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The Nikon D70 does start to show a fair amount of noise at 1600 ISO - It’s better than most Nikons at this speed but far noisier than Canon DSLRs. For that reason, all results here are with the application’s noise reduction turned on. Apart, that is, from the Nikon NEF plug-in which has no controls other than lighten / darken and color temperature. Equal last at 1600 ISO come Adobe Camera RAW and Silkypix, which although they both have noise reduction, still show far more noise than the others. In Adobe Camera RAW’s case this shows up as quite noticeable odd white artifacts in shadow areas, while with Silkypix areas of wood grain in the test image start to develop colored spots that none of the other applications replicate. Of the rest, I’d still rate Bibble as the best, although results do show a fair amount of noise even with the built in Noise Ninja. However, the noise looks much like film grain and sharpness is excellent, so unlike the odd effects with ACR and Silkypix, this isn’t so noticeable. Nikon Capture NX comes second equal with ACDSee which both show very good noise reduction performance with only a slight loss of detail. The Nikon result is perhaps a bit too smooth for my taste, while ACDSee’s excellent noise reduction strikes a better balance with better sharpness at the cost of a little more noise. Capture One would be an excellent choice for portraiture with the smoothest result of all, but at the expense of some loss of sharpness and detail. RawShooter produces a good result but color noise is visible in smooth toned areas and sharpness isn’t as good as the best. The Nikon NEF plug-in result is perfectly acceptable and at 1600 ISO better than Silkypix or ACR, but it lacks sharpness and again has slightly less detail than the others.
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