Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/File:Princess of Wales Conservatory, Kew Gardens - July 2009.jpg

File:Princess of Wales Conservatory, Kew Gardens - July 2009.jpg

 * Reason:It's very high resolution, aesthetic and a good architectural view of the Prince of Wales Conservatory in Kew Gardens in London. Yes, I know we have a couple of FPs of Kew Gardens buildings already, but this is likely to be the last for a while! At first glance, it seems somewhat obscured but I think this is the best possible angle of the building, short of an aerial view, having walked all the way around it looking for a good location.
 * Articles this image appears in:Kew Gardens
 * Creator:User:Diliff


 * Support as nominator --Diliff  | (Talk)   (Contribs) 15:30, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Support Fantastic shot--one of the better ones that I've seen on here. Great work as usual-- mcshadypl T C  17:09, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Obvious HDRI effects. Not realistic looking. Kaldari (talk) 20:30, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * You're being very presumptuous to suggest it's 'obvious'. There are no HDRI effects, because no HDRI was used - this is a single image (in terms of exposure - obviously it's stitched). You could at least ask the question out of politeness before making a declaration like that :-P. Could you perhaps also be more specific about what is so unrealistic? Diliff   | (Talk)   (Contribs) 20:54, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * To set the record straight as I get a bit sick of having to defend my photos against this sort of accusation (apologies for singling you out), this is a screen capture straight from Lightroom. Hard to fit all the relevent tools on the screen but as you can see, the only adjustment whatsoever is the fill light to bring out the shadows and the tone curve is close to linear. The same development settings are applied to entire set for obvious reasons. Diliff  | (Talk)   (Contribs) 21:16, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Setting the fill light to 44 would be the problem then. Anything over 20 is probably going to look unrealistic. I've never gone higher than 15 myself. The foliage especially looks flat. Without realistic shadows, it looks like a painting rather than a photograph. A very beautiful painting though :) Kaldari (talk) 17:20, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * BTW, I apologize for so often opposing your photographs as unrealistic looking. Your photography is really beautiful and impressive, so I feel bad for criticizing them at all. I'm a strong believer, though, that Wikipedia photographs should be primarily documentary rather than aesthetic. Obviously this photo is going to pass with or without my support, but I would encourage you to at least consider striving for more realism (rather than perfect tone curves) in future photographs. Kaldari (talk) 17:35, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I completely agree with you that a Wikipedia photo's primary purpose is documentary rather than aesthetic, but my opinion differs on what makes a photo 'realistic'. This is something that we clashed on with the Hong Kong panorama nomination too. My point was, and still is, that our eyes have a much better ability to see wide luminosity ranges than a camera does, and just because a camera will output photos with deep shadows by default, doesn't mean we should accept that as more 'accurate' - we should make a photo look like what our eyes see, not what the camera sees. Without some fill light, the shadows were too dark and detail was lost. I could have overexposed the image slightly to bring out the shadow detail, but then the highlights would have been blown which is even worse because they cannot be recovered. I certainly accept that there are limits to how far you can push fill shadow, but I don't think that it is over the top in this instance (and it would seem neither do others). On that subject I suppose we will have to agree to disagree, but I do think that you perhaps need to re-think the idea of realism and how it applies to photography, based on your fundamentalism on the subject. ;-) Diliff  | (Talk)   (Contribs) 10:09, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I understand the point of tone mapping. I adjust the fill light and tonal curve of virtually every photograph I upload. Tone mapping and HDRI are, however, imperfect solutions to an unsolvable problem, namely that the gamut and tonal range of camera sensors and computer monitors are far less than that of the human eye. Tone mapping is basically the effort to produce more realistic contrast levels (to human eyes) within a compressed tonal range. Since the tonal range on a computer monitor cannot be expanded, however, the way this is accomplished is to selectively adjust tones within the range to maximize local contrast (i.e. bring out the details). Since the overall tonal range is finite, however, every time you adjust a tone in one direction to increase contrast in a particular part of the image, you are actually reducing contrast in comparison with other parts of the image. If the tone mapping is done lightly, the secondary effect is not noticeable and the image looks improved. If the tone mapping is overdone, however, the image becomes over-compressed and it starts looking surreal. In other words, more tone mapping doesn't necessarily equal a better or more accurately perceived image. You have to balance making the details look more realistic with keeping the overall image looking realistic. For every degree that you increase one you are decreasing the other. The sweet spot is different for every image, but my perception of where it is seems to be very far from where your perception of it is. My sweet spot is right underneath the level where you can tell the image has been tone mapped (or fill-lighted etc), but clearly other people disagree. