Your guy's opinion on this rejection?

[HelmutS]

Fellow Photogs, I would like to hear your opinion on a rejection.

Today I submitted this:

http://www.jetphotos.net/viewphoto.php?id=6017798&nseq=0

and this:

http://www.jetphotos.net//viewreject_b.php?id=1507447

Both show the brand new 7L-WA, only yesterday landed at Austria's Main Air Force Base. 7L-WA being the first ever delivered export fighter from EADS, I consider these as rather hot pictures.

The first one was accepted, the second rejected for composition (aircraft not centered). Now, I can not really follow that logic and appealed for the following reasons:

1) Lowering the camera would have put the frontal tape barrier into the picture. (okay, weak excuse, but still valid)

2) I actually like the dynamic gray clouds contrasting with the brightly lit plane, I think the angle makes the airplane look higher than it already is and points towards the "sky where it will fly" so to say. Airplanes belong into the sky, why not show the sky above it where freedom lies...that kind of feeling is why I take shots like this. Not primary to avoid the tape, but actually with the intention to lead the viewers eye upwards.

3) Totally centering the subject is bad artistic composition, rule of thirds etc. It makes a nice documentation picture, but a boring artistic one. Reminds me of a certain other website that shall not be named.

4) So far there are three shots online of this plane - all from the left side, two almost identical (mine and Peter Unmuths, Peter was standing 2 meters left of me when he took his shot). This would be the first shot in the database with a totally different composition and angle. Wouldn't it be more logical to reject the one that had been accepted, and accept the more original one that had been rejected?

5) I'm really surprised that JP.net is so picky when they get a brand new registration and a historic picture submitted. With the current political climate being as it is in Austria (Anti-Military, Anti-Eurofighter) it may be months, maybe half a year or longer, until media gets another chance to photograph this airplane. You definitly won't see it at an airshow for the next two years. So it's not like you can easly throw away submitted "non-standard conformistic" shots and replace them with other ones.


Now, of course I could easily cut off the top part of the image, making it centered. Or I could have lowered the camera angle and included boring grey asphalt and the barrier tape into the show. Somehow I don't think either of these options would produce a more pleasing picture. So if my appeal falls on deaf ears, I'm not gonna resubmit, because frankly I like the shot just how it is.

What continues to surprise me is that aircraft magazines will accept shots from me that keep getting rejected from image database websites. Why, if it's good enough for paying readers to fork over their money, is it not good enough for a free website?

[Billsville]

Helmut,
From screeners point of view, when we get a photo like that we would have to look at the off centre framing and ask ourself what the photographer trying to achieve in this shot? The dark clouds don't really provide a spectacular backdrop for that shot and all it looks like to the screener is that it has been mis-framed.

To answer your points..
1.Off centre framing just because a tape barrier is on the way makes no sense at all.
2.As I said the clouds have nothing to lend to the shot
3.We accept off-centre shots, as long as the motive is okay. There doesn't seem to be a motive here.
4.We take each pic as it comes. If you upload them we screen them. Maybe you should decide for yourself which picture you want to upload.
5.Think of it like this. If we accept this shot with its flaws, then we have to start to accept every off-centre attempt at artistic shots. Some work, some don't and in this case two screeners thought that the motive didn't work.

BTW, did you include any of your reasons above in the notes to the screeners? That may have helped if you described what you were trying to achieve.

BTW, as a sideline, for me the shot also looks soft and over processed (too much noise reduction).

Hope this helps
Steve Brown

[AlanF]

I personally think it should be higher in the frame to much sky showing

Alan

[brianw999]

Alan has answered the framing/centreing issue. This may help you with your obstructing tape issue....accepted despite the blue rope in the picture.

[Thebuzu]

As said by the others the aircraft is too low...

If you have the original, see if the tape is obstructing anything, if it is now centre the aircraft and give it a try.

[HelmutS]

Okay, to reply point for point:

1) I could have lowered the camera angle without the tape obstructing anything. But that would merely have meant that there would be gray, boring asphalt at the bottom of the shot - and a barrier tape. How is that an improvement to what we have now (besides that people can then say "yeah, it follows our standards")?

