Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/King's Cross Western Concourse

King's Cross Western Concourse
Voting period ends on 9 Apr 2012 at 23:02:58 (UTC)
 * Reason:London's King's Cross railway station is being transformed from being ugly and congested to something beautiful and free-flowing. The newly-opened departures concourse, by architect John McAslan, is a sight to behold rather than just a means of going somewhere else. A stereographic fish-eye lens was used to capture the full-visual-field scene with one shot, though this leads to a small degree of uncorrectable distortion. The ½ second exposure captures the movement of the rush hour scene. Oh, and there's a bit of Harry Potter in there too if you look closely. I hope you enjoy it. Colin°Talk 23:02, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Articles in which this image appears:London King's Cross railway station, John McAslan (the architect)
 * FP category for this image: Featured pictures/Places/Architecture Featured pictures/Places/Interiors
 * Creator:Colin


 * Support as nominator --Colin°Talk 23:02, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Support -- Loved it on Commons. Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:53, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Support Its a good photograph with EV. I'm usually a little iffy on spherical/cylindrical projections (which includes fisheye lenses) for architecture shots if it is unneeded, this is just slightly wider than any readily available rectilinear lens, and the distortion isn't too bad so I'm ok with it. JJ Harrison (talk) 12:08, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your support. The shot has a 180° diagonal field-of-view, which is considerably more than the 120° a rectilinear projection or ultra-wide lens could reasonably achieve. I'm pretty pleased with this lens' ability to achieve this feat with only a little curvyness, particularly if you align the most prominent lines with the central axes. Colin°Talk 11:52, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Support -- per Commons. Saffron Blaze (talk) 14:23, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Weak Oppose. Not a fan of the fish eye or all the motion-blurred people. Clegs (talk) 10:03, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose I'm not sure if fish-eye lens is a good option for architectural photography. Sanyambahga (talk) 16:51, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Sanyambahga. I agree with you that because they don't do straight lines then for formal architectural photography this is a problem. I'd argue, that WP has to serve all readers, which means it is also valuable to give a sense of the space of the building, and an aliveness that a populated busy station has during rush hour. Compare a conventional view that has the same right-hand-side here. This is about 50-60% as wide/tall as the above. It too has sloping verticals. If I were to crop the above picture to the same area, it would look very similar. But the linked picture, like many of the architectural shots taken during construction, is boring and dead. It is possible that the above pic appears more distorted than it really is. The picture is taken with the camera on the handrail at the point where the walkway curves round in a meandering 90° bend. The roof, of course, is extremely curvy. -- Colin°Talk 18:58, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Dear Colin, architectural photography does not serve only the architects. Your image might depict a sense of aliveness but surely does not provide a sense of space as compared to the 60% cropped image you have tagged. I would surely not want to find this image in the Architecture category. In my opinion, the fact that it has a 180° field-of-view isn't sufficient enough for the image to be nominated. Sanyambahga (talk) 19:55, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * You may be right about the category. Perhaps Featured pictures/Places/Interiors is more appropriate, and a category with other non-standard projections too. Colin°Talk 20:37, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Support. Nice photo. O.J. (talk) 13:13, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose Too much distortion, motion blur, and noise for me. Makeemlighter (talk) 20:17, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm fine with the image not being to everyone's taste but am upset about the "noise" criticism. This is an evening interior shot with a challenging dynamic range, but taken with a modern DSLR at ISO 100 and upload at the full 14MP. I don't think that is fair, and just encourages folk to cheat by downsizing their images before upload. Colin°Talk 11:42, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
 * That's why noise was third: it's the weakest of my objections. It's the combination (mostly of the first two) that leads me to oppose. Makeemlighter (talk) 15:42, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
 * We can't read your mind, so they all appear as equal reasons in your list. Since we're judging against Featured picture criteria, it shouldn't be listed as an objection at all because it isn't "significant" at any resolution and doesn't exist at all at resolutions that are still way above the minimum standard. You may prefer that at 100% there was no noise at all, but that is holding the image against a standard we have not agreed to and fairly unrealistic given this wasn't taken by some little compact at ISO 800. To list it here is unfair against those who upload their original sized images. I'm not asking you to change your vote but would like you to strike that objection. It harms the FP process to pick faults at pixel peeping levels that are only visible because the photographer has been generous when uploading. It is like wandering round an art gallery with a magnifying glass, complaining about brush strokes. -- Colin°Talk 16:37, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Support Interesting projection, good quality and motion blur appropriately shows how busy place is. BTW that Samyang lens looks a pretty good bargain. Also read somewhere it's not really a fisheye lense, but a stereographic.- Blieusong (talk) 13:57, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Support. Very nice wide view of the interior. Not bothered by the distortion (necessary with very wide views) or the noise (It's higher than I'd like to see for ISO 100, but tolerable), and the blur does not detract from the image IMO, as detail of the people is not particularly relevant, and instead it offers a bit of movement to the scene. &#208;iliff    &#171;&#187;  (Talk)  06:16, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

--Makeemlighter (talk) 16:41, 13 April 2012 (UTC)