Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/20140402 MCDAAG Jahlil Okafor dunk

20140402 MCDAAG Jahlil Okafor dunk[edit]

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 19 Apr 2014 at 17:15:02 (UTC)

Reason: This is a high quality action photography shot
Articles in which this image appears: Jahlil Okafor
2014 McDonald's All-American Boys Game
2014–15 Duke Blue Devils men's basketball team
FP category for this image: People
Creator: TonyTheTiger

Support as nominator --TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 17:15, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Looks a little underexposed, I think. You may need some post-processing. Also concerned about the players' legs in the background. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:22, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- What do you mean by underexposed. What about this photo points toward that assessment? How do you post-process a correction?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:37, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - The floors at BBall courts are usually very, very, shiny, owing to the amount of polish. Here it has a very matte look. That being said... I'm concerned by the noise in this image. His skin is not very smooth; looks like noise. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:13, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    - I suppose noise stems from my use of a monopod rather than a tripod and the fact that I shot at 800 ISO/640 speed in manual mode. FWIW, auto settings for the action setting in this lighting were 1600 ISO/1250 speed when I tested the action setting on the mode dial. Given that I am working with a Rebel T4i, I can't do much better in terms of noise.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 11:44, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    - I suppose from the angle the image was taken from, there wasn't any reflection. I also agree that it's slightly darker than is ideal. All the whites in the image are dull greys. But I'm more concerned that it's not a true 'action shot'. Obviously, he's actually dunking the ball, but the absence of any defence in the image makes it look a bit staged. A 'demonstration duck' if you will, and not taken during an actual game. I appreciate that it's somewhat of a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situation to be in though. If there were a lot of other players in the shot, it would be opposed for messy composition! Ðiliff «» (Talk) 09:37, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    - If you look at the history, you can see that I cropped out the other players in the shot.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 11:26, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      - Visually, I am not sure what you mean by the whites not being very white. When I look at the word McDonald's on his shirt, that looks about as white as I could have hoped for, IMO. However I see what you are saying in the image brightness histogram. The brightness histogram of the original shot is sort of bimodal with a low peak very close to the left and a higher peak two thirds of the way to the right. There is almost no content in the right quartile of the histogram. I am shocked to see no content in the right quartile of the image histogram. I thought the whites were white, but I see your point.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 11:44, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      - Looking at the image brightness histograms of all the images that I have uploaded from this game, the only ones with white whites are the non-action ones shot in fully automode. File:20140402 MCDAAG Justin Jackson Jack Daly Award (2).JPG seems to have the best histogram in terms of having white whites without notable spikes going off the chart. File:20140402 MCDAAG MVPs (2).JPG is also decent. However these are at 500 and 400 speeds so they would have more blur in the action shots.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:00, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      - P.S. even in the game-winning dunk (File:20140402 MCDAAG Jahlil Okafor game-winning dunk (2).JPG) by the same player, it does not look like anyone is trying to stop him. So having other players in the shot does not make it look like any more of an action shot in some senses.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:25, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        OK, you've convinced me that it's just an unfortunate angle that makes it appear that he's completely uncontested. But as for the brightness, perhaps your monitor needs an adjustment because the whites on Jahlil's shirt are not particularly bright. I've made an image which shows the original next to an edit I quickly put together for comparison, and I think it improves on the exposure somewhat. I would say that perhaps the court appears slightly overexposed in the edit (I'm not sure what it looked like 'in person'), but the darker tones of the player's skin and shirt are more what I would expect to see. I suppose it's a tricky scene for the camera to meter. The court is bright and the player is dark. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 13:00, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        Actually, looking through my files, some of the actions shots with the same settings have significant white whites presence in the histogram. I am going to spend time looking at more images. I like your processing of the whites however. Can you post that edit here for consideration.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:58, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        Done. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 14:41, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        I don't know what to say about whether the court is overexposed or depicts the true appearance in the edit. This picture is now a 53.5% crop of a 200m zoom image. We are talking about what the court would look like if I had 20-25x zoom vision in comparison to my regular eyesight. I was not down on the court and don't know its true color.