Make Your Own Digital Camera ISO Test Target

dpnow writes I run a digital photography site and came across what I thought might be an interesting story. It's about a Cornell university researcher that has reverse-engineered the design of the ISO 12233 resolution test target, used by all the best digital camera testers. These usually cost over $100 but a free pdf download of the target is available. Print it out on a good quality printer and you have your own ISO-spec test target so you can find out how good (or bad) your camera really is! "

Comments

Or...

[tomcio.s]

frequent www.dpreview.com and get professional reviews of cameras.

Dpreview carries digital camera reviews dating back to 1996. They are usually very detailed.

Cost over $100 ???

[sbryant]

Somebody can't read! It said over 100 pounds ($180).

Insert comment here about people of a certain nationality making too many assumptions about units of various things...

-- Steve

misdirection

[Anonymous Coward]

the article links to a story which links to the actual content you want. To get to the real content, thus bypassing the advertisements that they wanted you to view in the first place, go here:

http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/~westin/res-chart. html

Site

[WhatsAProGingrass]

Another site with better pictures

Another excellent source

[poszi]

With description of the optics and details of the resultion measurements is here. He created also his own chart which includes shades of grey for better measurements of MTF50.

Re:Color Fidelity

[Henry Stern]

Someone obviously didn't even LTFA. The target is black and white.

Coralized link to pdf

[Anonymous Coward]

ISO 12233 Test Chart

How *real* photographers test a new lens/camera

[Zocalo]

1. Throw away any test charts into the corner of the room
2. Toss any rulers on top of the test charts
3. Newspapers? - on top of the rulers
4. Avoid any brick walls
5. Pick up camera (and attach lens if applicable)
6. Go outside (yes, it really does exist!)
7. Shoot numerous pictures of various subjects, at varying apertures, focal lengths and durations. Using a flash for some of the shots would be a good idea too.
8. Make some nice large prints of your efforts
9. Do the prints look OK to you? If they do, congratulations - consider the test passed, and you might even have a few prints you can actually use for something as well. If not *now* it's time to retrieve the test charts, rulers etc.

Seriously, the only people that really need these charts are people that are designing or calibrating imaging systems. A charming term that I think was coined over on DPReview to describe everyone else is "measurebator". Believe me, if you've got a lens bad enough to make a difference visible in a print, then you'll know it without any test charts. I had a lens that backfocussed, a Nikon zoom lens I got for my film camera some years ago. I picked up the problem without test charts just fine (I often focus on an eye in portraits), and so out came the rulers, or in my case a newspaper. The largest focussing error in the series of test shots that I took was less than 2mm at a range of 3m.

Needless to say, I've never touched a test chart, or any facsimilie thereof, since then. The *only* chart that I do have is a Gretag Macbeth colour chart (it's a grid of 24 coloured squares) to get colour balance correct. I also have a couple of Kodak Grey cards for setting white balance if you want to nit pick and call one of those a "chart".