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October 04, 2007
[ BEWARE THE PIXEL PEEPER ]
DIGITAL PHOTOGRPAHY has produced an entirely new breed of pest – the infernal pixel peeper.
The pixel peeper is the fastidious chap who enlarges digital images on his computer until he can see and analyse the individual pixels. He agonises over the small dip in the Y axis on the infra red chroma extension scale. He perceives back focus and front focus where normal human beings see nothing. If auto exposure is not spot on every time he sends the camera back to the shop and demands a new one.
Pixel peepers are to be avoided. They spread despondency and despair.
You have bought a new camera and it is taking entirely satisfactory photographs and you run into a pixel peeper and you tell him of your purchase. You can see that he is trying not to hurt your feelings, but he can’t help himself. “Er, you do know that that model is well known for problems with magenta in the auto white balance? No? The salesman should have warned you about that.”
Almost as bad as the pixel peeper is the smug haggler. He has just bought a 13–300mm image stabilised f2.8 Red Flag lens on eBay for $99.99 on advice from a pal who says it knocks the socks off every Canon and Nikon lens in the shops.
The problem for the normal human being is that it seems we have no objective reference points from which to defend our purchase, or even on which to base our purchase. In fact we do. There are a handful of digital photography web sites that provide the results of objective, scientific testing of cameras and lenses.
Imaging’s assessments are subjective, based on 50 years of experience with cameras. We judge a camera by its feel, its ergonomics, its responsiveness and the quality of the photographs as measured by our eyes. There is an archive of these reviews at dpexpert . However, there are places where you can get assessments based on scientific measurements of things like resolution, chromatic aberration, distortion, exposure accuracy, image noise and colour fidelity.
The most visited digital photography site in the world is the London-based DPRreview, established by Phil Askey and now owned by Amazon. Askey and his staff put cameras through rigorous testing procedures and compare competing cameras from different brands. Not all cameras get reviewed on dpreview – like all of us Askey has a preference for putting the more expensive cameras on the bench, which means that most compacts get overlooked and some brands, such as Kodak, seem to be studiously avoided.
For the best lens testing we turn to the German site, Photozone. Photozone does its own scrupulous tests of cameras and lenses but it also maintains a database of owners’ assessments of their lenses which is surprisingly useful. You might think that all owners would be defensive about their purchases, but those who have bought duds seem ready to cry in public.
The best Australian source for results of objective testing is the quarterly magazine PhotoReview Australia, for which Margaret Brown puts cameras through the Imatest equipment, measuring performance of lens, sensor and image processing. There is something reassuringly unbiased about results from a machine.
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Posted by terry at October 4, 2007 07:51 AM
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