Event photography

I volunteered to shoot an indoor event.  About 100 guests in a large room.  I will use xt1 with xe2 back up, several primes, 2 manual flashes for bounce and several types of diffusers.  I shoot jpeg (Fuji does a better job then my partial color blind eyes).  My question is whether I should dial up NR to smooth out skin and diminish noise?

Thanks

If your exposures are good, you should not need to use any noise reduction. Ideally, you can keep your ISO to 400-800 or so, so images should be fine.

Leave NR at default, same for skin The Fuji does an excellent job in JPEG with default values I use  Provia below an example with one Godox on the body

Lmendy wrote:

I volunteered to shoot an indoor event. About 100 guests in a large room. I will use xt1 with xe2 back up, several primes, 2 manual flashes for bounce and several types of diffusers. I shoot jpeg (Fuji does a better job then my partial color blind eyes). My question is whether I should dial up NR to smooth out skin and diminish noise?

Thanks

‘Absolutely not’ would be my advice. The in-camera NR is the one thing that Fuji have yet to master and it can really ruin a shot - skin/hair and foliage are chief among those things affected.
The first setting I dial in on every Fuji camera I’ve had is the NR back to -4 (or as low as it can go on whichever model).

If your final use case is only a digital screen or small prints you will never notice the noise - even at ISO6400.
But that smeary waxy look that the in-camera NR produces is hideous IMO.

Since you are using strobes, presumably your ISO won't be particularly high, so no need for noise reduction. I would leave that turned off. What you might consider is using one of the film simulation modes that has lower contrast. That will reduce the unevenness in skin tones without reducing detail. I would play around a little bit before the event starts to see if you like the look of, for example, "Pro Negative Standard". Don't worry too much about the label--choose whichever one you think looks best with your lighting conditions. There is some variability in what film simulations are available in which cameras, but definitely worth taking a look.

As others have mentioned, definitely worthwhile to shoot RAW and JPG together. That way, if you get it "right" in camera you will be good to go with the JPG's and won't need any heavy editing. But if you find when you get back to the camera that you have messed up the white balance, or that the film simulation you chose really didn't work well, you'll have tons of latitude to make adjustments since you'll have 16 bit files.

Best of luck!

GMacF wrote:

Lmendy wrote:

I volunteered to shoot an indoor event. About 100 guests in a large room. I will use xt1 with xe2 back up, several primes, 2 manual flashes for bounce and several types of diffusers. I shoot jpeg (Fuji does a better job then my partial color blind eyes). My question is whether I should dial up NR to smooth out skin and diminish noise?

Thanks

‘Absolutely not’ would be my advice. The in-camera NR is the one thing that Fuji have yet to master and it can really ruin a shot - skin/hair and foliage are chief among those things affected.
The first setting I dial in on every Fuji camera I’ve had is the NR back to -4 (or as low as it can go on whichever model).

If your final use case is only a digital screen or small prints you will never notice the noise - even at ISO6400.
But that smeary waxy look that the in-camera NR produces is hideous IMO.

I second this. I would absolutely shoot RAW here but, for jpegs, I’m at -4 NR, always. -4 is still plenty of NR in most cases, and you can always add a bit of NR in post if necessary. If the overzealous camera NR smears the fine detail and plasticizes the skin texture, there’s no undoing that later.