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:24, 11 April 2014 (UTC)--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:18, 12 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        Not that it really matters what 'zoom level' it was taken at, but I think 20-25x is an exaggeration. You shot it at 200mm with a crop-sensor camera, meaning a full frame equivalent of 320mm. The human eye's focal length is apparently 22-24mm, but it's not a direct equivalent to a camera lens because the eye is really nothing like a camera lens/sensor, and you only really see clearly in the central 3-5% of your vision. It gets progressively worse the wider it goes. 50mm is considered to be roughly equivalent to the 'sharp' part of our vision though. So going with 50mm, 320mm is really only about 6x 'zoom'. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 22:38, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        Then this is cropped so we are looking at about 12X right? Regardless, I don't know what a court should look like. Crisco 1492 seemed to know what the floor should look like.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 23:20, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        We're getting a bit caught up in the details now, but different courts look different. They're usually all shiny and waxed though, but the colour and luminosity depends on the wood used to build it, I'd imagine. So unless Crisco has actually been to that particular court, I don't think he'd be any more accurate than you are. If you think it looks fine, let's go with that? In any case, I'm not sure it's going to be a featured picture... The image quality isn't quite there. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 00:19, 12 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        I can't vouch for this exact court (my only experience with Chicago thusfar has been O'Hare, and that was a combined total of 6 hours), but I think Diliff's edit has the colors a bit more as one would expect a BBall court. That being said, the noise is still significant... once I'm done tweaking my new panorama of Sari Temple, I'll see what this looks like if we denoise it and downsample, see if it can be made featureable or not. Composition wise this is decent, although I think a more direct shot (i.e. from a lower row) might have more "oomph". But then, I'd expect one's mobility with a camera to be limited in such a setting, so I wouldn't think too much of that. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 02:29, 12 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        Of course an event like this at the United Center is reserved seating. I had a ticket for section 319, which shares an entrance with section 318. In section 318, there is what appears to be a standing room area where I set up.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:18, 12 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        I was playing with the image in Lightroom, and with Luminescence at 30 (maybe as high as 40) the image is considerably smoother. However, I don't think the loss of detail would be a good trade off. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:28, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        Well, the feedback on this image will greatly improve my photography. You have made me think more clearly about what all the graphs are on my camera. Now, that I have processed that they can tell me if my whites are really white, I will probably choose my settings a lot better. I think almost all the indoor basketball photography that I have done in the past two years has been underdeveloped now that the two of you have coached me to think about whether my images are presenting white whites. Sadly, the images in this set are among my best in terms of being adequately developed. Certainly, something is better than nothing. I am not going to be able to reduce the noise. In action photography as in life, you cannot have speed, quality and affordability. In choosing the Rebel T4i, I have surrendered quality.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 02:35, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        What software are you using for processing? Camera Raw and Lightroom are paid software, but they both perform admirably (the "auto levels" is a bit too bright for my liking, but you can easily fix that with the software). — Crisco 1492 (talk) 04:36, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I don't really do much post-processing. I crop in either MS Paint or the Windows 8 Photo app. The Win8 app crops more quickly but is approximate. I might want to retain 3:2, but it might give me a 2401:1600 image instead of 2400:1600 image. Aside from cropping, I don't do much. There was a time when I used Hugin and GIMP fairly regularly, but that has been a few years. Not sure what you mean by "auto levels".--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:08, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- Ah, that explains it; you may need something more powerful for such things as contrast, exposure, highlights, etc. As for the automatic feature: this gives a fairly good overview of Camera Raw. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 06:16, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- Agree with Crisco. You don't necessarily have to use expensive software, but I would recommend using something to ensure that your photo is the best it can be before submitting an image to FPC. Photos are rarely exposed perfectly straight out of camera. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 10:00, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - For non-expensive software (i.e. free), GIMP offers some possibilities. I don't use it as much as the software I've mentioned above (I mainly use it for circle cropping; GIMP allows one to resize the cut area much more easily than Photoshop), but it is fairly powerful. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 11:20, 14 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Well, based on the above conversation, we've managed to improve the exposure issues slightly but I don't think it's quite FP material. Sports photography is inherently difficult, particularly without professional camera equipment. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 10:00, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure how much either of you is into basketball photography in general, but I could use some feedback at Talk:2014 McDonald's All-American Boys Game#Image_choices. It should take about 10 minutes. Just give me a number (generally 1-4) and a sig for each guy.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:16, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not Promoted --Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 18:09, 19 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]