Photo IQ

[Ross]

Hi Everybody,

I need som words for advising (Is this a best in valuation for image?) about photo IQ testing softwere.
Thanh you very much.

Ross Brace.

[herbert]

Hi Ross,

The industry standard photo testing software is Imatest:

http://www.imatest.com/

Have a look and see what is possible. Unfortunately testing image quality may involve buying some equipment.

Alex

[Ross]

thanks a lot Alex

[EricBowles]

It really depends on what you want to test.

There is software for testing your sensor, but someplace like DxOMark already has done a lot of sensor testing for most cameras.

Another potential area of testing is lens testing. Generally there are two levels - testing for front/back focus can be used with some cameras for lens focus fine tuning. A product like LensAlign is a good choice as it presents a good focus target perpendicular to your camera and a scale to see the amount of focus error. A different type of testing is used to measure lens flaws - things like the degree to which you get distortion of various types. And a third type of testing is around evenness of the image - with a perfectly perpendicular camera, are the left right, top and bottom areas of your image even.

Probably more important than testing the camera is testing your technique. That gets into a whole range of issues around different shutter speeds, motion, AF accuracy, and lighting. In this area testing explores the limits you place on the camera.

With all types of testing you are looking for statistical distribution of problems - not a clear yes or no on whether there are errors. One of the worst things you can do is get an error and assume it is the equipment's fault. Testing needs to be repeated over and over to make sure your results are repeatable. There are random errors and the extent of errors will vary, so it takes multiple tests to get a good result.