Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Mont Blanc from Les Arcs 1950.jpg

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

File:Mont Blanc from Les Arcs 1950.jpg, featured[edit]

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes.Voting period ends on 16 Jan 2019 at 21:12:31 (UTC)
Visit the nomination page to add or modify image notes.

Mont Blanc seen from Les Arcs 1950
  •  Support --Aristeas (talk) 09:59, 9 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose Too violet-blue and not realistic. I don't find the "these are true colors" claim to be honest. The EXIF show the white balance has been adjusted to a custom value in Photoshop to 3750K and +15 tint, which would indeed generate a violet-blue effect. The EXIF also indicates a paint adjustment and a circular gradient adjustment that both have a temperature shift. So this image has been significantly altered by hand. Which is fine if the result is to create something realistic (my Sony camera's auto-white-balance is often a little too blue). As KoH says, white balance is a judgement, though the intention even in the blue hour, is to match what your eyes saw. It is a judgement initially made by the camera, but here it is altered too far into the artistic: this is Commons, not 500px. -- Colin (talk) 12:50, 9 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I feel that the deeper you go into the night, the more you’ll stray from so-called reality. For example the Milky Way is nothing more than a faint cloud of light to the naked eye, but shows up in astrolandscapes as this brilliant formation in the sky - clearly enhanced by brightening the image beyond the capabilities of the human eye. So I contend that this image (or any blue hour image) may very well have appeared this blue to the eyes if only they had a higher “ISO” for color images (our “high ISO” mode is in monochrome, after all, robbing saturation from what should be in the image). —- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 13:25, 9 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Many milky-way photos are a collage of astronomical photo with long exposure (and possibly a tracking mount) with a landscape photo with shortish exposure (and static mount), though there are exceptions. I agree they aren't realistic either but we seem to accept it. Northern lights photos are a bit like that too -- enhanced saturation. Perhaps because few people/voters live somewhere that the atmosphere is clear of light pollution or polar enough, so they assume it is real. But all of us do know what a night landscape sky looks like, and I think you'd need to have to be smoking something illegal to see violet-blue like this. If the clock on the camera is correct, this photo was taken at 17:42, which according to The Photographer's Ephemeris, the sun is at -6.5°, which is bang in the middle of the "Blue Hour" region. So this isn't darkest night and the sky would appear dark blue to the eye. If this has been exposed brighter than what anyone would see, then I also reject it can be called "realistic" -- Colin (talk) 15:31, 9 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Tangent here, but if you have a chance, see the Milky Way from 9,200 feet up Mauna Kea. It's quite brilliant up there on a clear night. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:39, 9 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ikan sounds great. I am informed that the southern hemisphere has a much better milky way than the north. -- Colin (talk) 19:26, 9 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hawaii is still Northern Hemisphere, but it's far enough south that if I remember correctly, the astronomers said all (or at least almost all) of the southern as well as the northern constellations were visible. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:49, 9 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I wouldn't say all but yes, most sounds right. And what makes Hawaii and Southern hemisphere great is that we can see a larger part of the galactic center, which is the brightest (because we're at the edge of galaxy and looking towards its... center :)). Some nice celestial objects like the Magellanic clouds are seen from southern hemisphere only. - Benh (talk) 06:03, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Colin: I find your claim a bit dishonest. Cameras can get wrong. So post adjustment of WB is sometimes, if not always, necessary. I don't know about that picture, but it seems fair to me that there can be a colour cast due to the sky. - Benh (talk) 06:10, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
OK the light street lamps are very white :) u might be right about that picture :) - Benh (talk) 06:17, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Benh, please read again what I wrote (and what I was responding to by the nominator). I agree that without a calibration chart, white balance is just a guess by the camera about the ambient light conditions and modifications to it in post processing might be needed (as I said, my Sony camera is often a little blue). I was specifically responding to the claim that "Believe or not these are true colors....The only improvements are..." which according to the EXIF is simply not true at all: this image has been extensively adjusted. My guess is this was much darker in reality, with a dark blue sky, and as KoH says, lightening it (the +1.7 exposure adjustment along with whatever exposure the camera took) produces an image with brighter saturated colours we don't see -- in combination with the temperature and tint shift applied. -- Colin (talk) 12:36, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • My mistake :) Yes it seems author did deceive reviewers here (Although the picture doesn't look that unnatural to me, but why lying about the post processing). - Benh (talk) 18:35, 11 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment Cameras capture the world very differently to our eyes, and often it's not possible to recreate what eyes (and brain) see even with an expensive camera with all the right settings and calibration processes. Making matters worse photos are around for a long time so we are also used to seeing the world through them as well. I imagine we become used to certain shortcomings and even manipulations. For this image all I can suggest is to manually tone down the extreme color temperatures to bring both the outside and inside closer to neutral, just to relax viewers one time from saturated colors and allow them to appreciate other aspects of the view more. This is why I find B&W images often more relaxing. – LucasT 22:12, 11 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment Thanks all who mentioned that white balance was shifted. --Dmitry A. Mottl (talk) 13:39, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support and it should be made clear that you have now replaced this with an edited version– LucasT 16:16, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support --Yann (talk) 18:16, 13 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Confirmed results:
Result: 12 support, 2 oppose, 0 neutral → featured. /--A.Savin 11:31, 17 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This image will be added to the FP gallery: Places/Natural/France
Retrieved from "https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Featured_picture_candidates/File:Mont_Blanc_from_Les_Arcs_1950.jpg&oldid=335138389"