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Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Mustard

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Mustard

edit
 
Original - Mustard seeds (top left) may be ground (top right) to make different kinds of mustard. The four mustards pictured are a simple table mustard with turmeric coloring (center left), a Bavarian sweet mustard (center right), a Dijon mustard (lower left), and a rough French mustard made mainly from black mustard seeds (lower right).
 
Edit 1 - noise reduction and lightening of the background by Fir0002
Reason
Excellent encyclopedic value. It's doing well in its FPC nom on commons.
Articles this image appears in
Mustard (condiment)
Creator
Rainer Zenz

Support Per WP:ENC. Great Value. Pedro :  Chat  23:32, 22 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  Oppose Poor quality. Noisy, particularly in the shadows; terrible lighting with horrible glary bits, the background should be near white or white (and minus the odd reflections) and the shadow should be much softer. For an easily repeatable shot like this I'd expect perfection. Frankly I'm extremely surprised and a bit disappointed to see how much support this nomination has garnered without these issues being raised. At the very least someone should do a noise reduction (I'd probably do it but even with that editing I wouldn't feel it was up to scratch). --Fir0002 09:12, 24 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Don't you think that's a little harsh? Ok, there's a trace of easily-corrected chromatic noise; the lighting is far from astounding, but neither is it terrible... and that's it. The rest is all good news for the project. Really, the whole of the downside here is the use of a small light source, which gave hard highlights on glossy surfaces and challenged the camera sensor in the shadows. No professional would make that mistake, but neither would they shoot it with a Coolpix compact! Evoking notions of "perfection" here is totally inappropriate. Why should the BG be white? This was shot on a marble worktop AFAICS, not white paper. There isn't even an agreed set of standards for tabletop shots to measure "perfection" against. C'mon, we seriously need to encourage this sort of work, not invent impossible criteria for it. --mikaultalk 08:39, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No I think it's pretty fair really - I think the lighting really is quite unacceptable for a studio shot of a non animated and relatively common subject. Yes it is good news for the project, it's a nice contribution but that doesn't make it an FP. And yes no professional would make that mistake, however having a poor camera has never been an excuse/reason for leniency on FPC. I don't think such criteria is impossible, I mean we don't need to be perfect, but we can at least be very good. And considering the demands on other product shots (and yes that is a reference to some I've put up) I think those demands are community standards. The background could be that grey colour, but it really just looks snapshotish and a poor attempt at a product shot IMO. --Fir0002 11:32, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I see where you're coming from re standards. On the other hand, in practice, outright good illustration and high encyclopedic value often mean people forgive minor tech criteria shortfalls, which is as it should be. For such a technically demanding field, leaning too heavily on technical criteria means there's a danger of restricting tabletop FPs to the well-equipped "serious" photographer and (benevolent) professional, which means we either have very few such shots or those we have won't have been shot by wikipedians. If we consistently honour our own for this sort of effort, we encourage better standards of illustration, basically. But I do understand your grievance. Go on, change to support.. ;o) --mikaultalk 19:02, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I must agree with Fir - I bet if Rainer Zenz was a frequent nominator on FPC this would have been shot down in flames, rather than receiving almost universal rapturous support. I also agree with Mick regarding encouraging useful encyclopaedic shots by Wikipedians. But how can we can justify, or condone, this double standard? --jjron (talk) 07:56, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure the ID of the nominator is of any consequence, quite honestly. Sure, standards here are fluid, to say the least; as a whole, FPC criteria are generalised and interchangeable, correlating with the unique, specialised nature of the nominations. Most of the time, I think it's love or hate (or indifference) at first sight, and then people look for criteria which might support their initial reaction. As with this nom, if they like an idea or see something compelling, and they find few reasons to oppose, it'll get support. These aren't stock library submissions; we aren't a panel of objective judges. I can understand "serious" contributors not liking the fickle nature of this, but this is the way WP readers are. Visual literacy is not dependent on technical awareness. FPC comments are like a preview of reactions to main page images, which is why it's a good system, IMO. --mikaultalk 08:57, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think that is only true to a certain degree. FPC reviewers shouldn't be some kind of vox pop but rather they should be the more photographically discerning members of the community who can judge whether a photo is the best that wiki has to offer in comparison with all the other photos they see. That is of course why we have a recognised list of criteria with which to judge photos. What you say about a love/hate reaction and then finding reasons to back that up rather than a judging panel may be true but that is a bad thing and shouldn't be accepted with