I recently spent some time revisiting some of my Nikon 1 V2 butterfly images, and reprocessing them in post. Since I made some changes to my approach to post processing by adding Topaz Denoise AI, I thought it would be interesting to re-do some old RAW files from 2015. All of the photographs in this article were captured handheld with a Nikon 1 V2, fitted with a 1 Nikon 30-110 mm f/3.8-5.6 zoom, and using MOVO extension tubes.

Going back over old photographs can rekindle some great memories. It can also serve as a benchmark for the photographic skills that we had at that time.

NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.

I suppose the most obvious question was whether the change with my approach in post processing, along with some potential improvement with my own skill level in post, would make a difference.

I found that there was a noticeable difference adding Topaz Denoise AI to the end of my post processing approach.

Any noise that was missed by DxO PRIME was usually easy to address by running an image through Topaz Denoise AI. I also found that the sharpness of the images could be tweaked for a little bit of extra crispness when compared to the results I achieved in 2015.

DxO PRIME does a very good job with noise. Processing my RAW files using this function in the first stage of my post process has always been beneficial. I’ve been doing this with all of my photographs, regardless of the ISO value at which they were captured, for many years now.

Using DxO PRIME in tandem with Topaz Denoise AI at the end of my process,  works very well. I’ve started doing this with almost all of my photographs.

The odd time Denoise AI creates a few artifacts, and doesn’t seem to add to the quality of the output… but these occasions have been rare. This was not the case with these V2 butterfly images.

I found using the two programs in combination delivers better results than either of the programs used separately. Like anything photographic, it does take a bit of experimentation.

If you’re like me and are always looking for ways to squeeze a bit more out of your RAW files, giving the combination of DxO PRIME and Topaz Denoise AI is worth trying. You can likely still get a 30 day trial version of Topaz Denoise AI.

Revisiting some Nikon 1 V2 butterfly images was a worthwhile venture. I plan on doing a few more ‘revisiting’ articles. The fly image above is a small sample of a future posting about redoing some Nikon 1 insect photographs.  This handheld capture was also done in 2015.

If you clicked on some of the images in this article, you probably noticed that they load a bit slower… but now display the EXIF data with the enlarged image. We recently changed one of the plug-ins we use with this website which enabled this EXIF enhancement.

Technical Note

Photographs were captured hand-held using camera gear as noted in the EXIF data. Images were produced from RAW files using my standard process.

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