This paper compares two different local surface shape description methods. The general goal of surface shape description methods is to classify different surface shapes from range data. One well-known method to classify patches of various shapes is the HK classification space [1, 9]. Another way to classify patches is the SC method introduced by Koenderink [8]. This paper presents several experiments designed to show the (1) qualitatively different classification, (2) the impact of thresholds and (3) the impact of different noise levels. We conclude that Koenderink's approach has some advantages at low thresholds, complex scenes and at dealing with noise.