Sascha Tayefeh's Homepage

The tutorials at http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/ are very useful. You may come to astonishing results following them. My favourite ones are

• http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Color2BW/ (How to create good grayscale images from coloured ones)
• http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Film_Grain/ (How to add film grain to make the image look somewhat vintage)
• http://www.gimpguru.org/Tutorials/FilmGrain/ (dito)

Another nice tutorial that deals with creating vintage look using The Gimp is here:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6750

It focuses on more subtle filtering.

I was curiouse what exactly the difference is between the two Nikon bodies D40 and D90. Furthermore I took the chance and tested two lenses: The first one is a prime lense by Nikon: The first one is a prime portrait lense, Nikkor 50mm F/1.8, which has been subject of many positive reviews. The secound one is a standard zoom shipped with the D40 body, 35-55mm F/3.6-5.6.

Please note that this is no professional, commercial, scientific, accurate or what-ever reliable test. This is just a quick-and-dirty field-experiment, so please don’t blame me for anything. Only instrument to measure differences was my eye, so this could be rather a subjective view. THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE DATA AND THE RESULTS PRESENTED HERE, AT ALL! However, there was no post-edition carried out on the images but some shrinking using GIMP.

Fine.

Now here is what I did: I took some shots of a typical outdoor scene and was interested in the high-contrast area and the distant details. Here is the result:

So far, I could not determine any big difference in quality. However, let’s have a closer look at the details. Mind the red boxes marking some areas of the upper left image. Here’s the zoom:

As far as -1- is concerned, I am quite satisfied with all results – I cannot see any chromatic aberration and the lines are sharp. The overall impression is that, at ISO200, 8.0f and 1/800s, there is hardly difference. This is good for me, since these are the most common settings I use. However, keep in mind that this result may (and propably will) change drastically when changing any of the mentioned parameters, particularly at greater ISO and at the shutter opened wider.

In -2- I think the D40 using Nikkor 50mm is slightly less sharp, however, my overall impression is again that there is hardly difference.

I don’t want to make any conclusion here – open the pictures and make your own conclusion. However, for such a scene (a daylight outdoor scene) I’d say that both bodies and lenses provide similar quality. And remember: This is my personal view and THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE DATA AND THE RESULTS PRESENTED HERE, AT ALL!

Sascha = passionated photographer and technology geek. Microsoft has invented a really amazing tool called Photosynth. It merges photos allowing interactive walks and zooms through the scene.

Watch the quick video introduction to learn more about photosynth.

I am really thrilled! Watch out for my first work.