2) This image is framed as is, not cropped. So I can't "go back" to any other version. I could of course cut off the top, but that would look equally awful.

3) Concerning Billsville's sideline: How can this image be "overprocessed and soft?" It comes out of a D200 as jpeg fine, large, with sharpening set +1, at 100 ISO, shot with the rather good 18-70mm Nikon lens, then it got resized, USM applied and uploaded. No noise reduction applied at all besides that camera's standard setting (and Nikon is not known for harsh NR).
Seeing the "stair steps" effect at the canard top, I don't think more USM would have been alloweable. So if it's soft, maybe that's because it had to be scaled down from 3800 pixels to 1024 wide and then re-compressed during the upload...but certainly not from any software processing I applied.



Well then in summary....I guess this image will have to live in some magazine (it likely will), and not online here. I thank you all for the honest feedback but still come away shaking my head that an image databases like this one seem rather to happy to throw an original, rare shot away instead of applying some leeway to the artificial standards used for judging here. Maybe I really should stop uploading.

[Billsville]

Helmut,

I also shoot with a D200. It can get much sharper than that.

The bulk of the aircraft lies in the bottom half of the picture. It just looks wrong. Every time I open it up it just looks like the subject is located at the bottom of the shot.

Maybe it will be used in a magazine. But only so they can put titles above it, or re-crop it.

[HelmutS]

Billsville, the composition isn't going to change - even if I wanted, I don't have any other version of this shot. IMHO, it's jetphotos loss since pictures of AS001 will be rare for years to come.

Anyway, what I'm curious about is to learn your opinion on where the "softness" may come from.

Like I said:

1) I was shooting ISO100 - no extra NR software applied, NR setting standard in the D200, sharpening set +1.
2) I resized the file
3) I used USM to sharpen it (not just a little)
4) Saved as JPEG Max Quality (100% save for web) and uploaded

Lens used was the 18-70mm at f5.6 or somesuch.

I really have zero idea where a "softness" or "unsharpness" would enter here. Definitly not a case of "overprocessing" or "noise reduction applied".

[Billsville]

What were the USM settings? Did you do a multilayer selective sharpen or a one hit Sharpen?

It may have occurred during the resize (depending on your resize settings)

Compare yours to this one...
http://www.jetphotos.net/viewphoto.php?id=6005137 (18mm at f9. Shot RAW, no in camera processing)

Maybe it is just a depth of field problem.

Also when you save for web is that out of Photoshop?

The pic just appears to have an absolute absence of noise, which is hard to find in any camera, and over use of the noise reduction usually results in the high frequency components of the picture being taken away (i.e. the detail). For a screener that is usually the first sign of over noise reduction. (absence of noise/soft pic). Maybe it is the save for web part of the program. To get better compression a noise filter is applied when saving.

[Will M]

see here for the review on this lens:

I had a quick read through it and it seems a LOT of users say it's a shit and soft lens ESPECIALLY at 18mm , maybe it's half the problem , K-Mart lenses aren't the best....
What focal length were you shooting at??

Maybe if you hook us up with the original we can try determine where you went wrong?

But I'd say the "save for web" is definitely not helping your cause !

Cheers

[NeilA330]

I use the 18-70 with my D70s, and although it may be soft at times generally i don't have many issues with it. Saying that, I don't test this lens limits and I don't use it as I could.

[HelmutS]

Well, the lens is certainly not exactly matched to the 10MP resolution detail of the D200, but it's not a bad lens, definitly not a "K-Mart lens" as someone called it above.

I just checked the EXIF, that was 18mm, 5.6 apperture, may be a bit of a problem to shoot so wide open.

Also the resizing is definitly not that great - if you have 3800 pixels to begin with and push them down to 1024 in one single step, that can't be so classic. Maybe at 1400 pix wide it would look different.

Didn't know that save for web applies Noise Reduction - this is Photoshop 7.0, are you sure?

But then, at ISO 100, bright sunny object, how much noise would you actually expect?

Anyway, the appeal was rejected - fine with me, I just hope you guys aren't holding your breath for more austrian EF pictures since under our current Minister of Defense, there won't be any, and he still has 3 and a half year in office.