This International Standard specifies a method for determining the resolving power of photographic films, plates and papers, including black-and-white films, black-and-white printing papers, colour-reversal films, colour-negative films, and colour-printing papers.

Materials designed for X-ray and other high-energy radiation are excluded, as are photographic materials used in medical radiography where the exposure source is an intensifying screen in contact with the film (sensitized on one or two sides). Also excluded are materials having photo-polymer, diazo, etc. light-sensitive layers.