Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:City Hall, London, Spiral Staircase - 1.jpg

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
Jump to navigation Jump to search

File:City Hall, London, Spiral Staircase - 1.jpg, featured[edit]

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes.Voting period ends on 8 Apr 2016 at 22:03:05 (UTC)
Visit the nomination page to add or modify image notes.

Spiral Staircase, City Hall, London
If you hold down Alt while dragging the noise or sharpening sliders in Lightroom, it shows a B&W version of your photo. It does this because B&W can sometimes help you see what you need to see and not be distracted by what you don't. There are of course more times when colour is wonderful and necessary. The original colour version doesn't suffer from any chromatic issues due to lens or processing. I'm not trying to hide any flaws; it just doesn't have the same pop. The staircase, from below, is grey and white. What colour there is, takes the eye away from the spiral, and isn't IMO adding anything. Compare this photo on Britannica or this photo in The Guardian. My photo was taken with my Samyang 8mm lens, which gives a much wider view that most people have managed of this scene (e.g. this similar image on Flickr). -- Colin (talk) 07:44, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your answer and now I want ask you something. Reviewing your picture again, i can see a hard noise in shadow in comparison with this one and I thought that it was stairs texture, however, it is not and you can see a better picture quality on that photo, however, your composition is better IMHO. --The Photographer (talk) 11:27, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Otto Berkeley (the photographer of the Flickr photo we refer to) makes some great photos and is worth following on Flickr. He didn't describe his processing for that shot but many other images explain that he often takes several exposures (up to seven) and blends them with luminosity masks in Photoshop. That's not a technique I'm familiar with but he gets great results. When I've used PtGui to create HDR from multiple-exposures, it is great at eliminating noise. So I suspect that he is benefiting from the exposure blending, his full-frame D800, darker shadows, and perhaps more noise-reduction. I'll have another look tonight to see if I can increase the NR or do so selectively. Otto took a great photo looking down which is a hand-blend of five exposures. Looking down, there is more colour with the green glass barrier following he stairs. I'll upload some more photos later, but I think this one is my best. -- Colin (talk) 12:01, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks again. Nice explain. In this moment I am trying do the same (multiple-exposures), however, i need a external shooter. --The Photographer (talk) 13:46, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've uploaded a new version with sharpening mask and selective noise-reduction which results in a clearer file. -- Colin (talk) 17:28, 2 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Nice job, however, when I mentioned "selective noise shadow reduction" I was talking about a manual process. Spiral bottom has a texture of small diagonal stripes (see note) and in the way you rise the spiral, you lose details and more noise apears (noise that could be denoised) --The Photographer (talk) 01:17, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure I understand your comment. There is some moire on some of the segments of the spiral, causing some stripes or whorls. I've just uploaded a new version that uses Lightroom's moire-reduction-tool to remove it from one segment but strangely the tool made the moire worse on another segment so I could only fix one. The "diagonal stripes" might simply be how the dot-pattern on the spiral gets rendered on my sensor as the dots become so small as to be similar size to pixels. I think I've fiddled enough already at the pixel level. -- Colin (talk) 12:05, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Please, apply denoise only in the third staircase up, because the first two have a lower texture detail at the bottom. --The Photographer (talk) 19:28, 4 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Confirmed results:
Result: 22 support, 0 oppose, 0 neutral → featured. /George Chernilevsky talk 05:24, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This image will be added to the FP gallery: Places/Architecture
Retrieved from "https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Featured_picture_candidates/File:City_Hall,_London,_Spiral_Staircase_-_1.jpg&oldid=192259449"