HIGH ISO COMPARISON: ** Z6 vs. Z7 ** (4,000 - 25,600) Real-World Setting

olyflyer wrote:

I did look at the right images, but perhaps not the same way as you did... For me, the tree is the subject, "OOF" means out of focus details for me. On the tree, there are some parts in focus, some out of focus due to the DOF.

This is the area where details show up in the Z7, but smeared out in the Z6 image.

Areas without anything in it is not OOF area for me, just totally blurred, but yes, in those areas where there is nothing, the Z6 image looks better.

I think that is due to processing. I am also surprised by the smeared out OOF of the Z6. This is something I used to see in my old Olympus images taken at high ISO, and did not expect to see that in a Nikon image also. It would be interesting to have a look at the NEF image and see if I can get a cleaner image using Nikon software. The artefacts we see where there is nothing is not something I am used to see, and I actually take images at even higher ISO, but I exclusively use CNX-D for NEF files and nothing else.

The artefacts can actually be a result of resizing also. But we will never know, since there is no NEF file to work with.

Looking at the two images you have here at full size, there's been very heavy handed NR and then equally heavy handed sharpening applied to both. I agree with you that there seems to be more detail in the Z7, but it could just be that it's fake detail because of the sharpening trying to sharpen detail which isn't there as it's been obliterated by the clumsy NR (or never was there because of the noise, who knows).

Anyway there doesn't seem to be much thought given to the fact that one would sharpen and NR images of different resolutions differently when presenting at a give size here. So we're probably just seeing what the default LR settings give.