Color Noise Reduction eats details in Lightroom

For a while now I notice that Lightroom's Color Noise Reduction, at the default setting of "25", unnecessarily eats some details, especially at lower ISO. For my D700, I changed the default to something like "3" for that reason. I adjust it manually only for higher ISO and when doing extreme black/white edits (where it does make a huge difference). The defaults for my Fuji S5pro were still at "25", I just didn't think about it.

So yesterday I made some tele photos of Western Grebes at nearby Lake Hodges - the birds are interesting: they're making cute noises and have a very funny mating dance where they more or less run across the water surface at a rather high speed. (the video shows Clark's Grebe which are very very similar and have the same behaviour, it's the best footage I could find on YT.)

Needless to say, I'm unable to capture anything like that with our 70-300VR lens: it's not long enough, it's slow, and the sharpness at the long end stinks (the professional term for that would be that "it is a bit soft".) Overall, I'm not too happy with that lens, and I actually think it might be defective. But on the other hand, it's very lightweight for a telezoom that extends all the way to 300mm, and it's stabilized. *)


Western Grebe (FinePix S5Pro, 1/250s @ ISO 200; f/7.1, 390 mm (in 35mm)

As you can see (maybe not so clearly in this small web version, sorry) the birds also have really wicked RED eyes, and when I was looking at the preview in Lightroom I could clearly see them - but when I zoomed in for a 1:1 inspection of the sharpness (I also suspect that our 70-300VR has a focusing problem) the red eyes became much less visible - what the... ?!

Here's a 1:1 crop of the above photo with the default Color Noise Reduction "25" - you can compare to a value of "0" when you move your mouse over the photo.

Yes, that is a very soft crop - it's made with a bad lens, but for the most part this is the Fuji S5pro, it can't be sharp in a 1:1 crop, I've explained that somewhere here in my blog too.

So the reason for the unwanted red-eye reduction here is the color noise reduction - but still, I'm somewhat surprised that it affects the eye of the bird so much.

*) I'm also mostly unable to get sharp photos at the long end in the range of 1/125s to 1/200s even with VR and I think the rather hefty mirror flap of the S5pro and D700 is the culprit - I get more sharp photos at 1/60s @ 300mm than at 1/125s and 1/160s, go figure... needless to say, this only happens handheld. ;)