Noise Reduction Settings

Just been looking at the settings on my K5 and K01 (well the tv is crap tonight) and I was wondering what seetings others use for Noise Reduction.

Mine were both set to Auto, I have now turned them off to see what difference it makes.

I always shoot in RAW so I am right to assume I wouldn't need them on as I can sort any noise during PP?

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Yes, in my opinion. Depends to some extent what programs you have at your disposal. I have a free version of Helicon Filter which I like because you can colour pick the noise profile and with a histogram raise that level whilst not touching the rest much. e.g - you could just remove the noise in a blue sky. Also has it separately for shadows and highlights, luminescence and colour. Others may be better but this is the best of the free ones I have tried.

IIRC the NR affects RAW files, but I opted to turn them all off in the camera for all ISOs and do it in LR.

Pretty sure the nr settings have no affect on the raw files, they'rr for the in camera raw processing to make the jpg.
Helicon filter sounds interesting, I will take look.

The K-5 manual doesn't state that NR is only used for JPGs.

Imaging resource provides RAWs with variosu NR settings

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/K5/K5THMB.HTM

ok, maybe I've misunderstood raw file vs jpg, I may have a bit of an experiment

well, after a very quick look, it seems that you are right smeggy. I'd better turn the nr off them as I mainly work from raw.
I'd thought that the high iso nr only applied to the jpeg

How does the camera NR setting apply to a RAW file? Sure, the parameter will be recorded as 'on', or 'high' low' whatever - but until the image is rendered it has no effect, surely?

PDCU will certainly act on any activated NR setting from the camera, but I have yet to see evidence that other software would do so. It has been an ongoing question I think, so if anyone can show such effects direct from the camera with any third part software (eg Lightroom, Aperture, ACR etc) it would be very interesting.

I have always therefore left the NR off, in the same way as highlight / shadow corrections, dist / CA corrections when shooting RAW only - they only slow down the display of the JPEG preview for LCD monitor review, so serve no purpose in this situation.

For JPEG shooting, then yes, they should be activated as required.

I may have confused myself as my processing software may have applied auto settings - I was in a bit of a rush

Just took 2 shots at max iso, one with nr applied and'tuther without. Both raw, they look identical in LR.

that's as I thought it should be

Yeah, I don't know how LR is supposed to recognize such camera settings. PDCU is the way to go if you like to control your shots using the camera items and features. And it can output 16bit TIFFs as well, which the camera can't

PDCU certainly applies 'default NR' settings to RAW files, but I think this is the software applying these on opening the file, rather than the camera applying them to the file. I agree with Daz's findings above, in that I don't think RAW files are affected by the in-camera NR settings.

Regards
David

Well, I guess the camera just records the settings in the file - they would be 'applied' to the JPEG preview by the camera processor, but the RAW would need to be opened into PDCU before the recorded settings were applied.

I never use the PDCU noise reduction, and I tend to leave it off on the camera, because I like to use Topaz DeNoise (within PS Elements as a plugin) which is far more flexible and controllable. But in general I have noticed that any activated camera settings (such as Distortion Correction or custom image settings like sharpness) will cause the equivalent PDCU sliders to move to reflect those camera settings already when the file is first opened.

This process is quite transparent. The bigger question, which we never seem to get answered for certain, is whether any Pentax camera settings recorded in the RAW files are detected and acted upon by any third party editors, such as Lightroom, ACR, RawTherapee etc.

I have not seen any evidence that this is so.

Any in camera post processing of RAW files is ignored by third party RAW processors like Lightroom. The Pentax software supplied with your camera will apply these settings to the image that you will see on screen after import. EG: An image taken with the B&W option will show in colour in LR, but B&W in the Pentax software.