Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/XH558 Planform

Reason: I feel that this unusual view of Avro Vulcan XH558 provides an excellent demonstration of the unique silhouette of the Avro Vulcan, and, given that the aircraft flew over my head as I was standing on the runway of my squadron's airfield, is a fairly difficult image to obtain.
Articles this image appears in: Avro Vulcan, Avro Vulcan XH558
Creator: James Humphreys (Colds7ream)

Support as nominator --Colds7ream (talk) 15:54, 17 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Unappealing background, lots of chroma noise, and the plane too underexposed.--ragesoss (talk) 12:52, 19 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Well, the background is the sky, and so, I suppose, a bit beyond my control. The exposure is a bit of a trade-off as if I brighten the aircraft it means I'd get a pure white, washed-out sky, so the whole image must be balanced. As for the noise, would it be better if I sent this via the image labs in attempt to quieten it? Oh, and I think you'll find that a plane is a device used for smoothing wood. :-) She's an aircraft. Colds7ream (talk) 18:22, 19 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In some conditions, it's hard if not impossible to create a photo of the kind of technical quality expected of featured pictures; no doubt aircraft in flight under cloudy skies are among those conditions, especially when the sky is so much brighter than the subject. In terms of what was under your control, some of the flaws could have been mitigated by shooting at 100 ISO instead of 400, and adjusting the levels during processing so that the darker parts of the image were brightened without blowing out the sky. At this point, yes, some noise reduction would help, although if you have the Canon Digital Photo Professional software, going back to the RAW file and using that program's color noise reduction feature would probably be more effective than sending it to Wikipedia:Graphic Lab and having someone work from the JPG.--ragesoss (talk) 02:20, 20 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Incidentally, I think another of your photos of this plane is better: File:XH558 Flypast.JPG. Better background, better exposure of the subject, less noise. I still don't think that one is quite featured picture quality, but it's closer.--ragesoss (talk) 02:24, 20 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough, IO'll have another look through my 700-image strong collection of that display. :-) I submitted this one merely because of the unusual and very-hard-to-obtain view, but if a bit of noise is going to prevent it passing, far be it for me to say otherwise. I'll upload a selection and put them for PPR? Colds7ream (talk) 10:33, 21 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I withdraw my nomination

Withdrawn by nominator --wadester 16 04:09, 22 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]