Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Jää on kulmunud pallideks (Looduse veidrused). 05.jpg

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File:Jää on kulmunud pallideks (Looduse veidrused). 05.jpg, featured[edit]

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes.Voting period ends on 20 May 2016 at 19:33:21 (UTC)
Visit the nomination page to add or modify image notes.

Formation of ice balls in Stroomi Beach, Tallinn
  •  Comment - No, I looked at it at full size. What might be noise and posterization looked to me like frost, fog and the results of cold on the camera, but I don't know what these ice balls look like in real life because I've never seen them before! Have you seen them in real life? -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:59, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The issues can be seen also on snow in foreground, so it's definitely posterization (and a pretty evil one). Plus see image note: looks like for the background a noise suppression was applied (which is apparently also the reason for the very soft horizon and water), but not for parts of the foreground, where the posterization is much more clearly visible. (And no, I haven't seen such ice balls before, but even an extremely rare phenomenon deserves a better picture, imo.) --A.Savin 09:24, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Updated vote:  Neutral per A.Savin's remarks. Is there a way to improve the quality of this photo significantly? It's of such great educational and encyclopedic importance that this should be at least a Valued Image and possibly a Featured Picture in spite of the problems, but it would be great if the quality could be improved. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:41, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
 Info I now added coordinates (got them from image author). As for the rarity of this phenomena, this also got some media coverage. Some examples: 1, 2, 3, 4. Kruusamägi (talk) 13:18, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I did see that the quality wasn't great at 100% but don't understand the logic "even an extremely rare phenomenon deserves a better picture". Sure, we'd all like it to be better, but if it is extremely rare then we can make allowances -- that's what separates FP from QI. I agree there is a fairly obvious band where noise-reduction and or sharpening has changed. Looking at the EXIF, this image is quite heavily processed, high ISO (for the age of the camera) and possibly could be better processed to avoid some of the issues. -- Colin (talk) 14:49, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Getting a sharp image at sunset during cloudy winter day (i.e. very dark time in this neighborhood) is pretty difficult challenge specially when it's minus 15–20 degrees (as stated) and you are trying not to freeze off your fingers.
Daylight calculator gives that sun should have set 15:29 and the info from camera says it was taken at 16:29:45. So the camera was likely on summer time (+ 1 hour) and it was almost exactly the moment when sun fell behind the horizon. Rather time critical event. Kruusamägi (talk) 21:14, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well, probably you're right, but at some point there has to be a border between "Has so much wow that it's an FP despite quality flaws" and "Definitely too many quality flaws for an FP". From my point, it has gone below this line, but apparently I'm in minority here. So what? Note also that some of the problems here are caused by poor development rather than difficulties during photographing. Maybe the author of this photo is willing to start a new try. --A.Savin 16:22, 14 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I understand your opinion and thank for stating it as it's not easy to go against majority. Kruusamägi (talk) 20:03, 14 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment - But the problem is, this is a rare phenomenon, and I don't think we have another photo at the same location and time of day with less noise. That's why the most I feel I could do is abstain, in the hopes that the photo could be improved. But if pushed, I'd probably feel impelled to change my vote back to support, rather than oppose. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:03, 15 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Confirmed results:
Result: 13 support, 2 oppose, 2 neutral → featured. /George Chernilevsky talk 07:16, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This image will be added to the FP gallery: Natural phenomena
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