High ISO Testing per John Shaw

John Shaw, a great nature photographer, just posted a blog.  Http://www.johnshawphoto.com/run-a-test/, about utilization of high ISO in a situation.  He said:  "It  depends on several factors.
1.    Every camera has different high ISO liabilities.  What does your camera do?
2.    How much noise is acceptable to you?
3.    What are you going to do with your images?  Downsizing a file removes noise, so you can get away with a lot if all you’re going to do with the image is posting it to the Web.  Making large prints, however, is another matter."

He then suggested to run a simple test, which is outlined in his blog, I decided to follow his advice and test out mine and my grandson's cameras which are at home at this time.  I set up on my porch two soda cans, plus the flower that I used to photograph the praying mantis.  I photographed the scene only utilizing the native ISO from each camera, I did not utilize the high and low settings.  I followed John Shaw's procedure.  I decided to take the highest ISO from each camera and see which software, and my eyes was the best at reducing noise.  I utilized noise reduction in Lightroom, with Topaz Denoise and NIK Dfine in Photoshop, so I could use layers.

Nikon D300s highest native ISO was 3200.  Nikon's D3s, D7100, and D800 highest native ISO was 6400.

Noise reduction in Lightroom was done manually by utilizing the slider and looking at the photograph on the computer screen.  Topaz Denoise I utilized a strong setting under Raw.  With NIK Dfine I utilize the auto setting.  This was so I can make the results as equal as I could.

My results: Nikon D3s     1: Denoise 2: Lightroom 3: Dfine

D3s ISO 6400 -  Original

 

D3s ISO 6400 - LR Noise Reduction

D3s ISO 6400 - Denoise

 

D3s ISO 6400 - Dfine

              

Nikon D300s  1: Denoise 2: Lightroom 3: Dfine

D300s ISO 3200 - Original

D300s ISO 3200 - LR Noise Reduction

    

D300s ISO 3200 - Denoise

   

D300s ISO 3200 -Dfine

        Nikon D7100  1: Denoise 2: Lightroom 3: Dfine

D7100 ISO 6400 - Original

D7100 ISO 6400 - LR Noise Reduction

D7100 ISO 6400 -Denoise

 

D7100 ISO 6400 -Dfine

            
  Nikon D800    1: Denoise 2: Lightroom 3: Dfine

D800 ISO 6400 - Original

D800 ISO 6400 - LR Noise Reduction

D800 ISO 6400 - Denoise

D800 ISO 6400 - Dfine

Interesting results, I am sure if I worked with Dfine the results may be different, but Topaz Denoise results were straight out of the box.

When I get a moment I am going to run even more tests that John Shaw suggests in blog.