Sony A7R III High ISO NR

Sony A7R III High ISO Noise Reduction

The Sony A7R III offers only three High ISO Noise Reduction settings: "Normal" (default), "Low" and "Off". The user manual doesn't say at what sensitivity High ISO Noise Reduction begins to be applied, so we've included crops from ISO 50 on up to find out.

See for yourself how the the default and lowest noise reduction settings compare to RAW files converted in Adobe Camera Raw with no noise reduction or sharpening applied. Click on any of the crops below to see the corresponding full-sized image. (Note that the framing and scale appear slightly different between the camera JPEG and RAW conversion crops because the camera applies lens distortion correction by default but none was applied in Adobe Camera Raw.)

As you can see, the Sony A7R III's default High ISO Noise Reduction is applied at all ISO sensitivities, and the "Off" setting really isn't off (which is almost always the case), as the A7R III still applies fairly strong noise reduction with that setting at high ISOs. The Normal setting does a very good job at removing much of the chroma noise, but it doesn't impact fine detail in our difficult red-lead swatch at low to moderate ISOs like the A7R II's default noise reduction did. The "Off" setting preserves more detail but leaves a lot more chroma noise behind, and it also produces more objectionable luma noise in flatter areas with a stronger peppering effect at low to moderate ISOs.