  There is a large body of work that has used the excellent Chandra
observations of nearby galaxies with neglible low mass X-ray binary (LMXB)
populations. This has culminated in a ``Universal'' X-ray luminosity function
(XLF) for high mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs). However, a number of methods have
been used to convert from source intensities to luminosities when creating
these XLFs. We have taken advantage of the XMM-Newton observations of the
nearby starbursting spiral galaxy NGC 253 to test some of these methods. We
find the luminosities derived from these various methods to vary by a factor of
$\sim$3. We also find the most influential factor in the conversion from
intensity to luminosity to be the absorption. We therefore conclude that a more
consistent approach is required for determining the true Universal XLF for
HMXBs. Ideally, this would involve individual spectral fitting of each X-ray
source. Certainly, the line-of-sight absorption should be determined from the
observations rather than assuming Galactic absorption. We find the best
approach for obtaining an XLF from low-count data to be the splitting of the
X-ray sources into two or more intensity intervals, and obtaining a conversion
from intensity to flux for each group from spectral modelling of the summed
spectrum of that group.
