I have been chatting to numerous people over the months when I am out with the camera, or online in chats about noise in images, and I realised, that since leaving Fujifilm, I have never once felt the need to apply any kind of de-noise technology to my images.
Those of you who know me know I photograph for work and play, in light and dark environments, both in-doors and out-doors and I often heavily crop images. I almost always use auto-ISO unless I am specifically shooting long exposures or doing flash work or work that needs a fixed ISO.
So, why do I not, and have not, de-noised any images? Well, other than the fact that the Nikon Z6ii and ZF are extremely good in low light and high ISOs, I really do not understand the obsession with zooming in to 200%-600% and looking for noise and other defects that can not be seen at normal viewing distance or in normal situations. I have printed huge prints (A3 and bigger), I have delivered clients work and I regularly post to numerous places online and not a single person has ever even mentioned any noise in images, be it a wedding photo, or a photo of a macro bug.
Of course, many people say there is a tolerance threshold of how much noise they can stomach. But usually, these are the people who are zooming in on images. People tend to forget, in the real world, people look at an image for a split second. If they see an image on a wall, they will study it from a distance where you simply can not see any noise, but more importantly, they are looking at the subject.
If for some reason your camera simply does not handle noise very well, or you have used settings which cause adverse noise in your images, then by all means, use whatever method you need to remove the noise if you so wish. But stop looking for noise. Stop pixel-peeping.
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