Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Turdus Merula female

A young female Blackbird (Turdus Merula)

A young fluffed up female Blackbird (Turdus Merula) in a residential area hedge in north-west Germany.

Edit 1: Contrast boost, background blur

Edit 2: Less insane contrast boost, background blur (more work to finetune the mask)

Edit 3: edit 2 with yellow grass cloned out.

Reason

High resolution shot, made with a Maksutov 300mm telescope. Shows the female Blackbird appearence in contrast to the male specimen appearing in the taxobox.

Articles this image appears in

Blackbird

Creator

User:Dschwen

• Support Edit 2 as nominator — Dschwen 12:00, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose Lack of contrast. Try the Photoshop command Image/Adjust/Autolevels for a major improvement in contrast - Adrian Pingstone 12:59, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose The OOF items in the foreground are mighty distracting. --Bridgecross 14:17, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Well, what can you expect from a 150 EUR russian mirror telescope? Circular bokeh! :-) Anyway, I tried to adress both points with an edit. --Dschwen 15:39, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Tech question: Are you using the telescope as a prime lens, or in front of a prime? --Janke | Talk 16:02, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
      • Prime lens on a 5D. I have an adapter from T2 to EOS mount. --Dschwen 16:31, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
        • Wow 5D! Your own? --Fir0002 11:32, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
          • I've been contemplating that investment for quite some time, and I made it a combined ph.D. and wedding present to myself :-) --Dschwen 12:55, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose due to the fuzzy object in front of the bird. — The Storm Surfer 00:58, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
• Support Edit 3 A little better. ^8thstar 01:22, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
• Sigh, so I fix one thing and people come up with another reason? Come on, it's not like that straw is in front of the birds head. What is it obscuring? --Dschwen 07:49, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
• Support edit 1. To my eyes the photo looks a hundred times better at full size than in thumbnail. The straw in the foreground is basically transparent. Otherwise it looks great, with lovely detail. Pstuart84 Talk 09:45, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
• Weak support (edit 2, edit 3 is also OK with me) per above. A natural habitat is bound to have some obscuring stuff... --Janke | Talk 09:56, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment I'd support this - it's a very natural shot, well resolved etc - but you've overcooked the contrast on your revision and blown some subtle detail. It just needed a *small* adjustment to counteract the lack of contrast in your cheapo lens ;) mikaul^talk 16:28, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
  • You are completely right. Edit1 was over the top. I redid it with moderation and additionally put a lot more work into finetuning the mask separating the foreground from the blurred bg. --Dschwen 18:15, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
• proposal I would support this with the yellow obstructing blade of grass cloned out. But I would only bother to spend the time to clone it out if people wouldn't vote against it because of that cloning. Anyone think that modification is a particularly good or bad idea?Debivort 19:26, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Good idea, I love the picture but that yellow straw kills me. Leave the rest of the blurred foreground, though. Enuja 22:08, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't know, doctoring the picture like that seems a little dirty to me. The Storm Surfer 23:13, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

• Support edit 2, for reasons stated above. I would probably support a decently cloned version, if it came to it, but I really don't have a problem with the OOF grasses; they seem perfectly appropriate to the subject to me. mikaul^talk 23:15, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
• Support Edit2 or Edit3 - It was harder to do than I expected, but here is a version in which the most annoying grass blade has been cloned out. Debivort 09:26, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Weak Support edit 3 I do like this image with the alterations as noted --Newton2 12:57, 15 April 2007 (UTC)