/3 file because it has to be magnified more than the full frame file.

Combine the two and things can get ugly real fast. When I first started using micro four thirds I was using the noise reduction in Photoshop and Lightroom and it wasn’t too flash smearing the details badly at ISOs over 1600. So that had me questioning my choices. Then I started hearing about Topaz DeNoise AI. I gave it a go and I was pretty impressed. Now I was happy to shoot at 3200 and occasionally use 6400. I was quite happy with that and used DeNoise as plugin from 2020 until this year. Topaz discontinued DeNoise as a stand alone app and wrapped it up with some other apps under the name Topaz Photo. I tried it but wasn’t happy with the results – they were a bit too crispy and crunchy giving a very “digital” look.

After a couple of months I learnt that quite a few of the OM System ambassadors were touting DXO Pure Raw 5. I gave it whirl on a free trial and was impressed. So impressed that I stumped up my own cash and bought it. It’s a one off payment so no subscription which is nice. I don’t know how it does what it does – it could be magic for all I care – but the results are fantastic. Click on the images below to see them larger.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a few months I’ve learnt that most of the time you can just rely on the auto settings, but every now and again you will need to fiddle about with the settings, but it’s all very easy to use. Of course you can use the apps on your full frame images and they will benefit too. 

 

 

*The title of this entry is referencing the 1973 song by Slade.

 

Having watched the video the music has dated well, but the clothes! Some fashions deserve to be consigned to the dustbin of history.