Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

I have just been informed that the DxOMark site is now doing lens and sensor tests as well. This means you can see how well a lens does on a particular camera. Here's a partial screenshot of how it looks when set to rank at "Peak Score":

While the lens tests has some good bits of information in there, I am not liking how DxO decides to give a "Peak Score" and then rank lenses according to that score. DxO's definition of "Peak Score" is the best possible rating a lens has at a certain focus distance, aperture (and for zooms) zoom setting. The number is derived from a number of tests that include resolution, chromatic aberration, distortion, and so on.

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DXO Labs is known for some of the most scientific camera tests in the world; their software is used by many top magazines and Web sites for analyzing camera and lens performance. I stumbled across their comparison page last week and plugged in my three main camera bodies: a Panasonic GF1, Nikon D5000, and Nikon D300. The results were pretty interesting - I wasn't expecting the D5000 to rate higher than the much more expensive D300 in the areas of low-light performance and the overall sensor score. I don't know enough about the data points they're using to generate these scores...what I do know is that I find my D300 infinitely nicer to shoot with than my D5000. Not that there's anything wrong with the D5000 of course, but the D300 is a much more satisfying overall camera experience. Plug in your DSLR (or Micro Four-Thirds) camera and see what DXO Labs has to say about it!