Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/LCAC

LCAC

 * Reason:It isn't easy to get a good photograph shooting through a binocular lens and this is quite a sight. It's the only photograph of this type on Wikipedia or Commons and it happens to be a view of an encyclopedic subject: a United States Navy LCAC hovercraft assigned to USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7).  For reference, the type of binoculars used for this shot is Image:Navy binoculars.jpg.
 * Articles this image appears in:USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7), Binoculars, Hovercraft
 * Creator:MC3 Michael Starkey


 * Support as nominator -- Durova Charge! 11:21, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Support, impressive shot through the binoculars with good detail on the subject. DoF is better than most shots of this kind, keeping the binocular eye cup acceptably clear (so we know what we're looking through).  Could use more eels.  -- Coneslayer (talk) 13:14, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Support for quality, EV, rarity. Very cool. Fletcher (talk) 16:30, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Support Very cool, very ENC, and very unique. Clegs (talk) 17:45, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Skepticism - I really doubt this is through binoculars. It looks much more like a porthole. 1) It is not round - I have never seen binoculars (or any optics set up) with non round lenses. 2) You can see a weld-point at left, suggesting the housing is metal. 3) The tube is in near focus throughout - intervening lenses would have to make some of that tube unfocused. 4) The tube is all dinged up with pits and scratches, not like a piece of optics built to fine enough tolerances to generate a universally sharp image like that. 5) there is lots of light hitting the inside of the binocular tube/porthole - since the focal distance for binoculars is very short (You have to put your head right up against them) - how can this much light be getting in with the camera sufficiently close? 6) That there is no blur, even on the outside of the "lens" challenges credibility. I've taken photos through binoculars before, and there is always blur. . de Bivort 17:56, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Nominator linked to Image:Navy binoculars.jpg which appear to be heavy duty, metal binoculars mounted to a ship, which would explain their condition. I can't explain why it doesn't appear circular -- an optical illusion maybe?  The lighting appears to have been extremely bright -- 1/500th second exposure at f/8, so there was plenty of daylight to illuminate the tube.  Additionally, a porthole shot is unlikely, because you'd have to wait for the hovercraft to enter your field of view, and how would you even know you're stationed at the right porthole!  It would have to be an extremely lucky shot.  By contrast, the binocs can surely swivel on their mount. Lastly, and no offense, but a navy photog with a dSLR can likely take pictures you can't get with that Olympus P&S.  I'd still be curious how he or she took it.  Fletcher (talk) 18:32, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The linked binoculars appear to have plastic eye pieces - they are smooth and without weld points. They cannot be the same as the tube we see here. Optical illusion taking a circle and rendering it as a rounded rectangle? Please... You could know which is the right porthole by looking over the rail - portholes are often built right into the gunwale of large ships look along the tires. As for the olympus shot vs DSLR, true, but with my new D20, I have found identical constraints shooting through both binoculars and microscopes. other military photos too. Honestly, there is no way the microscope or binocular housing can be in focus while the subject is also in focus. The light paths through the lenses don't work that way. look a the light path and tell me how the entire length of the tube could be uniformly in focus. de Bivort 18:44, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Hehe - I know exactly what's going on here. Through the porthole you can see wake preceeding the hovercraft. This is because LHD 7 has a stern loading bay for hover craft. Take a look at this military blog and this image. The aft rail of the ship, the one with the obvious shot of the approaching hover craft has portholes that are easily visible in that photo! They even are of the correct shape! de Bivort 19:07, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Plausible... I wasn't too convinced by your tugboat image, as the Iwo Jima doesn't seem to have portholes on the gunnel like that, but it looks like it does have them on the stern.Fletcher (talk) 19:30, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * conditional support if it is removed from binoculars article. de Bivort 19:07, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I also share doubts that it is taken through binoculars... and even if it were, I don't see the encyclopaedic value of a photo of a hovercraft taken through binoculars. ;-) To me, the housing of whatever it is we're looking through is simply a distraction, in the same way that artificially introduced vignetting is a distraction. The actual image of the hovercraft is quite good, but to crop the image to remove the 'binoculars' would make the resulting framing too tight. I just don't think it works particularly well as an encyclopaedic photo. Diliff  | (Talk)   (Contribs) 19:18, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * FWIW I thought about the hole as a distraction, but ended up thinking that it was good for this image, since it shows a view of the craft from its "mother ship", kind of uniting the two ships into a single system. Not bad since it illustrates both the hovercraft and LHD 7 articles. Admittedly, a steady shot from a third ship along side the landing scene would probably be better. de Bivort 19:23, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not convinced.. I agree that the concept you mentioned is a good idea, but surely a view that actually shows the "mother ship" as something more than an out of focus, unidentifiable metallic frame around the main subject would be better. I don't think that this particular photo gains anything from this composition. Even just a photo from an elevated position (such as the control room maybe?) looking down at the stern of the ship toward the hovercraft would be far better. Diliff  | (Talk)   (Contribs) 19:35, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment. I don't think it should be removed from the binoculars page; it's the only example of looking through a pair of binoculars there. Also, what if there's no lens at all? Intothewoods29 (talk) 21:08, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, if it's not actually through binoculars, that might be a reason to remove it from the binoculars page. :-) Fletcher (talk) 21:41, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose Is this about binoculars a joke? Permit me to doubt that this is shot through binoculars. I've made such shots myself, but they never turn out as sharp as this one - there has always been some chromatic aberration, as well as loss of focus at the edges of the image. Furthermore, the source page states: A landing craft air cushion assigned to Assault Craft Unit 4 approaches the multipurpose amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7) while under way in the Atlantic Ocean July 8, 2008. The Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group is conducting a composite unit training exercise, which provides a realistic training environment to ensure the strike group’s deployment capabilities and readiness. