Somebody has just emailed me a shot from a wedding I attended. It appears to be taken with a Panasonic LX3 at 400 iso. To be honest I am quite surprised by how poor it is and how noise and NR has clobbered the file so badly. It really wasn't that dark inside the church. Is this normal?

For the sake of this couple, I hope you (or somebody) took some shots with a real camera.

cogitech wrote:
For the sake of this couple, I hope you (or somebody) took some shots with a real camera.

Check.

For the sake of this couple, I hope you (or somebody) took some shots with a real camera, with their flash gelled down to match the ambient light.

Probably poor settings such as a lower jpeg quality and so forth. The sensor is about the size of your pinkie nail. Do you know what camera settings were used?

Is that the full frame, or a crop? Judging by the size of the grain, it looks like a crop..

I took this photo with my LX3, iso 400. I found using my LX3 indispensable. It performs beautifully and I carry it everywhere with me. While traveling in Japan recently, it was often inconvenient to be carrying my 5D, but this little camera went everwhere!

Oops - it can be found here. Not sure why it didn't upload to the previous reply.


http://soaplady.smugmug.com/gallery/8458472_AmwYR#556049310_2cZga

After getting used to such cameras as the 1D Mark III, 5D, and 5D Mark II, I take for granted the low noise levels on higher ISO settings. When I see images from my Mom's Lumix or from my fiance's G9, I realize how spoiled I have gotten.

KE David wrote:

Oops - it can be found here. Not sure why it didn't upload to the previous reply.


http://soaplady.smugmug.com/gallery/8458472_AmwYR#556049310_2cZga

Thanks a lot for that link. Your example is waaaay better - looks like I can put it down to user error.

Well, if you look around at the original size of the image linked to, you will see the same poor noise pattern but thats the price of small sensors. The original image posted by richard is worse and was likely underexposed originally which would make the noise more visible after pp. We are spoiled with our larger sensors.

Tariq Gibran wrote:
The original image posted by richard is worse and was likely underexposed originally which would make the noise more visible after pp.

I'm pretty sure there was no post-processing. Karen's picture shows that the LX3 can do much better. The original shot does not appear to be representative of all that the LX3 can do in the circumstances.

That must be a 100% crop, and a very poor example. My Panasonic TZ5 can do better than that.

Fuji Superia xtra is better than that and it's like $2 a roll here in AUS.

LX3 sucks pretty bad at ISO 400 if you peep at 100%. But the above example is probably lifted in PP, and perhaps with ACR or something similar that can't do any usable NR.

This is a JPG straight out of the camera at ISO 400, f/2 and 1/25":

It does suck by comparison but not so bad, I agree with Makten that they must have cropped, or sharpened or pushed exposure in pp. Its a capable camera but it requires very careful editing even at low ISO. Cant go pushing exposure or dodging like you'd do with a file from an APS-C and above sensor.