Nikon Coolpix P100 Samples

Below are sample crops from an indoor photograph of a book-spine at each of the Nikon P100's ISO settings. A crop from the Fuji Finepix S100FS at the same ISO setting is shown next to each crop from the P100. Images below are all unmodified 100% crops from their respective cameras taken at the highest quality setting. ISO and white-balance were set on camera, everything else was left on automatic.

These crops help determine which ISO settings can be acceptably used on these cameras. As noise increases, most cameras compensate with noise reduction which introduces softness. The result is that, while you can partly reduce noise at the expense of details, the maximum acceptable print size gets smaller as ISO is increased. The point at which a print become unacceptably noisy is a matter of personal taste.

Nikon Coolpix P100	Fuji Finepix S100FS
ISO 160	ISO 100
ISO 200	ISO 200
ISO 400	ISO 400
ISO 800	ISO 800
ISO 1600	ISO 1600
ISO 3200	ISO 3200

The Nikon Coolpix P100 starts showing noise and slight softness from noise reduction at its base ISO of 160. Noise does increase slowly at each ISO which means reasonable performance until ISO 400. At ISO 800, noise reduction is strong enough that maximum print sizes are reduced. ISO 1600 and 3200 are extremely soft which would be only usable for the smallest prints. Compared to the Nikon, the Fuji Finepix S100FS has a comfortable two stop lead in terms of ISO. Color performance is similar with both cameras but the Fuji exposes darker than the Nikon which has a tendency to over-expose by 1/3 or 2/3 EV.