Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Moonrise over Nationalpark Müritz.jpg

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File:Moonrise over Nationalpark Müritz.jpg, not featured[edit]

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes.Voting period ends on 22 May 2014 at 19:52:33 (UTC)
Visit the nomination page to add or modify image notes.

Moonrise over Nationalpark Müritz
  •  Info The image shows the moon rising over a field adjacent to the Müritz National Park, which is one of the least light polluted areas in Germany, and a likely candidate for a future dark sky park. The image also contains the constellations Orion, Taurus, and Gemini, the planet Jupiter, and a faint meteor. Compared to other "moonrise" photos on the commons, it stands out in that it's the only photo with stars. Photo created by Pmisson - uploaded by Ckyba - nominated by Ckyba -- Ckyba (talk) 19:52, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support -- Ckyba (talk) 19:52, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose The noise on the field is a pity. Beautiful sky, stars, Jupiter, capture nonetheless. I'm still waiting for the day I will see this kind of night sky. :/ --Graphium 10:02, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Amazing image. The sharpness and noise problems are forgiveable due to mitigating factors (astrophotography). --King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:48, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment I just wanted to expand on why it is so difficult to take such a shot. First timewise. You need a perfectly clear night, and the moon can't rise during twilight. You only have about 1-2 minutes to take such shots before the moon is no longer on the horizon, and each shot is a 30 second exposure. You can't use a longer exposure to cut down on noise, or the stars won't appear as points (they already have small trails). And if an airplane happens to fly by, or if car or tractor headlights shine on the background, your chance is burned. Second, spatial. MeckPomm is actually one of the only places in Europe where such a shot is even possible, due to the lack of light pollution. The moon rises in a different place each night, making preparing composition challenging. And the site is (necessarily) ~100 km away from the nearest city. As a final point, this is a subject that used to be as universal as sunrises, but is no longer something that regular people experience: there are 180 monrise photos in the commons, but this is the only one that features stars. Ckyba (talk) 20:19, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Weak support considering the difficulties, I'm going to "forgive" the noise. I really do love this sky, complete with moon, Jupiter and lots of stars. @Ckyba: I assume Jupiter is the biggest white dot in Gemini? --Graphium 02:26, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment @Ckyba do you mind tagging those constellations and planets in the image description? I'm not used to this kind of starry skies, so I can't find Orion's bow, or the three stars in a row. --Graphium 02:28, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment @Graphium Yes, Jupiter is the big white dot. An annotated version is here. Ckyba (talk) 06:01, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support With this explanation, it is easier to understand the value of this image, and the technical difficulties to make it. Yann (talk) 12:37, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Jee 03:15, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support after some consideration - per Yann. Pixelpeeping really doesn't help here. --Martin Falbisoner (talk) 05:24, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support --El Grafo (talk) 11:43, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Weak support As I see from meta data, some kind of compact camera has been used for this image, which is probably not the best choice. So there are some technical problems (noise, stars are not perfect points due to long exposure time). Nevertheless, the photographer has done a good job, and the image is impressive. --Uoaei1 (talk) 07:51, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose -- Image quality is poor and difficulty should not be, in my opinion, a criterium for promotion. Is it possible to do better with this subject? Yes, I believe so. Alvesgaspar (talk) 14:48, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose per Alvesgaspar. — Julian H.✈ (talk/files) 09:43, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose the quality is far from an FP-image. --Alchemist-hp (talk) 21:35, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment I am not sure that the "noise" in the sky is actually noise - it's probably stars. The instructions emphasize the value of an image, and say that "A bad picture of a very difficult subject is a better picture than a good picture of an ordinary subject" and that "Given sufficient “wow factor” and mitigating circumstances, a featured picture is permitted to fall short on technical quality." This is a very unusual photo (1 of 180 in its category i.e. top 1st percentile) of a universal theme. If someone eventually takes a better photo, then certainly replace this with the new one. But based on the difficulty and the rarity of such photos in the commons, it's unlikely to happen anytime soon.Ckyba (talk) 22:55, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose excellent subject for a photo but there is far too much noise. Take this same photo with a better camera and I will likely support. --Pine✉ 06:49, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment You sure that could be done the same picture with another camera? Why there are so few moorises with stars at google images? Example Here you have a time lampse with the same LX7 and a Nikon D3. Except for the fisheye pictures, the panoramas look the same. I have a Nikon D3, but for some images is more usefull my LX7. I have it with me always and luminosity of your goal is f/1.4. It's almost impossible to have brighter lens.