DxO PureRaw not what was expected

[billtils]

Having decided to explore moving from Aperture Priority to manual exposure with Auto ISO for wildlife shots, that's the way I've been shooting everything the past few days (not just BIF). I was out yesterday in fairly dull weather and shot a range of birds, including some "bird on a stick" ones of blue tits and chaffinches.

Many of these turned out to be quite noisy as the birds were in a shady area and the ISO had jumped to 2800 (Shutter and aperture left at 1/1600s and f/6.3 as the main targets were red kites and a blue heron in flight and the main goal was exploring the settings, not to get some 'keepers'). My go-to for noise reduction is NIK Dfine2 but I thought I'd give DxO's PureRAW a run.


Here are the results:


No noise reduction






Dfine2






PureRAW







Both noise reduction programmes were used at their default settings. Comments welcome (but not on the image - it was chosen as a vehicle for the NR exercise because it was the noisiest of the day!)

[xpatUSA]

Having decided to explore moving from Aperture Priority to manual exposure with Auto ISO for wildlife shots, that's the way I've been shooting everything the past few days (not just BIF). I was out yesterday in fairly dull weather and shot a range of birds, including some "bird on a stick" ones of blue tits and chaffinches.

Many of these turned out to be quite noisy as the birds were in a shady area and the ISO had jumped to 2800 (Shutter and aperture left at 1/1600s and f/6.3 as the main targets were red kites and a blue heron in flight and the main goal was exploring the settings, not to get some 'keepers'). My go-to for noise reduction is NIK Dfine2 but I thought I'd give DxO's PureRAW a run.


Here are the results:


No noise reduction






Dfine2






PureRAW







Both noise reduction programmes were used at their default settings. Comments welcome (but not on the image - it was chosen as a vehicle for the NR exercise because it was the noisiest of the day!)

Hi Bill,

Politically-correct Real World comment: They all look the same on my monitor.

Frowned-upon technical comment: The area above the bird's neck selected in the GIMP yields:

Filename, mean, StdDev, SNR(EV)
511475etc 0.543 0.010 5.76 No NR
511457etc 0.543 0.007 6.88 Dfine2
511466etc 0.550 0.008 6.10 PureRaw

Mean and Std.Dev are fractions of full brightness e.g. 0.543 = about 138/255.

From the GIMP histogram which is based upon Value (brightest channel) ...

[LenR]

Bill, on my monitor I can detect some noise on the first image. I see no difference between the 2nd & 3rd.

[DanK]

Blowing them up as large as they will go in the lightbox and looking on my larger monitor (27"), it looks to me as though the second preserves a bit more feather detail. However, this could easily be a function of the default settings rather than the software's capabilities.

You could try masking the bird. The noise is pretty mild, and given the detail on the bird, the noise only seems apparent (although mild) in the background.

[billtils]

Thanks for the feedback. On my monitor at 100% and with everything as constant as I could make it, PureRAW makes the best job of denoising but there is a loss of feather detail; Dfine2 makes a reasonable job of denoising, not as good as PureRAW, but much better at retaining details in the feathers.

Ted and Dan - the image was chosen to test the denoising software and I have better ones from the day.

I was curious about the results since both are DxO products (the Dfine2 is the one in the DxO version of NIK) and for me, I don't see any advantage in paying the £70 for their "latest and greatest" but that may be situational.

[stuck]

Thanks for the feedback. On my monitor at 100% and with everything as constant as I could make it, PureRAW makes the best job of denoising bit there is a loss of eather detail...

If you read the DxO Forum I think you'll find it is generally accepted that DxO's default noise reduction settings are not always ideal. See this thread for example:
https://feedback.dxo.com/t/how-to-us...ge-heavy/11962

stuck
edited to add:
Don't forget that, for RAW files, PureRaw also gives you the option of 'DeepPRIME', which is a step up on PRIME.

[billtils]

Don't forget that, for RAW files, PureRaw also gives you the option of 'DeepPRIME', which is a step up on PRIME.

Thanks for the response. The original image is a NEF file and it was edited with the 'DeepPRIME' option. Thanks too for the link - I'll check it out later.

[stuck]

There is also a new dedicated section for PureRAW at DxO, here:
https://feedback.dxo.com/c/dxo-pureraw/69

stuck

[billtils]

Thanks "I'm" (clever!). I had a browse and looked at some more of the noisier files in my catalogue, but I'm sticking with Dfine2 and will spend the £79.99 on something else (probably a rain cover for the camera and lenses, rather than stay indoors in the poorer weather).

[stuck]

Could this very recent thread over at DxO be relevant?
https://feedback.dxo.com/t/deepprime...settings/19157

[billtils]

Thanks "I'm" but I'm happy to stick with Dfine! I was serious about buying a rain cover and was thankful that I did when got caught in heavy rain on Monday!

[stuck]

I wasn't trying to sell you anything, hey, I'm stuck on PL3 so I don't have DeepPRIME myself. I was just pointing out that DxO have identified a bug in DeepPRIME that may or may not have had some bearing on your experience.

[billtils]

I wasn't trying to sell you anything, hey, I'm stuck on PL3 so I don't have DeepPRIME myself. I was just pointing out that DxO have identified a bug in DeepPRIME that may or may not have had some bearing on your experience.

No worries - what you say here is how I read your post.