I just spent some time playing with some high-ISO files from various cameras I've owned over the years. I thought you all might be interested to see how some unusual cases might perform.
These are photos I selected because they were high-ISO, not because they were great photos. These are all screenshots of 100% crops in the Lightroom Classic app. You can see which ones are noise-reduced by noting which are DNG files.
Nikon Z9, shooting a concert in a near black-hole, illuminated only by some small RGB light panels. ISO 102,400!
Canon 7D, shooting at the 24 Hours of Daytona some years ago.
Fuji X-H2S at a modest ISO 3200. The algorithm still did a great job giving me more feather detail.
Fuji X-T4. The noise reduction meant I could crank the sharpening up without fear of the dreaded "Fuji worms". Without being sensationalistic, I think you could say the new algorithm replaces false detail (noise) with
real detail. (Of course, that "real" detail is synthetic, sooooo...)
Fuji X-T5. I've found the X-T5's sensor to be
very demanding of lenses, so if this one looks a bit "waxy", part of that might be coming from the fact that there are a few trillion pixels per millimeter on this sensor!
Fuji X-T5 840nm IR conversion. 840nm needs a TON of light, and after ISO6400 you sometimes see PDAF sensor pattern noise. I switched this camera to near-IR as a result. Here's a test shot I took at ISO 12800 to learn about the pattern noise. Unfortunately, the new NR algorithm doesn't eliminate the pattern noise.
My beloved X100V after dark. This was the highest ISO file I had. I don't care so much that the X100V doesn't have IBIS anymore... I'll just crank up the ISO from now on.
My old Olympus E-M5
literally in a cave. What you're seeing is a cave wall illuminated by bioluminescent lichen (I think it was lichen?), with the cave lighting turned off. This was ISO 6400 1/4sec f/2.5, "pushed" two stops in LR. Not a great photo, but check out that chroma noise!
A vacation photo shot with my now-antique Oly E-510. This is the only photo where I found LR produced a result unlike the actual scene. Check out the big, red color shift! I could easily re-grade the photo, but I found it interesting. Be careful when processing Four Thirds DSLR files, folks!
I hope you enjoyed this stroll down
Obsolete Camera Memory Lane!