Further to Don's post, you will find some reviews of noise reduction software here:

http://www.photozone.de/7Digital/noisenew.htm

There are other online review as well, so do not take the above as gospel truth. FWIW I recently purchased Noise Ninja as I liked the interface when I tried the demo.

Thanks Don and Leif, I am "getting the picture".
Just had a look at Neat Image, and I see a Freeware
edition for personal use is available; have downloaded
that, and I will "giv'em a go". Thanks for the URL.

You are not alone, sir!

Incidentally, Adobe Camera Raw supports quite a lot of cameras other than SLRs - my wife's Olympus 5600, for instance.

And Treeve's Finepix 9500

When shooting in RAW I use the 'luminance smoothing' and 'colour nise reduction' sliders in the detail module of Adobe Camera RAW (or Lightroom) to deal with any noise issues. I find this gives a better result, removing less fine detail, rather than converting and then using Noise Ninja.

I thought Nikon NX Capture included NR ??

It does, but it is poo if it is anything like the NR in NC 4.

It does Rob but I do not use it. D2X noise is very random but it can show up in dark areas over ISO 400. I use selective sharpening instead of NR to overcome those probs. In the days of film I mainly used Tech Pan at ISO 12 or Agfapan at ISO 25 for B&W, and in colour tranparency the fastest I used was ISO 50. Now being able to go up to ISO400 with the D2X's resolution and quality is good enough for me.

Don

Given that treeve has PSP 7 ( no RAW conversion available ) rather than Photoshop, I have had a net wander but am unable to find a downloadable RAW test image from the 9500. Thought being to see if Rawshooter Essentials ealier freebee version could read the file.

While on that trawl I came across the RAW write times for the 9500. A pedestrian 9.8 secs compared with 3 secs for a Jpeg fine. Given that the camera cannot take another shot while the buffer is emtying from a burst of 3 jpeg fine, then using RAW suggests a frame rate of one per 10 secs.

So a lot will depend on the low light situations that treeve is contemplating.

Don

I have checked out the camera database website;
Write up on the S9500 is not actually that bad; it
did seem to give me the conclusion that there was
precious little point in taking RAW on it, though.
I will bear in mind all I have learned from all the experts
on this Forum when getting a DSLR in the near future.
The other point is, in relation to this and noise, etc.,
do Nikon bodies have White Balance access via buttons?

The low light situations I have in mind are a dark evening
with mist; night shots over a harbour; woodlands without
sunshine; in the machine rooms of ships, with available
light only, etc.,. ..

Best Wishes, Raymond

Raymond,

I have found your gallery in Ships Nostalgia and will look through it later when I get a chance. ( lots of pics there. ) It will help me in providing an answer specific to your needs.

Don