Author Archives: DXOMARK

Extended depth of field (EDOF) cameras have recently emerged as a low-cost alternative to autofocus lenses. Different methods, either based on longitudinal chromatic aberrations or wavefront coding have been proposed and have reached the market. The purpose of this article is to study the theoretical performance and limitation of wavefront coding approaches. 

The aim of the paper is to define an objective measurement for evaluating the performance of a digital camera. The challenge is to mix different flaws involving geometry (as distortion or lateral chromatic aberrations), light (as luminance and color shading), or statistical phenomena (as noise). . 

We describe the procedure to evaluate the image quality of a camera in terms of texture preservation. We use a stochastic model coming from stochastic geometry, and known as the dead leaves model. It intrinsically reproduces occlusions phenomena, producing edges at any scale and any orientation with a possibly low level of contrast. 

A method for evaluating texture quality as shot by a camera is presented. It is shown that usual sharpness measurements are not completely satisfying for this task. A new target based on random geometry is proposed. It uses the so-called dead leaves model. It contains objects of any size at any orientation and follows some […]

In this paper, we numerically quantify the information capacity of a sensor, by examining the different factors than can limit this capacity, namely sensor spectral response, noise, and sensor blur (due to fill factor, cross talk and diffraction, for given aperture). In particular, we compare the effectiveness of raw color space for different kinds of […]

This article explains the cause of the color fringing phenomenon that can be noticed in photographs, particularly on the edges of backlit objects. The nature of color fringing is optical, and particularly related to the difference of blur spots at different wavelengths. Therefore color fringing can be observed both in digital and silver halide photography. 

A general trend in the CMOS image sensor market is for increasing resolution (by having a larger number of pixels) while keeping a small form factor by shrinking photosite size. This article discusses the impact of this trend on some of the main attributes of image quality. The first example is image sharpness. A smaller […]

This article proposes new measurements for evaluating the image quality of a camera, particularly on the reproduction of colors. The concept of gamut is usually a topic of interest, but it is much more adapted to output devices than to capture devices (sensors). Moreover, it does not take other important characteristics of the camera into […]

A unique digital postprocessing technique compensates for performance problems posed by ever-shrinking pixels | by Dr. Guichard Frédéric, DXOMARK | From Photonics Spectra , November 2007. As camera phones become ubiquitous, consumer demand for a photographic experience similar to that of traditional digital cameras is growing. 

We define color sensitivity or effective color depth based on the “number of reliably distinguished colors”, using ideas from information theory. This figure of merit allows the comparison of different sensors or cameras and we indicate how it can be used both for the design of imaging devices and to optimize their adaptation to the […]

Noise is an important factor in image quality. We analyze it in images produced by digital cameras. We show that, beyond the usual standard deviation measurement, spatial correlations also convey interesting information which allows to (i) better describe the perception of the noise, (ii) analyze an unknown imaging chain. Indeed, knowledge of these spatial correlations […]

After discussing usual approaches to measuring blur of optical chains, we show theoretically that there is essentially a unique way to quantify blur by a single number. It is the second derivative at the origin of the Fourier transform of the kernel. This somewhat surprisingly implies that blur is especially sensitive to attenuation of the […]