RAW (NEF file format) cont.

Settings used for each sample in this comparison:

Other notes:

• White Balance point samples were taken from the white patch on the Kodak Colour Patch card
• Output was saved as the applications best quality JPEG

Increasing sensitivity (ISO) samples

In these samples we're more interested in the consistency of colours and visibility or suppression of noise in dark / shadow areas at higher ISO's.

ISO 400

Original NEF (RAW) here (3.7 MB)

D1 native JPEG	Nikon Capture v1.13
Bibble v2.02	QImage Pro v10

Of all the Nikon Capture image is cleaner while still managing to pull some detail out of the reflection, QImage appears to have amplified the noise and diagonal banding is already visible.

ISO 800

Original NEF (RAW) here (3.7 MB)

D1 native JPEG	Nikon Capture v1.13
Bibble v2.02	QImage Pro v10

Now Bibble is keeping the image the clearest, it's also discarding the most detail at the bottom end, diagonal banding is now visible in the native JPEG and QImage Pro images, Nikon Capture has somehow turned this banding into what appears to be random noise.

ISO 1600

Original NEF (RAW) here (3.7 MB)

D1 native JPEG	Nikon Capture v1.13
Bibble v2.02	QImage Pro v10

Diagonal banding very visible in the native JPEG and QImage Pro images, again Bibble suppresses most of it although it's just about starting to show through. Nikon Capture has done a relatively good job of hiding the banding and all that's left over is what appears to be random speckle noise.

ISO 1600 - Noise Reduction (RAW; NEF)

Original NEF (RAW) here (3.7 MB)

Bibble v2.02 Noise Reduction	QImage Pro v10 Noise Reduction (High)

Both Bibble and QImage Pro have noise reduction features which are designed to deal with the banding noise in high ISO D1 images, the two samples above are conversions of the very same ISO 1600 NEF (RAW) file with noise reduction enabled in each application.

NOTE: QImage Pro v10 seems to have a bug which stops noise reduction from operating on RAW files, you can see the expected result in the JPEG example below...

ISO 1600 - Noise Reduction (JPEG)

Bibble v2.02 Noise Reduction	QImage Pro v10 Noise Reduction (High)