DxO sheds light on camera sensor performance

FEBRUARY 24, 2009--DxO Labs (Boulogne-Billancourt, France), a company with deep experience measuring cameras' technical performance, has launched a web site called DxOMark.com, which features detailed information on the performance of the image sensor at the heart of many higher-end digital cameras.

Many web sites measure camera image quality with varying degrees of rigor, typically examining either the JPEG that the camera produces or a processed version of the camera's raw data. But with its DxOMark Sensor measurement, DxO takes a new approach by judging the sensor performance based on the unprocessed Raw image file from higher-end cameras such as SLRs.

That's significant, because raw images typically must go through a conversion process called demosaicing before they're useful for viewing. Most digital cameras capture only a single color -- red, green, or blue -- for each sensor pixel. Demosaicing fills in the gaps in this colored checkerboard pattern so each pixel gets all three color components, but this processing stage can disguise sensor performance. For more information, go to: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13580_3-10105196-39.html