The entire composition can be seen in the image above, and the crops are taken from an area in the very middle of the image. The image was taken with the Nikon D90 at a sensitivity of 800 ISO, using the DX 18-105mm VR kit lens at 18mm f8; the original Large Fine JPEG file measured 5.26MB. As you'd expect, the steadily higher noise reduction settings smooth out the grainy textures, but also take some fine detail with them. Judging from the crops below, we'd say Nikon has made the right choice for its default setting on in-camera JPEGs, but some may prefer the Low option at 800 and 1600 ISO. If you're intending to apply more sophisticated noise reduction in software later, you'd be better off using the Low or Off setting. At the other end of the scale, the High setting is applying quite heavy-handed processing, and while it's certainly delivering a smooth result, there's loss of detail - some may however prefer it, especially at 800 ISO where it's not yet having too detrimental an effect. Now let's have a look at some more real-life examples including several low-light indoor compositions in our Nikon D90 sample images gallery. |
Nikon D90 High ISO NR off |
Nikon D90 High ISO NR Low |
Nikon D90 High ISO NR Norm (default) |
Nikon D90 High ISO NR High |
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800 ISO |
800 ISO |
800 ISO |
800 ISO |
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1600 ISO |
1600 ISO |
1600 ISO |
1600 ISO |
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3200 ISO |
3200 ISO |
3200 ISO |
3200 ISO |
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H1.0 (6400 ISO) |
H1.0 (6400 ISO) |
H1.0 (6400 ISO) |
H1.0 (6400 ISO) |