FZ200 NR and sharpening - my theory and experiments to date-Part 1

This part gets down to the application of the material in Part 1.

In the FZ200 if NR is set to lower settings like -1 or -2, noise will increase, but things will look sharper since NR is not smearing away details as much.  If you go to the sample shots from the FZ200 on the Imaging Resource review site, you'll note that there are three samples of their studio set up at each ISO setting.  These are labeled as NR1, NR3D, and NR5 and they correspond to NR -2, NR 0, and NR +2 in the camera.  If you look at the 100% views of these images, you'll notice that the NR1 image is much sharper looking with better edge definition than the others.  However, if you look at higher ISO shots at NR1, you'll see less and less detail and softer edges.  You can down load these images and add some sharpening in post processing and can bring back some of the sharpenss.  But eventually as the ISO increases, the detail is lost to the mottling of the noise.  So low settings of NR at -1 or -2 will work for situations with low ISO, and good lighting.  Good lighting means faster shutter speeds and less time for noise to build up.  But it isn't so good for low light, long exposure times, high ISO, and low contrast subjects.  Under these conditions -2 NR is overwhelmed by noise and details become softer looking.

At this point, additional sharpening is needed to restore or maintain details; however, adding sharpening adds more noise.  Raising NR to counteract the noise added by sharpening only smears more detail.  Very much a zero sum game.

The way out of this seems to be to use i Resolution (i Res, for short - to save typing) which applies sharpening in variable amounts on more of an as needed basis.  I had good luck in low light on a mostly low contrast subject (my stuffed tiger, seen below) using NR = 0 and i Res. at both low and high ISO.  What got me to try this was my ZS15 which has i Res, but no sharpening and which had images I thought were a tad soft.  Using i Res on the ZS15 gave very nice images with just the right amount of sharpening, no artifacts, and little to no increase in noise.  And so I decided to try i Res on the FZ200.  And since the ZS15 didn't have adjustable NR, I set the FZ200 to the default NR of 0.

I have now shot four sequences of images with i Res and NR = 0.  Each sequence goes from ISO 100 to 3200 (six shots).  These four sequences were my tiger, indoors under room light (1/5 second at 2/2.8 at ISO 100); a pile of dead leaves on my covered deck in shade on a brown outdoor carpet; a silver Ford SUV parked in the sun with trees, leaves and dead grass in the background; and a shot of green grass, pebbles, and a wood walkway in the shade.  All four sequences gave consistent results, although the SUV in the sun overloaded things at ISO 3200 and a little at 1600 as the camera went to f/8 and maximum shutter and still couldn't get a good exposure.

This is running on too long, so there will be a part 3.

--
Jerry