This month, DxO reached a significant milestone with the release of its 100,000th DxO Camera and Lens Module. Having developed this technology for over two decades, the company is marking the occasion by offering a first-ever glimpse behind the scenes of its calibration lab.

If you don’t know what DXO modules are, here’s a quick primer: DxO Modules are highly specialised software corrections designed to optimise camera and lens combinations. They are basically a mathematical model of each lens and sensor combination, created from thousands of data points. The data is gathered from extensive laboratory testing, ensuring that the unique characteristics of a particular camera and lens pairing are fully understood and accounted for.

By precisely analysing factors such as sensor performance, lens sharpness, distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting, DxO Modules allow the software to extract the maximum quality from images.

They recently held a press conference to showcase this, and having attended, I’m pretty impressed by what goes into the calibration process. It’s way more detailed than I was expecting. For example they even take into consideration vibrations from the building when testing lenses and ensure no one is moving on the lab floor when measurements are being taken. They also talked about having to specially print their charts because standard laser printers were too soft, and this could affect the calibration. The calibration hardware and software they use is custom built in house and pretty extensive.

Here’s a quick summary of the process from their Press Release:

From custom-designed test charts and precision-engineered rails to advanced lighting setups, every detail of the calibration process is fine-tuned for optimal results. Each camera and lens undergoes rigorous pre-analysis followed by testing at every focal length, aperture, and focusing distance. These measurements ensure that DxO Modules provide definitive corrections for sharpness, distortion, chromatic aberrations, and vignetting— delivering impeccable results for every image.

DxO Modules are seamlessly integrated into DxO software, including DxO PhotoLab, PureRAW, and FilmPack. The company claims its technology surpasses competitors by considering a far greater number of parameters and applying highly precise corrections across multiple points in the frame.

For example, when sharpening a lens, Lightroom applies a uniform sharpening across the entire image. In contrast, DxO’s software—having meticulously analysed specific camera and lens combinations—recognises where a lens may be softer, such as in the corners, and applies targeted sharpening to compensate.

Additionally, I believe the data from these modules is also used to train DxO’s AI models, which power DeepPRIME—their advanced noise reduction and demosaicing algorithm found in DxO PhotoLab and PureRAW.

New Camera and Lens Modules for February

To mark this milestone, DxO has added support for several new cameras and lenses, including:

New Cameras:

Canon EOS R1
Leica Q3 43
Nikon Z50 II
Panasonic Lumix S5D
Sony A1 II

New Lenses:

Canon RF 24mm F1.4L VCM, 50mm F1.4L VCM, 70-200mm F2.8L IS USM Z
Sony FE 28-70mm F2 GM
Nikon Z 50mm F1.4
Sigma 105mm F1.4 DG HSM A (Sony FE)
Voigtlander and Samyang prime lenses for Sony, Nikon, and Fuji X

For more information, and to see more behind the scenes, the company has a dedicated information page and video showcasing the process on their website.

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