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this, as I suppose it is ultimately a matter of taste. Kaldari (talk) 17:05, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep, fair enough, and I agree with you about most of it, although I am confused by the way you keep referring to tone mapping when tone mapping was not used - at least, as I mentioned below, the fill light slider is not usually associated with tone mapping as it really just pushing the tonal curve rather than re-mapping local values. One final thing - I don't think it is necessarily that people disagree about the sweet spot being just below the threshold of perceptibility, it is probably more that they don't find it particularly perceptible. I don't look at the image and automatically think "oh, it looks overly processed". If you do, there is the possibility that your monitor is not well calibrated? Just a thought. Without looking at the same monitor (and having the same visual perception system!) it is hard to compare apples with apples. Thanks for your well-reasoned response anyway. Diliff  | (Talk)   (Contribs) 11:24, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Using fill light to bring out details in the shadows is a form of tone mapping, although it is not usually called that since "tone mapping" these days usually refers to HDR tone mapping specifically. "The normal process of exposure compensation, brightening shadows and altering contrast applied globally to digital images as part of a professional or serious amateur workflow is also a form of tone mapping." I suppose it doesn't matter what you call it though, as we both know what we're referring to. I've recalibrated my monitor, which helped some, but the image still looks a bit flat/over-compressed to me. I have my monitor set to standard Mac gamma, however, which is brighter on the dark end of the spectrum than PC gamma is. Even on my PC, though, the trees look photochrom. Kaldari (talk) 15:27, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The ultimate result of filling shadows is not dissimilar to using fill flash imo. I think both are ok. I feel that as long as it isn't going at all overboard (eg ) then there is more enc to be had doing so than blown highlights or clipped shadows.
 * The digital "fill light" effect and overexposure are not your only options. Contrast reduction would also allow you to brighten the shadows while maintaining the highlights, without the surrealism of the fill light effect. —Darxus (talk) 18:25, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Tone mapping effects, not HDRI effects. HDRI has no "effects".  (I'm not suggesting this image contains either.) —Darxus (talk) 04:57, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Good point - there is a difference, but I suppose it's implied that any image created through a HDRI process will be blended or tone mapped to be a viewable 8 bit image for the web. Diliff  | (Talk)   (Contribs) 10:09, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Only if you realize that contrast reduction is (the simplest form of) tone mapping. The surreal stuff is local tone mapping (maximizing local contrast while "violating tonal hierarchy"). Contrast reduction and fill light are global tone mapping (the same modification is applied to the entire image). —Darxus (talk) 15:13, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Also, tone mapping, including very surreal local tone mapping, does not imply HDRI. You can tone map a single LDR image. —Darxus (talk) 15:15, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed, but fill light is best explained as an adjustment of the tone curve rather than 'tone mapping'. All it essentially does is brighten the shadows by bumping up their luminance values, whereas most people's understanding of a tone mapping implementation is local tone mapping with all the trippy, haloey effects that are associated with it. Diliff  | (Talk)   (Contribs) 16:31, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Support - great colours and exposure control, and great effort with an unlikely subject for FPC. Only minor quibbles are the cloud behind those air vents, and the unsightly bin in the foreground, but whaddyagonnado. Stevage 02:31, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Support, per nom. Mostlyharmless (talk) 03:29, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Support  Franklin.vp   05:30, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Support to good to be true – for some ;) – Wladyslaw (talk) 09:12, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Support Shadow on RHS foreground is a bit distracting, but who wants a dull overcast sky. Noodle snacks (talk) 10:48, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Support The article is getting filled with FPs though. Did you use a polarizer (hope that's the right word) to get the sky come out so well? --Muhammad (talk) 13:27, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * True, but different buildings are being illustrated. It isn't the same thing as the same species of insect having multiple FPs. I can't actually remember if I used a polariser (polarizer if you use American spelling), but I probably did. The angle of view isn't very large so the polarising effect would be uniform. Diliff  | (Talk)   (Contribs) 13:33, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, Diliff, could you please stop taking featured pictures? We have too many. :p Stevage

--Shoemaker's Holiday Over 209 FCs served 10:24, 29 September 2009 (UTC)