Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Seven Rila Lakes panorama

Panorama of the Seven Rila Lakes[edit]

Original - Panorama photo of the Seven Rila Lakes in the Rila mountains of Bulgaria

Edit 1 by Diliff - Lightened shadows slightly to show shadow detail better, downsampled (detail simply wasn't there, so downsample is practically non-destructive), and cropped out cloned sky

Edit 2 by Fir0002 - More punch

Reason: This picture is stunning. The area is renowned for its beauty, but it takes a nicely stitched and well-shot panorama to show it all. Well, this one is 9,565 × 2,877 pixels and captures all seven lakes as well as the background and the sky in great colour. None of the illustrated objects is cut off or anything, it's a smooth picture.

Indeed, at max zoom it isn't perfectly sharp, but it can be reduced in size to eliminate that concern completely, and it would still be big enough.

Note: the image on the right is the Wikipedia duplicate of the picture awaiting deletion, the Commons file has a proper description.

Articles this image appears in: lake, glacial lake, Seven Rila Lakes, Bulgaria, Rila
Creator: Anthony Ganev

Support as nominator --Todor →Bozhinov 20:08, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support both Stunning picture, well done. —αἰτίας •discussion• 21:35, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral for now. Granted, it is very high res, but the image quality is fairly poor. It is still a bit soft even if downsampled to half its current size. Another problem is that the sky contains cloned clouds at the very top, and there is a minor stitching error on the land between the first two lakes. I'm not sure why it wasn't just cropped a bit lower as it wouldn't have affected the composition that much. And finally, too much of the image is in shadow (bottom half of the histogram) and just looks a bit dark. The shadows could be lifted a bit. I do like the view/composition but the technical details are slightly lacking. I've uploaded an edit to 'correct' some of the flaws. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 21:40, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose both - Serious quality issues in both versions which I don't believe can be solved: white fringing due to oversharpening and artifacts/pixelation, among others. The edited version smoothed some of the flaws but the colours came out washed out. A shame, because this is a fine composition. -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 23:06, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
~~Conditional weak~~ support for edit 1, provided the washed-out look is fixed (halfway toward original, or so). Magnificent vista anyway, would love a higher quality stitch. --Janke | Talk 08:19, 13 October 2008 (UTC) Changed to full support for edit 1. Edit 2 is too light. --Janke | Talk 19:36, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support original, oppose edits I think the original is fine, and, IMO, the edits do too much. I think that we shouldn't meddle with the contrast subce that's what the landscape looks like when clouds are above. I don't believe that details in the shade are particularly hard to make out. Tokugawapants (talk) 20:58, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Fair enough, but I don't think the shadows are the result of clouds. The shadows are due to taller mountains behind the camera. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 21:27, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support This is why I watch FPC...to see beautiful places beautifully photographed.--HereToHelp ^{(talk to me)} 23:29, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Edit 2 - the most exciting photo on Featured Picture Candidates today. Oscar (talk) 04:25, 14 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Edit 1 - Edit 2 looks too bright to my eyes. Noodle snacks (talk) 06:39, 14 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support edit 1 per Noodle snacks. Matt Deres (talk) 10:50, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

- As nominator I approve both edits, but I think I prefer the milder looks of Edit 1. Todor →Bozhinov 20:56, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Clear support - fantastic composition, great subject, nice detail, interesting foreground on the right, very encyclopaedic - uhh, what more do we want exactly? I don't see obviously cloned clouds ("obviously" being key here), nor glaring purple fringing. My only complaint is I only see six lakes. Prefer edit 1, #2 is over the top for my taste. Stevage 03:08, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Look on the top middle-right of the clouds. A strip of about 10-20 pixels, at a guess, is cloned from directly below. I don't know if it is a stitching error (no stitcher I work with would do that, but I've seen some old nasty ones that could) or a deliberate clone job, but when viewing the image at 100% they are pretty obvious. I agree though that there isn't any purple fringing in the image, not sure where Alves saw that. The white fringing he was referring to is sharpening, which is a bit obvious in the original but not significant in the edits. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 08:31, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yep, I see the cloning now. Kind of confirms my point - it's not easy to see, and it's not offensive. Cloning/ghosting is a standard part of panoramic photo taking (well, unless you have specialised equipment) - the question is whether it's distracting or particularly harsh on the eye. A small strip of clouds in one corner is about as inoffensive as you get. (My guess is a stitching error caused by moving clouds that the creator has softened by using the clone tool...) Stevage 13:06, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree though, I could see it in the thumbnail, and I also disagree that cloning is a standard and necessary part of panoramic photo taking, especially with landscapes where parallax is a non-issue. Only if you have a crappy stitcher, which is something that I wouldn't call specialised equipment. Sometimes, if the sun is ducking in and out from behind the clouds, it can mess significantly with consistent illumination of the scene, but clouds almost never move that fast within the scene itself that the blender cannot cope with, as long as you take each frame within a second or two. Sure, it requires a bit of skill, but nothing out of the ordinary. And as I asid originally, rather than clone the sky, why didn't the author just crop that strip of sky out?? And even if they had to use the clone tool, it could really have been done a lot more skilfully. It just makes no sense to me. Nor does your Britney Spears obsession. ;-) Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 13:35, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

