Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Brandenburg St-Katharinenkirche 19 (MK).jpg

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Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes.Voting period ends on 18 Sep 2014 at 15:26:35 (UTC)
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Interior of the Katharinenkirche
  •  Info Yeah... a church interior! Bored of? I hope not! ;-)
I think it is pretty obvious who was my ideal when I was shooting this one?! :-) My last visit in this church is a while ago and the actual high-res-multi-exposure-church-interior pictures presented by Diliff and DXR where so inspiring that I want to try it for my own in this church again. This nominated result is the most ambitious picture I've made so far. It is merged of 135 single pictures and for those who like, here is the full res ~344mpx version. But instead of the big one I want to nominate this downsampled version because I think it is the best compromise between resolution, size (compression) and quality.
I'm aware that (sadly) the nominated picture isn`t perfect and there are some minor stitching errors which, thats what I think, dont distract that much from the overall view. But thats just my opinion. Also the brightest lights in the windows where not exposed perfect because of shooting "just" 3 exposures with +/-2.0EV... That's too little I've learned! ;-) So far from me, now I´m very curious what you think about this try of mine. c/u/n by me, --mathias K 15:26, 9 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Youre right about the composition thing and the crop at the ceiling. Sadly there isn`t any more room way to the top (still not enough pictures ;-) ?!). At the bottom my intention was to give the left column a little more room to the bottom. I´ve already tried a crop like your sugestion and with the cut on column it feld like the picture was too compresed horizontaly then. Anyway, thanks for your review! --mathias K 17:20, 9 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support... but... with only 3 exposures at +-2EV, as you say there isn't enough dynamic range. I usually do 5 images with +-9EV. ;-) I didn't see any stitching errors on my first look, so probably they're not that bad. Also, why the angle and the cylindrical/Panini projection and not rectilinear? Maybe the angle of view is too high. I do think Church interiors look better when taken from the middle of the interior so that the symmetry is expressed. Diliff (talk) 21:31, 9 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks! My first intension was to take this picture from the middle of the interior, but than I realized that the candelabra would be right in front of the organ. Thats why I choose this point of view. --mathias K 21:50, 9 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's a good enough reason, and I guess I would have done the same actually to avoid the candelabra. But I would have chosen a camera position much closer to the seating so that it didn't feel so distant to the viewer. I try to fill the frame with what is interesting, and a lot of foreground empty floor space is not so interesting (but I admit, some of my images such as this recent nomination have the same issue). I don't think anything is really gained from being as far back as you were. I think an ideal camera position might have been close to where the flowers are on the left side. And I still think rectilinear would have been better. :-) Diliff (talk) 20:51, 10 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hi Diliff, thanks a lot for the tips! My intention when shooting this one was to capture as much as possible visible from my viewpoint. But I think youre may be right that a) this isn`t the best viewpoint and b) I didn`t have to show that much of the interior. Sometimes less is better... ;-)
To the projection: during the processing in PTGui I thought that rectilinear may look a bit awkward cause of some visible streting at the corners. But now I think when I cut out the stretched areas it could look a bit like youre "sugestion", closer to the chairs, less column and it would look more focused on the interesting things. I will give it a try! So thanks again, mathias K 14:07, 11 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

* Oppose Thank you for this nice image, and of course no, I'm personaly not bored with church interiors. I notice that some supporters here support..."but". All these "but" make me oppose, for instance :I don't think anything is really gained from being as far back as you were. I think an ideal camera position might have been close to where the flowers are on the left side. And I still think rectilinear would have been better by Diliff are for me two good reasons for oppose, and I share the opinion. The left bricks are too much IMO, and the "curved" threshold disturbs me. The overall sharpness is not so good as I expected in thumbnail view. The light of the window is not very well managed (lack of detail: one can see the little window panes below, but not above). I like the original composition though. Sorry for this vote, I feel a bit embarassed with it, because I know pretty well that I'm not able to take the same kind of shots...