Poor lowlight pics from Fuji F200EXR

[pentode]

Originally Posted by AldPixto

Pentode - thanks! And your lnks are quite interesting.

You've inspired me to take dozens of test photos with my F200EXR. I left my camera in 6MP resolution. Then I picked some scene and shot it in EXR-SN, EXR-D100, D200, D400 [,and D800 for provia] then repeated in "A" setting D100, D200, etc.. I did observe that during playback the LCD indicates "SN" or "DR" mode, so that "SN", "DR D100" and "A D100" all indicate as separate modes, and their jpeg files are slightly different sizes.

Shooting at night the D400 (and D800) mode renders pin points of bright lights 'sharper' than the D100 and SN settings.

Perhaps my laptop's LCD monitor is too limited, but I couldn't see grain/noise differences between the "SN" and "DR D100" settings. Most of my shooting was either at night or cloudy days with lots of snow on the ground.

The visual differences between Astia and Velvia, or Provia and Velvia were most striking. The visual differences between D100 and D200 are very slight.

What I found interesting was that shooting in DR D800 B&W produced the largest jpegs, followed closely by Sepia. Does this mean we're getting more details in B&W, or is this just an artifact of how the in-camera jpeg compression works?

Very pleased to be of assistance, AldPixto!

There shouldn't be any difference at all between SN mode and DR100, because they're both the same (so when you want a low noise shot, in low-light conditions, all you have to do is set DR100 - in any shooting mode!).

I agree, the differences between Provia, Astia and Velvia are indeed striking, and it's a pity we're forced to use Provia when in DR800 mode. Actually, I tend not to use DR800 mode for this reason, though it can be very useful for livening up an otherwise featureless (overcast) sky - something we get a lot of, over here!

Jpeg file sizes vary quite a lot, according to the nature of the image, so I wouldn't like to make any predictions here.

Enjoy your photography!

[frank-in-toronto]

As I recall when that exr came out, i was real interested but some reviews i read indicated that the theoretical low light performance due to binning wasn't actually realized in real life. i didn't follow it up after that.

[AldPixto]

Originally Posted by frank-in-toronto

As I recall when that exr came out, i was real interested but some reviews i read indicated that the theoretical low light performance due to binning wasn't actually realized in real life. i didn't follow it up after that.

In my low-light testing, my Canon S90 outperforms my F200EXR in terms of image details. When both camera's AF assist lights are turned off, the F200EXR autofocus works reliably whereas the S90 AF sometimes hunts and misses shots.

In other photos of this scene taken at lower DR settings, the two closely spaced lights (blueish mercury vapor light on the right edge of the building and amber light on the pole) merge together.

photo: F200EXR 6.4mm (28mm) 1/6.5 s at f/3.3, ISO 400 , EXR DR, DR400

[pentode]

Originally Posted by frank-in-toronto

As I recall when that exr came out, i was real interested but some reviews i read indicated that the theoretical low light performance due to binning wasn't actually realized in real life. i didn't follow it up after that.

I don't know about noise performance compared with other P&S cameras, but I can definitely say (for my F70EXR) that images taken at 5MP and no DR expansion (i.e. at DR100) are less noisy than the same image at 10MP. Theoretically, the improvement should be about 30%, and this does indeed seem to be the case.

Interestingly, you can get the same noise performance by re-sampling the 10MP image down to 5MP.

In my opinion, the main advantage of the EXR sensor is the ability to expand the DR - with low-noise at DR100 a bonus.