Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Polarlicht 2

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[edit] Aurora Borealis

Original — Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska: The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, shines above Bear Lake

Edited version — Picture of the year at Commons

Edit 2 by trialsanderrors — Rotated, cropped, color corrected, noise reduced, downsampled.

Edit 3 by AzaToth — Cropped, color corrected, noise reduced, downsampled.

Reason

Commons Picture of the Year 2006, somehow not an FP on the Wikipedia

Articles this image appears in

Aurora (astronomy)

Creator

Joshua Strang, US Air Force

Nominator

Goodmanjaz

• Support — Goodmanjaz 19:15, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support - I thought it's already featured. --Arad 20:12, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - I suspect this discussion is going to be long, interesting and unpredictable... Alvesgaspar 20:21, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. Oversaturated low quality shot. Quite a surprise this came out as POTY. --Dschwen 21:28, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Hmmm, the original version is actually of decent quality, concering the circumstances it was made. So my initial oppose was due to the POTY surprise. I'll stay Neutral for now. --Dschwen 17:53, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Alvesgaspar was right. The discussion is going to heat up. --Arad 21:39, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. Oversaturated, very grainy, severe and highly irritating (to me) distortion. I share Dschwen's surprise at it being POTY. --Pharaoh Hound (talk) 21:53, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose - There's something really weird about it, which I can't quite put my finger on. Mrug² 00:00, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - Maybe because an Aurora is wierd? :-). --Arad 00:54, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Shouldn't we also include the original in the nomination? ~ trialsanderrors 04:01, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - Probably so; I've been hanging around for a while, but it's my first nom and I couldn't figure out how to add more than one image in the template. — Goodmanjaz 04:43, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
    • You can just add images after creating the nomination. ~ trialsanderrors 04:51, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose POTY edit and Edit 3 I was trying to find out what the motivation for the color correction was, but can't find any other than it seems to make it look prettier. The main problem is that it turned the aurora turquoise and the snow blue, killing any enc the original had. I haven't made up my mind yet about the original. ~ trialsanderrors 05:53, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose original, weak support my edit. I fixed the problems that bugged me with the original without overdoing the color correction like in the POTY edit. I agree with Alvesgaspar that this is among the best impressions of an aurora borealis (compare Flickr), so with a number of edits the technical problems should be solvable. Happy to ditch this though if someone finds a better picture of an aurora. ~ trialsanderrors 17:24, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment I'm not a photograph expert, but as I'm grouw up in such conditions, I personally can assert that the snow may look like that. _→AzaToth 18:26, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Not sure what this means but when comparing to the original I'm not buying that a turquoise aurora reflects purple in the snow. When I'm trying to recreate the edit I have to move the blue color balance slider all the way over to the right, something that doesn't instill any confidence in me that this was done to replicate the original natural colors. ~ trialsanderrors 20:25, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support color corrected edit. I'd rather see the snow blue than a sickly yellow-green. As for the "true" color, that's impossible to tell. In low light, the human eye loses color vision, and cameras and films behave differently than in normal lighting conditions. However, the edit matches the majority of aurora pics I've seen. As for being grainy, that's pretty unavoidable - I'm sure this wasn't shot at 50 ISO speed... ;-) --Janke | Talk 08:07, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
  • The problem is that the snow is supposed to reflect the light of the aurora, which it does in the original but not in the edit. ~ trialsanderrors 08:41, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
• Neutral - Aesthetically it is overdone and somehow kitschy. Also, the deformation is annoying and the photographic quality is not great even considering the difficult conditions of the shot. But I won't oppose the promotion: it is still the best available Aurora borealis image and the Commons POTY 2006. However I'm not surprised with the promotion, anyone has noticed the voters' comments (the quantity and the quality) in the four best pics? It is not by chance that I have tried (with no success)to select the POTY 2006 by a "consensual type" of election rather than by a "blind voting"- Alvesgaspar 13:16, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm partial to Image:Aurora australis 20050911.jpg myself but it's too small. howcheng {chat} 03:36, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose All The original two per above. Edit 2 (trialsanderrors) looks unsaturated and lacking in contrast. -Fcb981 00:32, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support POTY - Not my favorite but we should defer to the judgment of hundreds of other Wikipedians from a broader audience. —dgies^t_c 20:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Discussion moved to talk page.
• Oppose It seems that the camera hasn't been still during exposure, as the stars are stretched. _→AzaToth 20:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC)Neutral changing because of invalid reasoning from my side. _→AzaToth 22:05, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
  • The exposure length is 25 seconds. The stars moved. If they used an automatic steering device, the ground would be blurred. —dgies^t_c 20:53, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Ok, then I understand, I have also made another version of the image. Image:Polarlicht4.jpg
• Support Edit 3 Tomer T 16:18, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. Very nasty colors before photoshopping and since the main appeal of image is the beautiful colors it's not a very good image --froth^T 23:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support I think the end product is a beautiful picture at any resolution. Werothegreat 20:11, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Not promoted MER-C 02:41, 11 March 2007 (UTC)