Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Batrachoseps attenuatus

California Slender Salamander
Voting period ends on 12 Jan 2011 at 08:22:50 (UTC)
 * Reason:A compelling high-resolution portrait of a California Slender Salamander to illustrate the morphology section (which mentions the shape of the head)
 * Articles in which this image appears:California Slender Salamander
 * FP category for this image:Animals/Amphibians
 * Creator:Kaldari


 * Support as nominator --Kaldari (talk) 08:22, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure because of 2 reasons: it's only its head hurts the EV; and you get no sense of scale in the image, the other (awful) photos in the article surprised me when I realised how small it is. Aaadddaaammm (talk) 18:01, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose If it is meant to illustrate just the head, then I want to see the whole head in focus. Here only the eye is, and it is hazed up. Jó Kritika (talk) 23:06, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Not sure what you mean by hazed up. That's what the eye looks like. Kaldari (talk) 00:41, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not the eye in particular. The whole portion that's in focus is glowing white, and actually extends to the region that's out of focus as well. Jó Kritika (talk) 02:19, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm still not sure I know exactly what you mean. Are you referring to the specular highlights or something else? If you're referring to the specular highlights, the image was taken at 1:1 magnification, which is quite difficult to do without using a flash. Guess I need one of those homemade macro diffusers. Kaldari (talk) 21:09, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
 * No, it is not the specular highlights. The image looks cloudy, maybe because of the intensity of the highlights? I'm not sure if the lens caused it or it just lacks contrast, but it is not clear. If you still don't understand, then just ignore. The focus range is more important reason for my opposition. Jó Kritika (talk) 04:24, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah, I think I know what you mean. I noticed this "cloudiness" as well. At first I thought I wasn't focusing properly but then I noticed that it only affected the salamander's skin, not the surrounding moss and leaves. I think this is just an optical characteristic of the skin—that it is highly diffusive. Might have something to do with the salamander's ability to breathe through it's skin, i.e. at a microscopic level it is highly porous. I agree the depth of field is somewhat shallow. The ideal magnification for this shot (to get good depth of field and sharpness) would have probably been something like 1:1.5, but unfortunately I didn't have the right macro lens with me since I was actually hunting jumping spiders at the time :( Kaldari (talk) 19:23, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I'd agree with Jó that the depth-of-field in this case is slightly too shallow. Nautica Shad es  15:48, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose does not scream featured. Nergaal (talk) 02:42, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

--Makeemlighter (talk) 05:12, 12 January 2011 (UTC)