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Michael Starkey/Released) - nothing at all about binoculars! To me, it looks like it is shot through one of those cast iron holes (er, the hole is in the casting, to be precise) used for passing ropes through (I don't know the proper term for it, sorry...) You can even see raised lettering typical of cast iron items in the upper left corner... --Janke | Talk 21:43, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment To the doubters, I respect your concerns. U.S. Navy "big eyes" binoculars have removable synthetic rubber facial cushions. Those were removed for this particular shot and were installed for the other featured picture of the binoculars.  And yes, "big eyes" viewpieces do have this shape.   If any doubts remain, please contact the webmaster at DefenseImagery.mil. It's an official U.S. Government website and the armed forces policies restricting image manipulation are extremely strict. Editors who know my professional experience may trust my word (and it does relate directly to these concerns), yet for the rest of FPC voters--the horse's mouth is a few clicks from the source link. Respectfully,  Durova Charge! 21:49, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Why doesn't the text on the image source page state it is a shot through binoculars? Is it just an assumption, or can you point us to a reference saying it is, please? If so, I'll retract my doubt... --Janke | Talk 21:56, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * It's the right eyepiece; note the ergonomic shape of the border. Durova Charge! 21:58, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Not enough for me - please note the perspective of the hovercraft - if shot through binoculars, there should not be as strong a convergence between the lines of the left and right edges (draw the lines) - you'd expect the typical "crunched" perspective of a long tele lens... Interesting, though - and in fact, I'd like to be proved wrong on this ... ;-) --Janke | Talk 22:01, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, perhaps my recollection fails me. It's been a few years since I served.  Will check this out at oh-dark-thirty; the office is probably on East Coast time. ;)  Durova Charge! 22:08, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with the logic Janke has used here. And in addition to the issue of a relatively wide perspective (consider also how far below the horizon the hovercraft is. Either the ship is extremely tall and you are looking through 20x magnification telephoto binoculars, or the ship is just pretty close to the hovercraft, which seems more likely to me), I imagine that if you were to take a photo directly into the binocular eyepiece, you would have to do it from very close up, in much the same way as a human viewer does. And if you were to take it from close up, the frame of the eyepiece would be far more out of focus than it is in this shot. This is purely intuitive, but from my experience, with an aperture of f/8, focal length of 24mm and with that degree of out-of-focus-blur, I would imagine that the photographer was half a metre or more away from the eyepiece/port hole/whatever it was. So as I said, intuitively, to me, it just doesn't make sense to be binoculars. Oh, and I had a quick look on Flickr for images of the stern of the Wasp class, and I didn't find any close ups with good detail, but this was probably the best of the ones I did find, and there are some suspiciously similar looking port holes that could well be what the photographer shot through. Just a thought anyway. Diliff  | (Talk)   (Contribs) 23:03, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The DOF isn't a problem for me - you can adjust binoculars so that the plane of focus is almost anywhere - even close to the eyepiece! Scrutinizing the image closely, there's one thing that points to a glassed-in hole (maybe even lensed-in...), i.e. not a rope hole as I originally assumed: at top right, there is a smudge in the image that couldn't be hanging in mid-air, and there are a few circular out-of focus smudges in the image itself - more out-of-focus than the edge of the oval... This is very interesting - maybe I'm wrong and it is a binocular image after all? Amazing aberration-free quality, in that case. Proof, please! ;-) --Janke | Talk 06:45, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I think that smudges could just as easily be water droplets on the camera lens itself, though. I've got many photos taken in the rain with somewhat similar smudges. And the DOF may not be a problem (not having had any experience taking photos through binoculars, I must admit), but surely the vertical angle that the photo was taken from should be as I mentioned above. It just seems an implausibly steep angle for such high magnification (large distance to subject and steep angle = very high camera location). And that, combined with the perspective of the hovercraft, points towards the photo being directly photographed. But I suppose we're best off waiting for Durova's proof! Diliff  | (Talk)   (Contribs) 07:39, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, we'll have to wait. Interesting, in any case! --Janke | Talk 11:37, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, I found this image which is far more high res and has some almost identically shaped slightly oblong portholes at the stern just like the one in this nomination. I'm almost positive this is what was shot through - not the binoculars... Diliff  | (Talk)   (Contribs) 23:16, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Withdraw nomination - haven't gotten a reply yet, but as I think about it this is better not to run without certainty. Removing from the binoculars article as a preventive measure and will re-initiate only if confirmation is forthcoming.  After sleeping on the matter, it really is better to be certain about this.  Thanks,  Durova Charge! 02:11, 26 July 2008 (UTC)