resignation as the norm. Otherwise the FP label becomes fairly meaningless. Quality images can only be identified from the rest when a standard is applied to all nominated images - and that is the way it should be on FPC. --Fir0002 10:07, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I must agree with Mick on this one - FP discussions are based on that first impression, and then backed up with the reasons - I don't actually believe that's a bad thing, as, factually, the true value these pictures have are as illustrations of articles. When you're reading an article, are you gonna stop and look at every single detail on the image? No, it's one look and you either love the image and want to read the article or not. Of course, FP isn't all about this - people here are considerably more demanding on a technical level then a first impression, which is good as it removes quite a bit of the subjectivity of the process, ensuring that the selected pictures will, most likely, universally be seen by our readers as something that lures them into the article. But we can't raise the bar indefinitely (in technical terms), which would be the consequence of the comparative system you speak of Fir, since, as you compare the pictures, you always want more and better. A thrive for perfection, of sorts, which would only limit the scope of FP's, until we have only pro pics as FP's. This leads me to wonder what the true purpose of this process is - is it merely to identify very good images? Or is it to encourage people to attain such images , benefiting the encyclopedia, and being rewarded (with merit) for it? I believe it is the latter, and as such, we can't risk raising the technical bar above what is reasonable, in terms of cost of material and experience, as that would shy away many people from going that extra mile for a great picture, as it seems to far out of reach. I realize that it's tempting - seeing those minor flaws and wanting to shoot them out of the sky, but the consequences are too serious for us to give in to that, as doing so could compromise the whole point of this discussion. --Mad Tinman T C 19:22, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly agree with mikaul and Mad Tinman. I believe that the technical bar is already too high and the reviewing process too unfriendly for most creators. Sometimes I fell that WP:FPC reviewers are too busy to listen to themselves (or to promote their own creations, hélàs) to give a damm about what should be the main goal of this place: to atract new talents, and stimulate the old ones, thus improving the overall quality of article illustrations. "Shy away" is really a soft euphemism for what's going on here, as many creators (including myself) don't feel much incentive in coming here. Pushing the "stereo set" metaphor to caricatural limits doens't real distract from its intrinsic truth. WP:FPC runs the risk of becoming a quite sad and lonely place. -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 21:44, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
All these comments are all well and good, and I agree with much of what's been said, but I don't think anyone's addressed my point about double standards, or really Fir's initial point either. To put it plainly, if Fir0002 (as one of a few possible examples) had created and nominated this I have no doubt the technical faults would have been jumped on and opposed, at least by a few voters, if not universally. I have seen many times opposes with reasons like "...I expect better from Fir...", which seems to be clearly basing the vote on the photographer. Honestly, I look through some of the names down for support here, often glowingly, and consider the minuscule nitpicks they make on other photos...well, it makes you wonder. But maybe it is all no more than "first sight" impressions (having said which, my first impression here was that this wouldn't pass, so I must say I too was quite surprised when I saw all the supports). --jjron (talk) 08:01, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak weak support. The only problem I really agree with Fir on is the blown out spots. I don't think the whites matter in the least... but maybe you could have bought a new spoon to make sure we didn't see any scratches on them :) But, I question encyclopediocity. It's useful, yeah... but, I'm not 100% convinced that it couldn't be done better with some clever table work and the 6 separate images. gren グレン 12:39, 24 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Delicious picture! Also, it is difficult to be more enc than this. Some "pixel counting type" of reviewing is like people who enjoy playing with the buttons and dials of their stereo sets rather than listening music from it -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 20:55, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well actually if you're going to take that allegory with the sound system the type of attitude you seem to be encouraging is the "I don't care if the music is distorted and off key as long as it makes a noise" --Fir0002 10:07, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • Hmm, I think that's pushing it too far, as you're essentially saying "any and every photo is a FP". What Alvesgaspar is saying is that he doesn't care whether the music is distorted, as long as it's good enough for him to like and is music, --Mad Tinman T C 23:29, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I've uploaded an edit (main improvement is noise reduction) so that if this image must be promoted to FP it can at least come close to the quality I'd expect from a product shot. (Note I Oppose Edit 1 as well as the original) --Fir0002 10:07, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted Image:Senf-Variationen edit.jpg MER-C 02:56, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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