Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Female red-veined darter

Female red-veined darter

Reason: Large, detailed and high-quality depiction of a beautiful species of insect. adding value to the articles it appears in.
Proposed caption: Red-veined darter (Sympetrum fonscolombei) is a common dragonfly in southern Europe and, from the 1990s onwards, has increasingly been found in northwest Europe, including Britain and Ireland. It belongs to the family Libellulidae, whose members are strong fliers and often perch on exposed reeds from where they dart out to snatch prey. Adult red-veined darters are red (males) or yellow (females), showing beautiful saturated colours. Juveniles are greenish with black stripes on the thorax and abdomen.
Articles this image appears in: Red-veined darter, Dragonfly
Creator: Joaquim Alves Gaspar

Support as nominator Alvesgaspar 22:35, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support alternative: top macro.--Svetovid 00:13, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
oppose both - looks like too much unsharp masking. Debivort 01:28, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Why do you say that? Do you see a particular artifact pattern in it? --Peter 01:36, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Um, Unsharp masking takes edges and sharpens them, and non edges and blurs them. This has clearly been done, as the images have fine detail, and blurred areas and nothing in between. Debivort 05:04, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Please check the new alternative. Alvesgaspar 10:24, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support alternative. Very encyclopedic; alternative gives a more complete view of the bug. It's got a bit of a "painted" look, different from ruthlessly realistic shots. Did you try this with a larger aperture? I wonder if that would improve the contrast and sharpness, if diffraction accounts for a drop of both at f/16 with that lens; if that's motion blur, I'm sure the stop of shutter speed you'd gain would've helped. Regardless, great shot, no serious complaints. --Peter 01:36, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Per Debivort, but I suspect a too strong de-noise filter has been used removing detail in the compound eye and body. --Fir0002 08:51, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Info - The suspiction about the detail in the eye is wrong. Here is the RAW file converted to jpeg, with no compression or any other processing. The only difference is the crop, which I couldn't make exactly the same. I have also added a more conservative alternative- Alvesgaspar 09:33, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- That is by far the best version. I'm sorry to say that post-processing completely ruins an otherwise good image. Mgiganteus1 11:19, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Check your RAW processor, it's either smoothing things down or you might be getting motion blur (1/80 on a 100mm is a bit slow esp for macro). There should be more detail like hairs (particularly where the wings join the body) and factions in the compound eye visible. --Fir0002 11:40, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - This species has not much hair (and none at the base of the wings, I think). As for the raw processor, I'm using Capture NX from Nikon (no smooting was used in the raw version). The shots were quite difficult: a small aperture was necessary to have adequate DOF and there was some wind. With an old 100 mm Tokina macro (with no VR) I think that was close to the best possible. Someone once wrote that dragonflies should be shot early in the morning for the heat makes them more active. Alvesgaspar 11:58, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - Hmm, I still think something there's something weird with the quality (take a look at the crop I posted) - looking at this the dragonfly seems to have a normal amount of hair etc (it's not that high res but you can still see the detail) --Fir0002 12:31, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per the discusson above; great shot but the "painted"/overly-smooth look ruins it for me (also makes it less encyclopedic). CillaИ X♦C [dic] 19:51, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I withdraw my nomination. A new one with improved pictures will be added above. - Alvesgaspar 19:06, 12 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not promoted MER-C 10:27, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]