Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Château des ducs de Bretagne

Château des ducs de Bretagne

 * Reason:Striking image, illustrates well several of the important buildings in the castle, as well as its walls. Technically the colours are good, and the image is quite large.
 * Proposed caption:The courtyard of the Château des ducs de Bretagne, in the city of Nantes, Brittany, France, was the residence of the Dukes of Brittany from the 13th to 15th centuries, and subsequently became the Breton residence of the French Monarchy. From left to right; le Grand Gouvernement, which served as the residence of the governors of Brittany, otherwise known as le Palais Ducal; La Conciergerie, currently Caretaker's Lodge, but housed first the lieutenant of the duke, then the castle's arsenal of weapons; Le Harnachement, also used to store artillary, now an exhibition centre; Le Petit Gouvernement, the former home of the king of France on his visits to Nantes; and to the side, Les Murailles Extérieures, the walls of the castle. In the left background lies the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul.
 * Articles this image appears in:Château des ducs de Bretagne, Nantes, Château
 * Creator:Schcambo


 * Support as nominator Schcambo 18:15, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Before I say why, let me thank you for taking this picture; it's great for the encyclopedia, and great to have.  I hope you found my comments useful; I obviously value your contribution enough to give a detailed response.  However, I oppose for a variety of reasons, some technical, some artistic.


 * Technical: I don't like the fisheye perspective - it feels wrong. If you want a wide angle shot like this, try just a very wide-angle lens, going on top of a building farther back, or a different/better panorama.  (Note: I don't know what techniques were used, just that they produced a fish-eye effect).  The lines of the buildings are not that sharp; in full sun, there should be no issues with crispness and wide depth of field.  Look at the roof edges to see this.  Surprisingly for this high a resolution image, there also may be jpg artifacts - check out the right-hand edge of the roof of the right-hand full building.  This may just be part of the overall lack of sharpness.


 * Artistic: I don't like the composition much. There is too much blank courtyard foreground, and not enough subject.  There should either be a lot of people in the courtyard, doing something worth looking at, or none at all; the couple of groups on the sides of the shot detract from the value.  The picture might be better if you cropped off some of the bottom, maybe at a line from the top of the grass.  It also might be worth trying again on a day with a festival in the square (although the clouds are great).  Your shooting location was probably not ideal; I can't say where you were standing, but it created an odd perspective on the scene to me.  (EDITED to add line breaks)


 * Zakolantern 22:16, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Oppose I don't like the fact that there isn't a focus within the picture. More than 1/3 of it is used up by a courtyard with nothing on it and I think it would be better if you were say in the courtyard (opposite of what User:Zakolantern said) and took a very wide panorama with the façade of the buildings facing towards you. I also modified User:Zakolantern's line breaks to remove the unnecessary &lt;br&gt;. --antilivedT 01:47, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Zakolantern 05:54, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I checked it out before Zakolantern voted and something bothered me about it; I didn't vote because I didn't know how to explain it, but it's the same thing he said about how the fisheye perspective affects the overall feeling. I now also notice the lack of sharpness, and there seems to be some chromatic aberration as well near some of the edges. That said, something about the clouds strikes me as very cool--maybe it's the same blur and fringing, but it looks like it's been painted... nice artistic effect. And there are a couple spots in the dirt that look like blending issues stitching a panorama, though that could be just how the courtyard was tended, as well as what appears to be a rather prominent painted area near the center building. I'm curious how you got this shot--what gear, image editing techniques, etc. you used. --Peter 01:52, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment - I am also really curious how this photograph was made. As you can see from my original comments, I couldn't decide what methods were used to take the picture, including if it was a regular shot, panorama, or fisheye lens.  Zakolantern 05:56, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment - Thanks for the comments. It's a basic panorama, four shots stitched together. The position I was at was right at the end of the wall you can see - there's actually another building between me and the leftmost building in the photo, I decided to leave that one out because it was cut off from the bottom and top. That position was really the only viable one - had I moved centre, then the midright building would only be seen from the side, had I moved far right, then the rightmost building would have obstructed a lot of the shot. The problem with the panorama was that people who were walking through the courtyard ended up showing twice, like ghosts almost, so I edited them out, so yeah in some cases that is a bit visible (the spots of dirt are real though). The clouds are completely natural, even where it changes from grey to white above right of the centre building, I was wondering about that even myself, but there's no stitch there. Lack of sharpness, can't explain. I was using a Sony T10, not the greatest but at 7MP and 'Fine' it generally comes up relatively sharp. About the fisheye thing - while my shooting method would be conducive to such, I can't really see much of it - most of the lines are quite straight. I'm thinking perhaps the layout of the courtyard itself may just be confusing it, none of the building are built in relation to each other. Schcambo 11:33, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment I don't think this is what you call "fisheye effect", maybe just that the eye is not used to the fact that you can see sides of the buildings that are supposed to be facing each other. Did you try shoot inside the courtyard, and make like a 360 degree panorama around you? --antilivedT 06:19, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah I tried, but unfortunately the size and proximity of all the surrounding buildings made it impossible; having to point the camera upwards and then stitching that to a level photo would just have created a real fisheye effect. Schcambo 16:55, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

MER-C 05:51, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * New version - hopefully addressed some problems. Schcambo 12:10, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose - really don't like the composition. It seems that there are three buildings, and all are caught side-on, meaning a lot of empty space, and not much detail on any of the buildings. I think for situations like this, we're better off having a few different photos, of each of the different buildings (eg, Château de Blois), rather than somewhat artificially trying to get them all in one photo. That said, it's a good, useful photo - but not quite FP standard. Stevage 01:59, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. I'm refraining from voting on the new version right now, and I have struck my prior vote.  Schcambo, thank you very much for listening to my suggestions and using them to create the new version.  I think it is dramatically better than it was before.  That said, I'm undecided if it is good enough for a FP still.  Zakolantern 17:31, 30 July 2007 (UTC)