--Jebulon (talk) 10:02, 11 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hate to raise this point again, but I really hope sharpness was not a major factor in your decision, because it is excellent at 30MP or so, still much more than most of the uploads here. I guess " I think we should not consider Diliff's work as the 'church interiors bar' " will be pretty tough to handle in practice. --DXR (talk) 10:32, 11 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Jeb, you don`t need to apologize for your vote! It is well founded and I can understand your points. OK, per DXR I hope the sharpness issue isn`t that big. But anyway your vote is OK for me and I think every founded review is helpful. So thank you. ;-) --mathias K 14:07, 11 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think that you and DXR are right that the sharpness should not be a factor in opposing because it is clearly very high resolution and we should not be encouraging downsampling as the only way to impress here at FPC. But Jeb's compositional criticisms are fair and are valid reasons to oppose IMO. As per my comments, I too think the image could be improved with my suggestions but I guess unlike Jeb, I thnk it is still 'good enough'. Diliff (talk) 14:19, 11 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(Sorry for bad english) How do I "judge" a picture ? I just open it by clicking on the thumbnail until the full size proposed, and see what is given to me ! And I'm sorry, what I see in this case is (for my taste), not as sharp as it could/should be. About "encouraging downsampling": Don't worry, those who think that downsampling gives a better result will continue to do so, and my oppose vote here will not change anything. Alas. But why uploading very high resolution pictures if they are not sharp enough ? I think it is an interesting question about the final/ultimate purpose of our work here... Must we absolutely chose between 'sharp' and 'big' ? And at the end, I'm not sure that the 'good enough ' concept is compatible with the FP (the best of the best) concept. Thanks for this interesting discution.--Jebulon (talk) 16:23, 11 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Just to make sure, of course I do not want to tell you how to vote, you know that very well and I agree that the compo here is a matter of taste. But I think that the way you review sharpness does indeed encourage downsampling. I completely understand this when we talk about 10 or 15 MP, but here your criticism becomes more "it's an inefficient way to use commons" than "the image is not sharp", and I do not think that should be held against the image. The decision how to size a panorama is much harder than a normal image, imo and we do have to make some trade-off between size and sharpness. --DXR (talk) 17:11, 11 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with you, it does encourage downsampling because with reviews like Jebulon's, it would be much easier to downsample it and have a sharp 30 megapixel image and then nobody could complain about the sharpness. And probably nobody would ever know that it was downsampled either, they would simply be impressed by the sharpness and detail. I downsample my images too, but I am careful not to downsample so much that I lose real detail. I don't do it to impress voters on FPC, I mainly do it because it's easier to manage the files, and because the edges of my images are less sharp than the centre due to the wide angle of view (edges will always be softer for this reason) and because f/13 is a bit softer than lets say f/5.6 or f/8. Even though I usually downsample a bit, I wouldn't usually encourage others to do it because it's easy to go too far and lose detail and because it shouldn't be necessary to win votes. Voters should consider whether it is sufficiently detailed for the subject, not what the sharpness is at 100%. That of course doesn't mean we can't consider and discuss the softness at 100% and whether the right settings or equipment were used, but it shouldn't be a major reason for a vote by itself. In fact, if I didn't downsample my images, Jebulon may oppose my images too as they probably begin life about as soft as this one. :-) I use one of the sharpest prime lenses in existence so it isn't a question of using a good lens, it's just that a typical f/13 image is not very sharp to begin with, and then when you distort the edges with reclinear projection, it will never be as sharp as any of us would like. Diliff (talk) 20:05, 11 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
OK. I understand what you write. Again, this picture, as it is, is not sharp enough to me. Opening a picture at full size is a bad way to review ? I'm afraid we disagree here about sharpness, risks of downsampling, and evaluation. Let's continue to live together, peacefully, with that. Please notice that I opposed for other reasons too, and consider that I agree with the fact that downsampling is a bad thing. --Jebulon (talk) 23:05, 11 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm happy to live together peacefully. I don't want to prolong the discussion too much but just one last set of questions for you to answer so I can understand why you disagree (and also maybe to make you think about why you disagree too)... This image is about 85 megapixels, right? If it was downsampled to 40 megapixels and was sharp (ignore the other compositional issues that we discussed), would you support it then? And if the answer is yes, then why would you support it and not the less sharp 85 megapixel image? The detail is the same (maybe even a bit more detail in the 85 megapixel image), so why is it so important to evaluate it at 100%? Of course we all do it, because it is the highest level of zoom possible before the image pixels begin to become larger than the screen's pixels and it is what our image viewer/browser defaults to. But really, 100% is an arbitrary zoom level. We use it to see 'what the image is made of', but it isn't necessarily the best zoom level to appreciate the image or its real sharpness. Compare this to how we would evaluate the detail of a large billboard poster on a street. A poster usually has much more detail than a 6x4 photo but at a close viewing distance (the equivalent of viewing images at 100%) the 6x4 photo is surely going to look sharper. We might look at a 6x4 photo from a few cm away but we would never normally look at the poster at this distance, so why should we do the same for this image which is the digital equivalent of a poster? What I'm saying is that yes you can review images at 100% if you want, but you should not look only how it appears on the screen at 100%, you should look at how the sharpness relates to the resolution and view it at a zoom level that is appropriate. Only then can the connection between sharpness and low resolution (or softness and high resolution) be broken. Diliff (talk) 07:36, 12 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose First: I appreciate the effort, which has gone into the capture and processing of this image! It is tedious work, and I guess several hours must have been used on it (it would for me). However, I do not like the composition that much, and I can echo the aspects regarding this by Jebulon. Also, the exposure control, while good is a bit lacking at the windows (if the compo had been great, this aspect alone would not have lead me to oppose).
Regarding sharpness and resolution, I find it is more than adequate considering the huge pixelage. I find it is a recurring flaw in reviewing images to open them at 100% and think they should be razor-sharp without at the same time considering their resoltion. Sure, if you nominated a 4 Mpixel image it should, as it is the total amount of information in the image, which counts, but the best balance between resolution and information is best achieved by retaining a little pixel softness. I find that this balance is just perfect in the nomnated photo. You can always downsample, the reverse you cannot do. And if you want to print in large scale, it will always be optimal to have the full pixelage to avoid visible pixelation. Say, for instance, if this image was printed as a 50' image (along the diagonal), in approximately 80×100 cm format, the width of the individual pixels would be less than 0.1 mm or 260 PPI. This is way smaller than what you can resolve by eye at a typical viewing distance of 50 inch display. (At least I do not watch television as at viewing distance of 15 cm). --Slaunger (talk) 09:23, 13 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
One last thing. I do not agree with Jebulon on weather the "sharp at 100% review philosophy" leads people who would not otherwise downsample to downsample. In my 20 Mpixel Alhambra nomination, which all reviewers appear to fancy, I can honestly say that I have downsampled the final stitch more than needed and more than what would be optimal for large scale printing simply to avoid the silly pixel peeping at 100% comments. I have as such pixel-prostituted myself. Shame on me!--Slaunger (talk) 09:33, 13 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
 Neutral The new crop works better for me, although it still lacks some wow for me. Changing to neutral. -- Slaunger (talk) 15:05, 13 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

 Info @ all: Kadellar,Diliff,Martin Falbisoner,Uoaei1,Christian Ferrer,DXR,Jebulon,Slaunger: I´ve uploaded a complete rework of this pictured where I try to get the composition a bit more pleasant and tried the rectilinear projection. And what should I say... I think Diliff was right! :-) So please have a look If you still like it or maybe even like it more. ;-) Thanks @ all! --mathias K 12:38, 13 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • I like it more, but of course I already supported so it doesn't change my vote. ;-) I did spot a few little stitching errors when reviewing this image, but very insignificant. Did you use a panoramic head or just a regular tripod head? Well done anyway. Diliff (talk) 13:55, 13 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hi David, thanks again. This one was taken with a selfmade pano-head. I've builded me one a couple of years ago but used it not very often. It is not comparable to a "real" one but it works pretty well so far. I will make a pic and show it... --mathias K 18:15, 13 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Confirmed results:
Result: 9 support, 0 oppose, 2 neutral → featured. /Jee 03:10, 19 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This image will be added to the FP gallery: Places/Interiors
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