Olympus E-P1 High-ISO RAW vs. JPEG

Olympus E-P1 High-ISO Comparison RAW vs. JPEG

Test setup:

The E-P1 used was a presentation model with firmware level 1.0, said to be pre-production.

The camera was shot (RAW+JPEG) with the Olympus Zuiko Digital 50mm 1:2 Macro, hand-held and not avoiding blur, so sharpness is not something to be judged here. The RAW files were patched to identify the camera as the E-30 in order to make the RAW converter accept the file and force it to use the E-30 profile. Sorry, since I was only interested in the RAW results at first, I can't say what the noise reduction and sharpness settings on the camera were – I just didn't care as I was shooting.

RAW files were developed with Silkypix Developer Studio 3 using optimized parameters for 'Sharpness' and 'Noise reduction' for each ISO setting, based on my personal defaults for the E-30.

The complete field of fiew:

The crops:

ISO

RAW

JPEG

800

1600

3200

6400

Conclusion: The new JPEG engine works wonders, not only but especially with the blotchy chroma noise which never was quite extinguishable until now, neither in the earlier JPEG engines nor with even the extensive NR features of a RAW converter like Silkypix. This is a significant progress, and I wonder whether Silkypix will one day incorporate a similarly effective NR algorithm.

RS 01-Jul-09