m4/3 and blue sky's aren't compatible?

<p>I meant to add that anyone who makes a photo may <em>pixel peep</em> to hearts content FWIW. Whatever pixel peeping entails, that is.... Remember when 'chimper' was a pejorative, but no more. Beauty, or rather satisfaction with product, is a moving target,i.e. that modification post -shot is now endlessly flavored with software. )Too many choices, actually.)..<br>

I have four thirds, two of them, and two micro four thirds and both yield <em>pretty much</em> the same quality(good! ). That of course may mean I am satisfied easy. Or not a pixel peeping mama to coin a phrase or a song lyric.</p>

<p>Patrick - I've looked back at some of my pics with an EP1 - blue skies are of course a rarity in the UK's mountains so I've not a huge number of examples. However, I can see noise in all of them - no surprise - but it seems to be worse (blockier, clumped) the darker the sky, either because I've underexposed or sunset shots etc. I routinely do noise reduction on my skies from M$£ for this reason, and can get noise to an acceptable level unless I've had to really up contrast. However the amount of noise reduciton the sky nees is too great for the rest of the picture.</p>

<p>Not sure what "chunky" is but I dug around in my files and found a sky shot taken with a Panasonic dmc fz 20. The first pic is unedited. THe second pic has a blown up area that has had PSE smartfix only compared to a PSE smartfix and a Neat image noise reduction. does the Neat Image take care of your problem? BTW I also am fixated with buying new gear so if you get a great justification... let me know. [:o)</p><div></div>

<p>Next</p><div></div>

<p>I looked at the full size version of your image and I think I see what you're seeing. I've noticed this with photos from my e620 before in particular situations. Since the m43 Olympus cameras have the same sensor, that makse sense. However, I have also found it with my D7000, 350D and other cameras. Strangely unlike you I find my LX3 is by far the worst offender - when shot raw that is.</p>

<p>The problem is twofold : shadow noise and posterisation. At ISO 200 the shadow noise from the 4/3 12mp sensor starts to creep into the midtones. It's often not noticable if you have an image with lots of detail, but in scenes with flat areas of low-mid tone (deep skies, fog, night skies) you can see it easily. Posterisation is also sometimes a problem since Oly actually only use a 12-bit raw format. </p>

<p>The problem is exacerbated by being heavy on the curves, the saturation, or the contrast slider. It's likely the in-camera noise reduction is able to detect and smooth out the skies if you are using jpeg, so it might actually be more noticable in raw.</p>

<p>The thing is, I wouldn't worry about it. I've seen it in low iso shots from full frame cameras in certain situations so there's not much point in brand/size angst. I can also see it from my D7000 in certain particular blues, even when shot 14 bit raw at base ISO. And that's from one of the 'kings' of low shadow noise.</p>

<p>How to deal with it? Try developing the shot twice, once normally, then again being much heavier on the noise reduction; enough to get rid of the sky noise. You can then blend these together in Photoshop to apply the noise reduction only to the areas which need it. You can do that either manually using layer masks, or by selecting the blue sky using the 'color range' tool.</p>

<p>And one more reassuring thing.. it rarely shows in print, as the paper has a grain of its own which masks a lot of these very fine deviations in tone.</p>

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