----Pmisson (talk) 10:18, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Strong support - About perfect. I'm so glad I can witness these nightskies regularily, as I live in the Müritz region. Cheers, Horst-schlaemma (talk) 11:57, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose Per Alvesgaspar and Pine, and welcome to Horst-schlaemma....--Jebulon (talk) 21:10, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Too few images of moonrises with stars. Good composition. Pmisson (talk) 23:57, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment Ckyba asked me on my talk page if I'm sure what I'm seeing is noise and not stars. Yes I'm sure. Look at file:NGC_6528_hst_11664_51_R814G555B390_9453_62_R814G606B.png and compare the sky to this photo. The background black looks solid. Here in file:Moonrise_over_Nationalpark_Müritz.jpg the background is not solid anything. Also notice the noise if you look at the ground in this nomination. As I said before, I think this same photo taken with a better camera would have my support. --Pine✉ 06:43, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment Thanks for taking a look Pine. I don't think your comparison is the correct one to use in this case. That image has an extraordinarily narrow field of view, and was taken from space itself by the Hubble Space Telescope! A better comparison would be to this image. The noise and star motion are very similar (the sky is darker in the ESO image because the moon is not lighting the sky), and the speckling in the foreground objects is actually worse. But that image was taken using 37 individual frames taken over a total of 30 minutes. It's not possible to do that during a moonrise, because you have at the very most 2 minutes to capture the scene. That image actually includes a moonrise (I didn't see it at first), and if you look at the noise near the moon it is very similar. But since the sky is so dark, the rest of the 37 frames were presumably taken before the moon rose. I would ask Pine, Alvesgaspar, Julian_Herzog, Alchemist-hp, and Jebulon to also please consider this image, which was picture of the year in 2010 and has noise in both the sky and the foreground objects (particularly near the horizon, even more in the foreground). Finally, regarding the camera, it's true it's not a full frame DSLR, but it's not some crummy pocket camera either. It's a recent model high end point and shoot with a f1.4 lens that pmisson specifically bought for the flexibility of taking such astrophotos when serendipity provides the chance for a shot like this.Ckyba (talk) 09:29, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think you make a few good points and I therefore want to specify exactly why I think the quality is not good enough for FP status here. The important thing in this is not noise, it's the signal to noise ratio. I think the best comparison photo among the ones you showed is the one with the laser in it. It has a very significant amount of noise, but that's because none of the noise was removed. It was left in there because our brains are very good at seeing the information behind the noise and all the information is preserved that way. The stars are sharp and the contrast is good. There is also a very intersting foreground object that actually makes this photo interesting, but that's a different story. In the photo that we vote on here, there is noise despite the fact that a lot of noise reduction has happened to the photo, smearing all minor details and higher magnitude stars. This is coupled with motion blur of the stars from a long exposure (presumably), which can't really be avoided, but because your foreground is also not sharp, this means that no single object/edge in the whole photo gives the viewer an impression of sharpness and definition. And that's not at 100%, I'm talking about a normal viewing distance of the full photo on my monitor. In this viewing mode, the laser photo seems totally sharp and the noise is hardly noticeable.
      Now I do admit that it is hard to take such a photo without the problems that I mentioned. But I think that FP is not about the best photo that can be achieved relatively easily of a certain subject, it's about great photos, and in the final result, this one doesn't convince me. At this point, the fact that it is hard to do it better doesn't matter. Nevertheless, I think there are ways that would improve a similar shot significantly apart from using a more expensive camera. Those are: 1) A more wide-angle shot. That way, using the same exposure time, the stars and objects are less blurred from the motion of the earth and wind on the leaves. Everything immediately seems sharper. 2) Better editing. I'm quite certain that with the RAW data of the shot you took, at least the definition of the stars could be improved. The foreground is probably impossible to get to a point where it's not extremely noisy or very blurred. A way to fix this would be to take several shots and stack them together and just use this for the foreground and not for the stars. Stacking is amazing for reducing noise on non-moving objects, and it can be done for parts of an image. 3) Composition. This image, to me, lacks any defined setup of the general order of things on the canvas. The moon is almost but not in the center, the tree is somewhat in the foreground but not really enought that it acts as a counterbalance to the moon. Placing the moon according to the golden ratio, a tree/bush/house/object in the opposite spot with significant presence and using an angle wide enought that the transition of the sky horizontally is more visible would make this a much better shot to me.
