Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Tristan und Isolde

Tristan und Isolde (original production)

Original - Richard Wagner is one of the defining composers of opera, and his Tristan und Isolde was one of the most influential on the genre. Here we see husband and wife Ludwig and Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld, the creators of the title roles, in costume and on set, though, given the demands of early photography, most likely not in an actual performance. The opera was extremely difficult on its leads - it had to be delayed when Malvina temporarily lost her voice, and Ludwig died three weeks after the fourth performance. Nonetheless, it remains a cornerstone of the operatic repetoire.

Edit 1 - Attempts to repair some of the artefacting with levels adjustment and lots and lots of careful, selective blurs.

Reason

One of those "I can't believe this exists" sort of images - who'd have guessed that a photo of the original production of Tristan und Isolde was floating around? There's some degredation, but it is nearly a century-and-a-half since the photo was taken. In short, a surprising and wonderful find that I really think deserves recognition.

Articles this image appears in

Tristan und Isolde

Creator

Joseph Albert

• Support as nominator Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 22:54, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
• Support. Good picture. Quality is good for a daguerreotype. scetoaux ^{(talk) (My contributions.)} 23:27, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
• Support Great photo given the background and age. -- Grandpafootsoldier (talk) 02:02, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
• Comment- given the size and the heavy artifacting, should we try for some downsampling? --Malachirality (talk) 08:07, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
  • As I see it, there isn't much artefacting on the people themselves, and the main effect that the degredation had on them seems to be to cause the highlights to get overblown a bit, losing detail on exposed skin. Downsampling doesn't help with that, and since things like the beard and her hair still manage to retain plenty of detail, I think downsampling would hurt the picture, without fixing anything really worth fixing. Levels adjustment might have good effects, if done carefully so as not to lose detail in the black areas while bringing out whatever detail is salvagable from the lighter ones. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 09:16, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
    • Ah, trying darkening brings out the JPEG artefacts, and shows me what you meant. Still, it's highly unlikely we'll get anything better than this. Maybe we could ask Durova for help? I believe she does a lot of restoration. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 11:55, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
• Support. Also remarkable poses. --Brand спойт 09:07, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
• Comment I've uploaded an edit - be harsh, the picture's more important than my amateur editing skills =) Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 03:32, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
  • N.B. Accidentally relinked the original -oops! Fixed now. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 04:36, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the levels adjustment is probably an improvement, but the blurring to get rid of the white line is not an improvement. This is usually done with cloning, and I certainly don't know how to do it. - Enuja (talk) 22:42, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I used cut and paste to fix the white line - the blurring was to fix the JPEG artefacting. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 05:26, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Promoted Image:Joseph Albert - Ludwig und Malwine Schnorr von Carolsfeld - Tristan und Isolde, 1865e.jpg MER-C 06:57, 22 March 2008 (UTC)