Hmm, I am not sure what your using to process, but you are getting radically different results than I am. This is from ACR in PSCC...I simply opened both ISO 6400 NR0 RAW files without any edits in ACR, downsampled the NX1 to the 7D II dimensions, and aligned the images as layers, then cropped the following area:
There appears to be visibly less noise in the NX1 image. The color also appears to be richer, less washed out. The differences in noise can be most clearly seen in the fiddler himself, in the glass of all the bottles, and in the black border and several swatches of the color checker card. The primary detractor that I notice with the NX1 image is the darn CA.
To see if my feelings about the images were correct, I saved the cropped areas as 32-bit TIFF and ran both through PixInsight's statistics tool. I created previews around four areas for statistical testing, and propagated those previews to the other image (so exactly identical regions of each image were compared):
According to PixInsight, the noise on the black part of the Fiddlers Elbow bottle, just under the label, has a standard deviation of:
7DII: 0.048 (R), 0.048 (G), 0.051 (B)
NX1: 0.037 (R), 0.037 (G), 0.038 (B)
Statistically, the NX1 DOES have lower noise. I also checked the maximums:
7DII: 0.325 (R), 0.325 (G), 0.349 (B)
NX1: 0.278 (R), 0.294 (G), 0.302 (B)
The NX1 also has lower maximums, so the black glass there is indeed deeper and richer, with less noise. The preview on the right-hand bottle had the following standard deviation:
7DII: 0.087 (R), 0.061 (G), 0.042 (B)
NX1: 0.077 (R), 0.055 (G), 0.039 (B)
And on the left-hand bottle:
7DII: 0.046 (R), 0.042 (G), 0.039 (B)
NX1: 0.037 (R), 0.034 (G), 0.033 (B)
In every preview, the noise levels of the normalized NX1 image are lower, by a pretty decent margin (enough for the difference to be detected visually.) I also checked the noise levels in the preview around the red part of the fiddlers bottle label:
7DII: 0.067 (R), 0.045 (G), 0.050 (B)
NX1: 0.057 (R), 0.044 (G), 0.043 (B)
Not as much difference in the green and blue channels, big difference in the red channel. That explains the loss in color fidelity with the 7D II...again, more noise, higher standard deviation, so some of the pixels are reaching a brighter/lighter (and therefor, according to color theory, less saturated) "red" tone.
It should also be noted, for maximum clarity here, that the 7D II is at a slight 'advantage.' I downsampled the NX1 image as a whole directly to the same image dimensions as the 7D II image. That did not, however, normalize the objects within the image. It can be clearly seen in my GIF that the NX1 objects are a little larger. This is probably the result of a framing discrepancy. Technically speaking, for a properly normalized test, I should make the objects the same size. If I did so, that would be downsampling the NX1 image even more, thus reducing it's noise even more in comparison to the 7D II.
It should also be noted that I could not find an actual 5D III raw file for download from IR. I looked around, and I could be missing it...but all I could find was a JPEG converted from RAW. That appeared to have considerable color noise in it, so I opted not to even bother using that in this comparison, as newer versions of LR seem to handle Canon noise a lot better than in the past.
I think it may be my new high speed birding camera some time next year, assuming the lenses pan out. I think I'd get this before I got an A7r even...as I am well and truly impressed.
