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M4/3 System                                                                  
(9th February 2023)
OM1 Quick ES Hi-Res LSNR Options Test...

The purpose of this quick test was originally to determine whether it was possible to use the in-built long shutter noise reduction option on the 'Olympus' OM1 in high-resolution tripod mode when the electronic shutter is being used.

The actual chosen test scene

First Things First: Regarding 'Long Shutter' Noise Reduction...

YES - Long Shutter Noise Reduction DOES work on the OM1 when using Long exposure, Electronic shutter, Tripod Mounted High-Resolution mode.

NO - Long Shutter Noise Reduction does NOT work when using Hand Held High-Resolution mode  on the OM1.

At least that is what seems to be happening!

For me testing was not straight forward at first because I am still not over familiar with the new menu (I knew the older menu much better). On the OM1 menu there are two separate places to control/set noise reduction. For normal use I always have ordinary noise reduction set to 'LOW' as I prefer keeping detail and am happy to deal with any residual noise myself.
Below that option is an option for retaining extra detail in the processing for low ISO shots, I keep this switched ON,
And there is also a further menu just below that, again for setting Noise Reduction and this is for long shutter noise reduction. I took shots with it ON & OFF to see how much difference it made.

I tried various exposure times between 3 and 25 seconds at ISO200 to test that the LSNR (Long Shutter Noise Reduction) worked through the range. It DOES.

For the tests I shot a difficult subject for the camera which included finely woven grey voil material and planed pine wood trim. These were shot head on in very flat dim light to really test the resolving power as regards very fine to non existent detail and hopefully show noise. Interestingly these seemed to reveal in the out of camera JPG's only a minute difference in detail and noise between LSNR being on or off.

Finally as an experiment I ran one image through Topaz Sharpening Ai and although it was necessary to tweak their suggested Ai setting, my gosh the eventual result was very impressive. From memory my chosen setting for this subject were Soft-Normal and remove blur at 15 and reduce noise at 20.

 - Click the images below to see full size crops of the images discussed -

But first one HUGE confession:

After testing I was interrupted and was not 100% certain whether it was image P2090910 or P2090911 that was created with the LSNR switched off, however I am 90% sure it was the P2090911 photo which had it switched off - you decide :-)

The OOC (out of camera) JPG's were quite impressive, but do show some minute noise squiggles, these are best seen in the bottom right quarter. But when converted from RAW files the situation was much improved.

The rest of the experiment image details - including what to look out for and where, - are written on the following images. The rest will be in the EXIF. 
Please feel free to download and examine the full size crops.


Click to see full size image.

 

Click to see full size image.

 


Click to see full size image.

 


Click to see full size image.

PS. To my surprise when I tried the OM1's HHHR feature (Hand held high-resolution) with the camera 'tripod mounted' (well it was actually laying flat on the table), it failed to stitch the composite hi-res image - and I tried 3 times, - yet as soon as I picked the camera up and held it in my unsteady hands the HHHR worked perfectly!


 Article © Adrian Harris
http://www.artfotografia.co.uk/