DIY Resolution charts - any tips and hints?

[thabo]

I have downloaded a printable chart from here - http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/~westin/misc/res-chart.html and printed it out on my laser printer. I'm aware that it's best to buy one but this is the DIY thread right! I profess to know nothing about how to use it so am looking for some tips.

I basically wanted to try to figure out the resolution of a crappy little kodak playful, a flip like camera I bought for $69 off Amazon. I stuck the chart to the wall and lit it as best I could. I then did a test with my HMC40 and compared the results to Barry's test found here - http://dvxuser.com/barry/HMC40-res.jpg

I think my chart HMC40 chart looks similar to Barry's but I'm puzzled as to how one can come up with an absolute resolution number? I also didn't print the entire chart out as it would not of fit on the letter paper from my printer; if I did I figured it would no be correct as it'd not be 100% of the original size. Of course the little Kodak had no manual controls so I just pointed it at the chart and hoped for the best but the I fiddled with the HMC40 a little, F3, no gain.

So any hints on how this DIY and admittedly inferior method might give someone decent results?

Attached are my Kodak playful and HMC40 results.

 

[J Michael]

Not sure what the DIY aspect of this is, there are some tutorials and charts online for resolution testing. But for a DIY project you could learn PostScript and create your own res charts, it's actually a pretty easy language to master. If you know a programming language you can even do some pretty complicated repeating patterns. A good project might be generation of a sinusoidal zone plate for testing resolution of video cameras.