Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Panorama of Edo

Panorama of Edo

Reason: I'm nominating this picture because it is a well done historical Panorama of Edo from 1865 or 1866 done using Five albumen silver prints to form a panorama.
Articles this image appears in: Edo, Felice Beato
Creator: Felice Beato

Support as nominator — Cat-five - talk 04:15, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support Both Impressive, given the I guess circonstances. Blieusong 09:13, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with trialsanderrors on the scan errors, but also with Mikaul on the fact it doesn't spoil the picture enough. Blieusong 07:22, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Question Could this be restiched with better quality? -Fcb981 19:38, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Conditional Support if we can get a better stitched version. If absolutely impossible then "support". Witty lama 21:45, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I understand (and hope I'm not wrong) that the "process which created the pano" itself was from the photograph, and is here part of the picture (as visible technical flaws). So I think this isn't to be "restitched". I'd even say, this is what makes this panorama so valuable. Blieusong 22:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support As an extrememly early example of panoramic photography, and not least as a historical document, this is outstanding, even if it isn't exactly classically beautiful. The yellowing, stains and slight mis-matching are relevant details and should be left as is, as evidence of the technique employed. mikaul^talk 23:53, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment In response to those of you above who asked about restitching it can't really because the stitching is really part of the historical work and in terms of quality of the stitching etc you have to remember that this was done using plates some 150+ years ago... not to mention falling under the exemption from many requirements due to it's historical status which I doubt anyone will contest considering it's age and importance. Cat-five - talk 02:06, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment I'd like to note that I have also nominated this for a featured picture up on Commons. Cat-five - talk 02:15, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Granted, this isn't the best stitch job. However, considering this panorama was done so long ago, it's actually quite well done. Amphy 16:37, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for now Can anyone identify which ones are stitching errors and which ones are scanning errors? I get the impression the most obvious ones are scanning errors, which should lead to rejection. It's also a very small scan for a 1.32m pano. ~ trialsanderrors 19:07, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm not sure what you mean. These old panoramas weren't stiched as such, AFAIK they were glued together onto a backing sheet. Without modern digital blending methods, this particular example is a fairly remarkable, techinically-speaking, given that there's very little vertical mismatching. See these examples for comparison. I suppose the scan isn't totally brilliant but it's quite detailed; most of the imperfections I can see are probably due to the age of the prints. Finally, 1.03Mb is about right for a 3000x450 jpeg, although I agree it could maybe have been bigger. mikaul^talk 22:42, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Bad teminology, sorry. "Stitching errors" = discontinuities in the original pano. "Scanning errors" = discontinuities from scanning the pano. I can accept the stitching errors if that was how panos were assembled in the mid 19th century. But if the discontinuitites are in fact from the scan as it appears, it should be done better. On what we can do with panos in terms of size, check the "Along the River" nomination below. ~ trialsanderrors 22:48, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's an awesome image in many respect, and one hell of a scan to boot. The scan here has certainly had less TLC applied. Now that I've gone looking for them I can see a couple of minor stiching errors in the scan; I see what you mean now, but I'm not sure they detract from the value of the image so much. mikaul^talk 23:08, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, scan is too small... gren グレン 16:45, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- I dont' see how it could be any larger considering the aspect ratio, for example to make the height over 1k (which is the normal standard for FPC's) you'd have to make the width about 6000 pixels which is both unwieldy and unecessary for use on Wikipedia. Cat-five - talk 08:14, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Uhh... ~ trialsanderrors 21:50, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - Hehe.. I still don't think this is a good oppose rationale in this case. 450px is probably less than borderline "too small" for a regular pano shot (I've been hassling for consensus on concrete guidelines for this, 6-800 high would seem a sensible minimum pano height) but this one delivers much more than just technical exactitude. mikaul^talk 00:20, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      - An exact number will only be a crutch for people who know nothing about photography. A picture file is big enough if it shows an adequate level of detail. I might even argue that the almost 1000px height of the QingMing pano is at the lower end given the astounding detail in the original. Of course 30,000px width is the limit for Photoshop, so that's what we have to make do with in that case. In this case here, it's clear that the original provides much more detail than the scan. ~ trialsanderrors 01:23, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        I wouldn't argue with you there. Pano shots are (generally) one of those which demand exceptional levels of discernable detail. The issue here is whether the detail you can't make out detracts substantially from the value of the image. There's huge historcial, photographic and encyclopedic value here which, along with it's uniqueness, greatly diminishes the file size / scan quality issue, in my opinion. I'm guessing that the chances of re-scanning what must be a very delicate print are slim to none. mikaul^talk 12:41, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        I'm still waiting for evidence of this historical value. It's interesting to see a cityscape that doesn't exist anymore, but there are thousands of those images. The panorama exhibit at the Library of Congress goes back to 1851 [1], so age can't be the deciding factor either. I'm also pretty sure that this was scanned larger and downsampled to the current size. Compared to the stuff we can get at the LoC I'm not impressed. ~ trialsanderrors 00:46, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support edit1. Interesting and historically valuable. Cacophony 05:09, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support interesting shot with much better resolution than the similarly dated Image:Panoramic from Lookout Mountain Tenn., 1864.jpg currently used in panoramic photography. Warofdreams talk 17:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted Image:Panorama of Edo bw.jpg MER-C 02:53, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]