      Now I have to say that I haven't done any of this, and similar efforts didn't turn out quite as well as I had hoped, and for everything that I say, someone probably has the opposite opinion. But that's why I opposed this image. I hope you take it as an encouragement and as constructive feedback, I tried to be as objective and helpful as I could. — Julian H.✈ (talk/files) 10:19, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • Thank you for your detailed explanation Julian H.. I happen to agree with you on many of the points, particularly regarding the composition (it was done that way to keep Orion in the frame). I don't deny that a better photo is possible, I just think that this photo is very valuable, given that it's a universal (but extremely difficult to capture) subject. So I would agree that if someone someday gets a better photo, this one should be de-listed. But the description on the featured picture page seems to indicate that value is more important than technical quality, and the image guidelines say that Given sufficient “wow factor” and mitigating circumstances, a featured picture is permitted to fall short on technical quality. Of course, "value" and "wow" are obviously debatable: my main point is that the picture should be promoted or not based on whether it's valuable and exciting, not based on the amount of noise when blown up. If you look back at the votes for the laser image, it barely scraped by after very similar objections were raised, and then ended up becoming image of the year. FWIW, I don't notice the noise on my retina display at full size, and it also looks great on a printed version I got by chance today (the cover of a formal invitation to an event in MeckPomm, near where the photo was taken). Thanks again for taking the time to write such a detailed comment.Ckyba (talk) 12:03, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose Nice idea but too much noise. --P e z i (talk) 19:07, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ckyba the example that I used was one that was linked from the page you linked to me on my talk page. (: For what it's worth, I've looked around for information about the best cameras for night photography and it seems that even the best full frame cameras have a bit of noise unless the images are downsampled, and I think the counterexamples that you gave in your response are good to point out. Would it be possible for you to take the same photograph with multiple shots and then downsample the stitched image? I bet you could get a very good quality image that way. --Pine✉ 06:27, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hi Pine - I was trying to point out that since the sky is full of stars, it's inherently "noisy" no matter what you do. Regarding taking the photo again: as said above, there are very few locations in all of Europe where such images are possible; this site is about a two hour drive from my home in Berlin. (This slide shows roughly where the photo was taken, along with the modeled skyglow of Europe.) To avoid too much moonlight, the phase needs to be near new moon, so there are only a few nights per year for which the moonrise time is late enough that such a shot is possible (summer is out because we're too far North). It has to be perfectly clear (about 1/3 of all days in our region), and if a farmer is working at night or an airplane drives by the shot could be ruined. Multiple shots would be difficult, because the stars move fastest near the ecliptic, but I suppose a talented astrophotographer (not me, I didn't even take the photo) could possibly do something like that. Ckyba (talk) 07:48, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have read the debate here and was conflicted about whether to support or oppose. Some of the arguments for support sounded compelling particularly from a European perspective. However, here in Canada, and many other places of the world, finding a spot to take a shot like this would be little more than walking out the back door of one’s house. Even if in a Canadian city, it isn’t a big deal to drive for a few minutes to access completely black skies filled with so many stars that you can actually see the Milky Way with the naked eye. Then I had to consider the fact that while the combination of the moonrise and the star field had some visual impact I also recognised that this is not an image anyone would ever see. It looks more like a sunrise in some respects. It is a bit like those long-exposure shots of waterfalls, which I shoot myself frequently and have had featured. They are pretty but how much do they deviate from reality? I saw these on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/xclearmindx/8980598548/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/davetoussaint/8445481293/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/fortphoto/7802210432/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/22982057@N03/12201527484/ Which is the finest or is either any good? Still conflicted and remaining neutral on this one. Saffron Blaze (talk) 14:34, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Confirmed results:
Result: 9 support, 6 oppose, 0 neutral → not featured. /A.Savin 20:52, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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