Medium-High-ISO Comparison

We have now compared the JPEG output of the Olympus E-P3 to some raw conversions done with RawTherapee at both low and high ISO settings. What we haven’t compared yet are the medium-high settings, which are likely to be used more often than perhaps either of these extremes. Let’s see an example!

Our medium-ISO sample was captured at of ISO 640 using the kit zoom. It has both bright and dark parts, as well as lots of colour.

Out-of-camera JPEG

Image converted with RawTherapee

The midtones are fairly clean, with the amount of noise present being unlikely to show in a print, even at large sizes. The shadows are a different story - the raw conversion has more chroma noise but - unlike in the case of our high-ISO samples - it also holds more detail and texture than the out-of-camera JPEG. This suggests that at medium-high ISO settings it might well be worth shooting raw for best results.

In summary, we have found that using RawTherapee can result in crisper-looking - though not necessarily artifact-free - results at low sensitivity settings, with better detail definition and obviously more control over tonality and contrast. At medium-high ISOs, shooting raw can lead to retaining more detail and texture in the shadows, while at high ISO settings we have found little to no extra detail in the raw files. The visual appearance of noise can be quite different in JPEGs and various raw conversions, but that’s to be expected.

The story does not end here - it will definitely be interesting to see what one can do with the Olympus E-P3 raw files when Olympus, Adobe, Apple, Phase One etc. release new versions of their respective raw converters, with full support for the new camera.

Your Comments