How Fuji X10 handles shady areas

Photo: December 19, 2011. | flickr

This photo was posted to illustrate how Fuji X10 handles shady areas. The image was shot at iso 100, exposure compensation -0.3,  1/750 sec. Below is 100% crop from the original image. Noise reduction wiped out nearly all details in shade. IMHO, such areas will be a limiting factor for big prints, not orbs.

Actually, I think that Fuji X10 handles these regions quite good for compact camera. I checked some Olympus XZ1 images, and noticed similar pattern in shady areas. I think my Fuji images are better :-)
(Don't take it seriously, I just love my pictures :)). I would say the difference in image quality between so called premium compacts is not very big.

The DSLRs render details in shady areas significantly better than the premium compact cameras, and I suspect that in order to get good details in low contrast/shady area either the number of pixels should go down, or sensor should be bigger. I dream about compact camera with 4/3 sensor size and bright 4x zoom lenses...  Or any sensor size between 2/3 and 4/3 with no more than 12 megapixels...  Sweet dreams :)