Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/University of Sydney Quadrangle

The University of Sydney Quadrangle

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 27 Apr 2011 at 05:59:43 (UTC)

Original - The Main Quadrangle at the University of Sydney

Edit 1 - Shadows lifted 20% and highlights lowered 8%

Reason: This is the oldest and most prominent building of the University of Sydney. The jacaranda tree in the corner of the quadrangle (a very important tree to the community) is in full bloom - associated with examination season. Thus I think this has crucial EV in the article about the university. The photograph meets all the technical criteria, at high resolution, and I think it is a pleasing overall composition. Some cylindrical distortion is obviously neccessary to represent the inside of a quadrangle, but here it serves to enhance the prominence of the bell tower, so I think it's good in a way. Also, I got lucky with fantastic cloud patterns.
Articles in which this image appears: University of Sydney
FP category for this image: Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Places/Panorama
Creator: 99of9

Support as nominator --99of9 (talk) 05:59, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- George Chernilevsky ^talk 11:26, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support Beautiful image! I don't foresee any problems with low image resolution.....What camera did you use to take the picture?--Nanoman657 (talk) 16:42, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment Canon EOS 400D with lots of stitching. 99of9 (talk) 21:56, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The perspective can be corrected reasonably easily, can't it? I'm no expert, but I can't see a fundamental reason why a 360 degree shot must be distorted. Also, the sky seems blown on the left. But of course, awesome resolution! Aaadddaaammm (talk) 18:34, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- There is a fundamental reason for the curved horizontal lines. Excluding fisheye lenses, the images you get from a camera normally are a rectilinear projection. This is fine, but such a projection has a practical limit of about 120 degrees field of view. The theoretical maximum is 180 degrees, but the display surface would have to be infinitely wide to display the scene again correctly. The way around it is cylindrical and spherical projections. This is very much not ideal for display on flat computer monitors etc. Cylindrical projections will result in bent horizontal lines. Spherical projections will result in both bent horizontal and bent vertical lines. The way around it is a panorama viewer - or sitting in the right spot w.r.t. a cylindrical display! JJ Harrison (talk) 22:04, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - That said, in many ways I'd prefer a restitch with the right and center parts of the courtyard in a rectilinear projection I think. JJ Harrison (talk) 22:06, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - Perhaps I should have mentioned the EV of the left hand side. At the far left is the vice-chancellor's office, and then the last building in shade is the Great Hall (the most significant room of all). These are annotated on the commons file page - does en-wiki do image annotations too? --99of9 (talk) 23:58, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Regarding blown out clouds, that end of the histogram looks perfect to me - in all three channels. --99of9 (talk) 00:16, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - You can't tell everything from a histogram. You could take blown highlights and then reduce the brightness of the highlights in the image. The histogram would appear to have no blown highlights but your eye would still detect that something wasn't quite right as there would be a light grey patch of the sky without any texture. Here's a good/extreme example (Apologies to Muhammad for using his image to demonstrate ;-) ). I haven't had a good look at your image yet but just wanted to mention that. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 09:46, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - Please go ahead and inspect the clouds. All I've done is blend exposure brackets, and I'm pretty sure all the cloud structure is all there. --99of9 (talk) 11:31, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose heavy shadows at the left, bad quality. --kaʁstn 08:15, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Can you clarify your "bad quality" comment - or are you still talking about the shadow? --99of9 (talk) 11:31, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'm not talking about the shadow, I mean the image quality. I made some image annotations on Commons. I hope then you will understand what I wanted to say. --ka ʁs tn 12:00, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Oppose Original. Lighting isn't great, but I know the difficulties of lighting in a 360. Could benefit from shadow lifting, perhaps. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 09:46, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Support Edit 1. Edit has improved the lighting quite a bit. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 09:40, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose While the photo has technical merit, the heavy horizontal distortion (even if this is unavoidable) greatly limits its EV Nick-D (talk) 12:12, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Regarding the shadow at the left, we have two portions of the building directly opposing each other. Something has to be in shadow unless it's noon which provides horrible lighting for photography. Regarding the clouds, this is hardly avoidable if a >180-degree panorama is to have reasonable exposure throughout. The perspective is acceptable IMO. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 09:01, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support per King.--Mbz1 (talk) 19:05, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support per King and nom. Cowtowner (talk) 02:12, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment For those interested in lifting the shadows, here's an edit, I also the highlights to convince you that the detail is still available in the clouds. 99of9 (talk) 03:12, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Edit 1per King. The shadow lift is misrepresenting and unauthentic. Also makes the leftmost part of the building look a bit grey on the thumbnail.--Nanoman657 (talk) 13:02, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Preference original. per Nanoman657, The edit just doesn't look authentic. Anoldtreeok (talk) 01:15, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - sorry, it's a nice picture but the distortion created by the 360 panorama stitching is very misleading; for a reader, it gives the initial impression that the buildings are round like the Radcliffe Camera or something, which devalues its encyclopedic use. Bob talk 11:41, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Lighting issues and the projection makes it look to strange for me. JJ Harrison (talk) 12:33, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support edit only --♫Greatorangepumpkin♫T 09:17, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This is obviously a great image, but I disagree with the reason given for it’s nomination “The photograph meets all the technical criteria.” I think it falls short of two of them (5 & 8) for the same reason: it creates the false impression that one of the sides of the quad is curved, which it is not. TehGrauniad (talk) 14:42, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- OMG, I lived in a few of those rooms. The pic is horribly distorted. Tony (talk) 15:14, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not Promoted --Makeemlighter (talk) 06:02, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]