Fujifilm FinePix X100

Fuji X100 Noise Reduction

The Fuji X100 offers five noise-reduction settings which provides pretty good flexibility in choosing how you want to make the trade-off between subject detail and noise levels. The Fuji X100 applies NR to its JPEGs at all ISOs, so we've included crops at all ISOs in the tables below.

The crops below show the effects of the Fuji X100's lowest, standard and highest level of noise reduction available, under the studio HMI lighting we use to simulate daylight. See for yourself how the noise reduction works under daylight-balanced lighting. Click on any of the crops below to see the corresponding full-sized image.

Noise Reduction Comparison Daylight-balanced illumination
	NR = Low	NR = Standard	NR = High
I S O 1 0 0
	NR = Low	NR = Standard	NR = High
I S O 2 0 0
	NR = Low	NR = Standard	NR = High
I S O 4 0 0
	NR = Low	NR = Standard	NR = High
I S O 8 0 0
	NR = Low	NR = Standard	NR = High
I S O 1 6 0 0
	NR = Low	NR = Standard	NR = High
I S O 3 2 0 0
	NR = Low	NR = Standard	NR = High
I S O 6 4 0 0
	NR = Low	NR = Standard	NR = High
I S O 1 2 8 0 0

To our eyes, the default "Standard" level of noise reduction strikes a good balance between noise and subtle subject detail, up to ISO 1,600. At higher ISOs, the lowest setting preserves a bit more detail, albeit with more visible noise. Use this setting if you have good third-party noise reduction software; with appropriate processing, the result could be very good. You should be able to do even better working from the RAW files.