I've been studying noise reduction more recently and deliberately shooting "noisy" photos to practice my DPP skills. A thought occurred to me last night that is a little difficult to test. Do the in-camera noise reduction settings have a better affect on noise in photographs than post processing noise reduction?
My thought process is as follows. In post processing, noise reduction seems to always come with some sort of reduction in overall "detail" (for lack of a better term) or deteriation in overall quality. Consequently, based on input from many here, I have learned that in applying noise reduction one needs to be constantly aware of the overall detail loss with corresponding noise reduction and determine a point somewhere where noise reduction provides diminishing returns. I was wondering if the in-camera noise reduction, based on the settings I choose in camera, does a better job of noise reduction with less affect on the remainder of the image (contrast/sharpness/detail, etc.)?