How to Evaluate and Test a Legacy Camera

At-home Four-point Film Test

After you've bought your new camera, you'll want to test it for proper function with film. Do this and make sure you get your film back during the return period. Some issues with cameras can't be detected during an in-store check. This test requires one roll of 24-exposure film. Ideally, dedicate a whole roll to testing your camera.

For these tests, it will help to have a tripod. It will also help to have a willing and stationary subject for your test photos, such as a person, car, statue, or so forth. Pets and kids are bad subjects for these tests.

Tip

Black and white will work better than color because it focuses more sharply, but color is fine if that's all you have.

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Fresh (unexpired) film is best for this test. Old (expired) film can introduce age-related artifacts that impair test accuracy or interpretation.

Film Test One: Sharpness and Shutter Operation

For this test, you need a brick wall, ideally, or a slat-type fence. Place your camera no closer than six feet and no further than eight feet from the wall. Make sure that your film plane is as close to parallel with the wall as possible. Also make sure that the camera is level. The wall's vertical plane should meet the horizontal axis of the lens at 90 degrees. The lens' horizontal axis will meet the film at 90 degrees in most types of cameras.

Take a meter reading and make sure your settings are correct. Focus on the wall. Take two photos for this test -- one with the lens at the largest aperture (wide open) and one with the lens stopped down three stops. In both cases, adjust the shutter speed so that you have a consistent exposure.

When the lab returns your test roll, look for the wall to be in focus and properly exposed. Also make sure, though this would be highly unexpected, that the photo doesn't exhibit odd out-of-focus patches. The corners of the image that was taken with the lens wide open should be softer than the corners on the image that was taken with the lens stopped down. That's to be expected.

The wall should be free of distortion -- the vertical lines should be vertical and the horizontal line horizontal. Ideally, this should be the case across the whole frame.

Tip

Camera viewfinders rarely display the entire image that will be on the film. To get to know your camera's operation a bit better, bring some sidewalk chalk and, using references in the viewfinder, draw a box on the wall with the chalk that rests as close as possible to the perimeter of what you see in the viewfinder. When your photos come back, the box you drew will be slightly inside the photo's perimeter and that will tell you how much of the image your viewfinder crops out. This will help you frame your images in the future.

Film Test Two: Focus Accuracy

This test benefits from a friend, statue, basketball, or stuffed animal. You need a subject that will be stationary and have a logical focal point that you will remember focusing on later.

This test almost requires a tripod to ensure that the focal point is consistent throughout and not affected by your own body movement. A table or wall is an okay stand-in if there's no available tripod.

With the lens at the largest aperture (lowest number) or stopped down no more than one stop, focus on your friend's dominant (closer) eye. The same applies for a statue or stuffed animal. If you use a basketball, then focus on the first letter in the logo.

Make sure that you don't stop down much, or any, because the goal here is to test how accurate the camera's focus is when the lens is most sensitive to a narrow depth of field. Stopping down increases depth of field and will render this test useless.

When your lab returns the photos, verify that your images exhibit focus in the proper place. If you focused on your friend's eyes in the taking but their ears are in focus, then there's an issue. If you focused on the logo but the space in front of it is in focus, then there's an issue.

Tip

If you have two lenses, perform this test with both. This way, if the test returns the same results for both lenses, then the issue is with the camera. If it returns faulty results for only one lens, then the issue is with the lens.

Film Test Three: Infinity Focus

Find a scene that's more than 60 feet away (approximately -- infinity focus is actually 200 times the lens' focal length.) For this, a visible landmark such as a building, bridge or overpass, antenna, or other easily recognized and large object works the best. Using a tripod to prevent mis-focus issues, focus the lens at a fixed point on the subject (such as a spire on a building or sign on an overpass.) It's key that you NOT use clouds, stars, or the sun for this.

Now shoot with the lens at the largest aperture (lowest number) again. This will help ensure that focus is accurate. When your results come back, you want to make sure that the point you focused on is in focus and that the image is generally sharp. The in-focus range should be from your infinity subject to 200 time the lens focal length (100 meters or 330 feet for a 50mm lens).

Tip

Never point your camera at the sun. If you ever used a magnifying glass to burn paper or wood as a kid, your camera would do the same thing to your eye when pointed at the sun.

Film Test Four: Consistent Shutter Operation

So far you'll have taken two photos of the brick wall, two or four photos of a friend or statue, and one photo of an infinity-subject -- five or seven photos. For this test, you want to check your shutter's consistency.

Take some photos of the sky— not the sun. For this test, you don't have to have a tripod.

You'll want to take three photos of the sky at each shutter speed that you can with your lens and the given light conditions. On a sunny day, this should be around nine or twelve photos if you're using ISO 100 film.

Set your shutter to the fastest setting that you can attain with the given lighting and adjust the aperture appropriately. Now take three shots. Reduce your shutter speed by half, open your aperture one stop, make sure that the meter reading is the same as before, and repeat. Do this again a third and a fourth time. If you want to dedicate this roll of film to camera testing, then keep going in this manner until you run out of film.

When your lab returns your photos, you'll be looking for all of the blank shots in each sequence to have the same uniform gradation. Ideally, all the shots should look basically the same. If some of the shots taken at the same settings are darker or lighter, the shutter speed is not firing at the same speed each time. If some shots are partially blacked out, then the shutter curtain and mirror are not timed correctly.

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A photo taken at 1/1000th of a second and f5.6 should look about the same as a photo taken at 1/500th at f8.

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On SLRs, the fast shutter speeds are the most likely to cause issues. On cameras with leaf shutters, the slow speeds are most likely. However, on the latter, slow speed timing issues are more easily gauged.

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If you plan to use this whole roll for testing, then take a photo of your hand between each set of three test shots. This will allow you to readily recognize when a series ends when you look at the negative sheet.