Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 15 Aug 2010 at 05:03:41 (UTC)
Original - Part of a school of moonfishEdit 1 - Attempt to address white balance issues.
Reason
Large, high quality and close shot of the species. Also the lead image of the article. There's a diver also shown, noticed it too late or I might've just taken this to PPR. I don't think it's much of a diversion, but that's for the voter to decide.
Oppose I think if we are to be awarding FP status to underwater pictures, we should be requiring full color. This is accomplished with either shallow depths and attention to white balance, or by flash-fill. Some of those sharp, colorful pictures of marine life really deserve FP status and look very, very nice on the Main Page for a day. Greg L (talk) 15:20, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Not necessarily. Underwater photography is difficult, granted, but this does not give as good a view of the species as I would like to see. J Milburn (talk) 18:30, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
How do you mean? You have two of them in their natural habitat probably real size here. You'd prefer to just see them cataloged in a laboratory environment instead? --I'ḏ♥One19:15, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Since green penetrates water so well, the blues and (mostly) the reds disappear quickly. In shallow water, the human eye adapts to balance the RGB to white. That’s why when divers or snorkelers get out of the water, everything looks purple at first. And that’s why, if one spends any time in a pool at night with a pool light on (lots of greens on everything), the night sky has a purple look when your first look up. As my son is a Navy diver, I get his underwater pictures all the time. If they aren’t shot properly, they can be utterly impossible to color correct. I imagine that one must simply set the ISO on their digital camera to a really low setting (to avoid noise in the red channel) and hit the ‘white balance’ button. And if one is in deeper waters, a flash is required. I’m sure there are some truly stunning underwater images out there available to us, so I think we can be choosier than either of these two pictures. Greg L (talk) 21:02, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
An interesting read: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~etrnsfer/water.htm also why water is blue is very similar to why the sky is blue. ;-) Basically, as I understand it (that link is very technical), is the wavelengths of blue light is almost identical to the size of an oxygen atom, so oxygen scatters blue light, causing the sky to appear blue (not black like the sky on the moon without an atmosphere). In water it's the O-H bonds that absorb other light frequencies, that combined with the scattering of blue light by the oxygen atom makes water appear blue, and the more impurities in the water causes the scattered light to shift more towards green. As for fish photography, the impurities of the water and color changes by the water are of course natural, but not ideal for representing a fish species. You want to counteract those color changes so the fish appears as if it was in pure white light. This is usually done in underwater photography by either bright sun in clear shallow water, or bright lights in deeper waters. The more water light travels through the more reds that are absorbed thus the bluer it gets. — raekyT01:31, 7 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If you googled it, you'd find this and see that it's not, just a crappy old point-and-shoot. But you can buy housing for various cameras and even bags (example of one type) that let cameras take pictures under water. Really any good underwater phtographry requires (a) high-end DSLR (b) super high end hard case (c) specially designed filters (d) specially designed flashes. Theres cheaper options but high-end stuff is super expensive. — raekyT23:00, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's not now, was probably pretty good back in it's day.. the Olympus C5050Z is from 2003 at 5mp, definitely "crap" by today's standards. — raekyT00:51, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
5 supports (3 specifically for the PapaLima's edit), 3 opposes for the original, but Hive001 was 1 oppose for Greg L's edit (he forgot or decided not to vote for his own edit) but apparently not specifically PapaLimaWhiskey's edit. It's looking like 5/7 (71%), excluding Hive001 since he didn't comment on PapaLima's, in support, if my math is correct, otherwise it's 5 supports favoring an as-yet uncontested edit and 3 opposes to the original. --I'ḏ♥One08:45, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]