- As for the seventh lake, it's a bit hard to spot at first, as it appears quite small and blends with the stones on the hill a bit. It's to the right, in the bottom right corner of the lower group of lakes, appearing just below the rightmost lake. Todor →Bozhinov 11:15, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ta, I see it now :) Stevage 13:06, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Is there any way to try get in touch with the original creator User:Anthony.ganev to let him voice his opinion as to which version he would prefer? I know I would be mildly upset if this were my photo and an edit I did not approve of became the FP while I was out of the loop. Obviously, this sort of thing can't be possible with every FPC, but since he might be a Wikipedia user... Tokugawapants (talk) 19:34, 18 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've posted a message on the user's talk page, but to be honest I doubt we'll be able to track him: doesn't seem to be an active contributor and probably doesn't check his talk page often if at all :S In my opinion, the promotion shouldn't be stalled because of that, and Edit 1 seems to be the preferred image version. Todor →Bozhinov 17:23, 19 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I know as a fellow photographer that it can be a bit annoying when someone 'improves' your photo but makes it worse (in your opinion), but wikipedia is a communal project and the image has been released under a Creative Commons license which allows that sort of change, so I don't think the author's approval is needed (not to say his opinion wouldn't be considered though). Ultimately if the image is more viewable as a result, then I think it is a good thing. If I were to guess, I'd say the photographer underexposed the image so that the clouds would not be blown. As a result, the foreground was too dark, but unlike blown clouds, shadows can be rescued and that is all I did. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 19:56, 19 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support any with a strong preference for edit 1 and weak preference for edit 2 and the original. Spencer^T♦^C 01:52, 22 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted Image:Rila 7 lakes circus panorama edit1.jpg MER-C 06:52, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Too bad this was already closed. An inacceptable amount of cloning de:Bild:Rila_7_lakes_circus_panorama_edit3.jpg was performed here, reducing its enc value. --Dschwen 12:36, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You're absolutely right, I spotted some of it in the clouds but didn't scour it to the extent needed to find them all (as I said, I could see some of it just from the thumbnail!). Now that I'm looking at it, I can see a couple more areas that weren't circled that have evidence of poor stitching/cloning, too. As I said above, I'm not entirely sure if it was delibrate or just a poor stitcher that caused them. Some areas of the land show classical stitching 'echos' at the seams, but the clouds are a bit more dubious, as whole cloudmasses/formations look like they've been duplicated. Out of principle I would like to see a re-evaluation of this one. I guess we'd have to see the original segment images to know for sure how authentic the scene is. At the very least I think I could do a better job of the stitching. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 12:46, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. Some of those (particularly purple circles 1 and 3, from the left) are pretty annoying, as they distort reality. If you follow purple circle #1 down and left there are more artefacts - a duplicated clearing, then in the immediate foreground (just to the left of the cairn), there are huge chunks of cloning - identical patches of pebbles, clumps of grass etc, like a whole big horizontal strip has been cloned beneath itself. It looks like this image was composed of very few shots (3?), leaving big gaps in the rendered pano which have been "repaired" fairly clumsily. It would be nice to see a better job of stitching. Still not fussed by the clouds - they don't contribute much to the encyclopaedic value anyway. Stevage 21:27, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]