Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Acanthodoris lutea laying eggs

Acanthodoris lutea laying eggs edit

Original - Nudibranch Acanthodoris lutea at California tide pools is laying eggs.

Alt 1

Alt 2

Reason: A beautiful action image of a hard to find and even harder to photograph creature taken in the wild. The image has big encyclopedic and educational value.
Articles this image appears in: nudibranch;Tide pool;egg
Creator: Mbz1

Support as nominator Mbz1 (talk) 18:57, 22 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment the original is used in the first two articles. Alt 1 is used in the third article. There's at least one more nudibranch FP, which I was able to find here:
Oppose They are nice and sharp at the center, but they are unfortunately quite noisy and there is some heavy spherical aberration or distortion everywhere else, also, the composition is a little bit confusing. On a side note, the current FP isn't great either. -Fcb981^{(talk:contribs)} 22:35, 22 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

May I please respond some of your concerns and no, I'm not going to respond every oppose, just this first one please. The original is noisy, the alt1 IMO is less so. May I please mention a mitigating circumstance: Nudibranches live underwater and they are really small. I would appreciate very much, if you could have explained to me how I could have possibly got spherical aberration or distortion everywhere with a point and shot Olympus. Please believe me, I do not doubt in any way your assessment of the image but because I'm not a very good photographer, I really like to learn something new. I cannot agree with you more that the composition is very confusing. It is how nudibranches live. As a matter of fact it is so confusing that, when I saw my very first nudibranch, I believed it was a sea grass or just a garbage before he started moving. That's why I nominated the image. I would have liked, if somebody else after looking at the image would ever see a nudibranch, he would have known what he's looking at.Thank you.--Mbz1 (talk) 23:36, 22 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the interest, I agree that the original has more noise problems than the alternative, and the alternatives arn't that bad. The alternative, however, has a light horizontal line that runs across the image that looks like a reflection in aquarium glass. As for your question about avoiding optical problems, its tough for an inexpensive zoom to do everything very well, macro is tough for many lenses. I seem to remember that you have a Canon 350D or something like that. I would recommend that over the Olympus any day. And in an aquarium, I would recommend putting an external flash either on a cable or remote trigger and pressing it against the glass to avoid reflections. Either that, or build a little lens shad out of cloth or paper that you can press against the glass so that there are likewise no reflections. The current FP, while badly lit, has a more informative composition. -Fcb981^{(talk:contribs)} 01:07, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much for taking your time to explain me the problems with the images. It is very kind of you.Please notice the images were not taken in an aquarium. I would not have nominated an aquarium image of such a quality. The images were taken in the wild in the tide pools. The line on the second image is not the reflection of the glass, but rather reflection of the water. I've used Olympus because it is underwater camera. The problem of taking pictures in tide pools is that the water sometimes is too shallow to place the camera in the water, but on the other hand, it would give you the reflection, if a camera is out of the water. No flash was used. In this particular situation I was able sometimes to put camera in the water, but then the distance between the camera and my subject was too small to take a really sharp image. I believe that the line at the second image could be removed in photo shop, if somebody is willing to take this challenge. May I please also add to your atention alt 2 with no line seen? You're right about better composition in the current FP. I've nominated my image because by showing other versions at the description page I was able to show a nudibranch moving away after laying eggs, which IMO could add encyclopedic value to the image. I'm sorry I've added too many alternatives already. It was the last one. I'm also sorry that I responded once again. I fealt it was important to stress one more time that the image was taken in the wild. Thank you.--Mbz1 (talk) 01:30, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No consensus MER-C 10:34, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]