Wikipedia:Picture peer review/Wind Point Lighthouse at Sunrise.jpg

Wind Point Lighthouse at Sunrise

Wind Point Lighthouse and surroundings taken at sunrise in the summer of 2007

I would just like comments on this. This is the first picture I have uploaded here and would like to know if I am on the right track. Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Creator: Daniel J Simanek (talk) 06:01, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nominated by: Daniel J Simanek (talk) 06:01, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

This is a pretty good effort. I would be interested to know what camera gear you are using? A few points I would make. The image, especially the lighthouse, looks a bit soft, I suspect it is a bit out of focus as the rocks in the water seem to be in better focus than the lighthouse itself. Possibly you took this with a digital compact? If so (or even if not) it could probably do with downsizing to help with the sharpness issue; note this won't fix the problem, but it will help it look better. The stitching seems pretty good, but there are some problems quite visible at the left - there is a band in the sky that could probably be fixed successfully with good use of the healing brush in Photoshop, but there is also a problem in the water a little bit across to the right that would be harder to fix (this can often be a problem when shooting a 'moving target' such as waves). There does also seem to be a slight colour variation across the images that have been used for stitching - perhaps you had the camera set to auto exposure rather than manual? Composition is quite nice - I personally feel it's cropped a bit tight at the top, we probably could have had a little less rocks/water and bit more breathing space for the lighthouse, which is after all the main subject. Also the island appears a bit 'pointy' - this may be a reflection of the true shape of the shoreline, but is often a perspective artifact when setting the camera up in the middle and then stitching the images, especially if what was in the middle was a lot nearer the camera than what was at the sides. One other thing is that it's usually recommended to upload images to Commons rather straight to Wikipedia. I think you have done a very good job - ATM I doubt this would pass at FPC, but there's not a lot wrong with it and it's a good contribution to the article. --jjron (talk) 16:15, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the review! The camera I am using is a Kodak EasyShare Z730, not the best camera in the world but, not the worst either. I am really not sure if it could be considered a digital compact (it is by no means pocket size); it does have your standard manual adjustments, but no manual focus. I am not sure what settings I used to take the shots, I was just starting out at the time and, to be honest, I really had no idea what I was doing. The tight crop was a consequence of the way I had to take the pictures. I was standing out in the middle of the busted up pier you see in the picture trying to keep the camera level so the picture wasn't 'smiling' so, when I cropped I was forced to crop on the lowest edge of the set. As for the pointyness, it is called 'Wind Point' and its actaully not an island (although other people unfamiliar with the area have thought the same).

I am not the greatest with Photoshop, so do you have any suggestions on how to clean the waves, or would that be more trouble than its worth? Also you meantioned the stitching on the left side, did you mean by the clouds? Would you recommend just getting rid of them or is there a better way about that? Also if you have any sugestions on how to prevent smile on pans when you can't keep the camera level, they would be much apprecated.

Once again, thanks for the review! Daniel J Simanek (talk) 19:45, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd probably say that camera's basically a compact, but as you say it shouldn't be too bad, and with manual control you should be able to get decent shots. Not sure what you mean by 'smiling' - I assume you're talking about the tendency to take the images at the side higher than the ones in the centre, so when stitched you get it bending down in the centre? I spose the best suggestion for how to avoid that it to set your camera up on a tripod and then just pan it horizontally without adjusting the vertical. Another idea (not sure what you've done here) is to take your original shots with the camera in portrait rather than landscape orientation. This gives you more height to play with, and often more detail in each shot (as you can zoom in a bit more). If your camera has a 'stitch assist' setting that usually won't work in portrait, but oh well. Re the waves I wouldn't bother fixing them here, it's not a huge issue, but it would be an issue if you were nominating at FPC. A bit of creative cloning could help the situation, so it could be worth just having a play with that (i.e., the clone stamp tool) for a bit of practice, but my suspicion here is that it's almost as much a problem with the variation in lighting as with the motion of the water. Re the sky, I wasn't talking about the clouds, there's an error in the sky itself, again a problem with the variable lighting - this is most visible right at the very top at approx. 660px from the left edge. I just had a fiddle and that's pretty easily fixed using the healing brush tool (I see you've edited this in Elements, so I'm not sure what tools that does and doesn't have). Cheers, --jjron (talk) 13:53, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks again! Daniel J Simanek (talk) 02:32, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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