Assessing camera quality

If you’ve been shopping for a bog-standard VGA resolution 1394 camera recently you’ll know that the market is awash with choices. So how do you decided which is right for you?

Clearly, price is always a factor, but what about performance? One route is to ask for a camera on evaluation and see for yourself what the image quality looks like. But that’s a rather subjective assessment, and the good engineer deals in data. So here’s what I suggest: drill down deeper into the specs. They’re usually published on the vendor’s web site and if not, just ask.

And if you’re not sure what data it is you’re trying to discover, PixeLINK have done a good job in setting it out. This link takes you to their “Product Documentation” page, and once there, click “Cameras” in the menu on the left, then look for “Image Quality Specifications”. (For reasons I don’t understand I can’t link direct to the section on “How to interpret digital camera parameters” so you’ll have to find it yourself.)