Help, how to accurately technically review a camera?

[Wayne Morellini]

Hi, I would like to learn all the aspects I need to know to review a cameras performance accurately. I've noticed that many reviews only review the tip of the iceberg, and unless you see footage of the right things, and get to use the camera yourself you won't get the full picture. I would like to know for my own benefit, but also possibly to review my own cameras here, and others. I am interested in doing in-depth technical analysis of performance across the range of the cameras abilities.

I am more interested in learning about the picture performance of the camera/setup, than the physical handling. What I would like to know is technical information about, compression codecs/artifacts, lens/problems, Senor/performance and picture processing etc. With the various problems/artifacts, information of when and where they appear and how serious they can get under what conditions.

Links would be appreciated. I am an extremely technical person with a little grasp of these things (except lens) so professional/technical responses are appreciated. But as as I am having reading troubles at the moment, links to pages/documents with the most concise, short, easy to read, simplest language, would be appreciated. Compression articles that don't use technical maths language would also be most appreciated.

I have posted this here in the hope of catching the best response, as this covers many different professional disciplines from a number of forums, and I cannot cross post to each of them (though it would be good if there was a way to link to the same thread from each of them).

Also, it would be interesting to make a FAQ from the information.


Thanks

Wayne.

[Glenn Chan]

http://dvinfo.net/articles/optics/lensdefects.php

Len defects.

If pulling focus, 'breathing' becomes an issue. There is a slight zooming effect when changing focus.

There should also be ways to measure exposure latitude, sensitivity, noise, resolution (in terms of MTF would be ideal), etc.

I don't know anyone who does this, but you can split light up into a rainbow (i.e. a prism, or diffration grating) and measure how the camera responds at the cross-over frequencies.

2- At the same time, real-world tests are sometimes more helpful.

3- The HD forum has the comparison between various HD cameras.

[Wayne Morellini]

I'm interested in going ten times further. I have had a design in mind to test for colour/luminance/ latitude test for a while, but your grating idea is a very good one that I will have to look into. Thanks for the link, that will be most helpful.