Nikon Wednesday Pic comments

[tholte]

<p>Mark, <br>

I think you have way too much time on your hands and should let one of the most popular things on PN just rest a bit and let people have some fun.</p>

[marklcooper]

<p>Tim - it's not that I have so much time on my hands. It's more that I only have Internet access for several days at a time, then I'm off to the boonies for several days. So I have lot's to catch up on when I can. If folks aren't happy with this thread or don't want to participate, they don't have to stop in. My 9:02 post took close to 3 hours ( a few minutes here, a few there, between tasks at work) to compose. As a computer consultant/network analyst/network administrator I spend a fair amount of my working time asking people to empty their email trash, their in and out boxes, etc. Plus I'm always looking for the most efficient PDF creator...a lot of Word and Excel documents are saved as PDF for posterity. All this takes disk space. Disk space is cheap. Tape drives are expensive. Bandwidth is expensive. Tonight's backup and verify has to finish before we start changing the data again tomorrow morning. No one big (document/picture) file is a killer. It's when you start adding them up that it starts to make a significant difference.</p>

<p>Thanks - Mark</p>

<p> </p>

[jeannean_.]

<blockquote>

<p>If folks aren't happy with this thread or don't want to participate, they don't have to stop in.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>And the fat lady sang.</p>

[bmm]

<p>I'm only just off a plane and reading this for the first time. Just a couple of my own thoughts:</p>

<p>1. Wednesday Pic is an absolute delight and something I look forward to each week, whether I'm participating or not. 2 or 3 minutes waiting for this gem of a thread to download is no hassle compared to the enjoyment it gives.</p>

<p>2. I don't like the thought that those people who give comments to everyone would be limited in words or in number of pics that can be commented on. I think these people like Lil and Jeananne are some of the real heros of this thread actually, especially for the newer posters whose work they so diligently and encouragingly comment on.</p>

<p>3. The issue of recent work - I tend to agree that some of the work has to be recent, but not all. For example I have frequently posted images where the original capture might be up to 24 months old but where its only in the relevant week that I've done post on it etc.</p>

<p>Bottom line for me is please don't change a thing. The Wednesday thread is an absolute treasure and an inspiration.</p>

[sebastianmoran]

<p>I agree with several of the comments... <br>

<strong>It ain't broke... Don't fix it!</strong><br>

As for time to load... Words don't take much bandwidth. I think any delay is the images.</p>

[joseph_leotta]

<blockquote>

<p>Mark - I spend a fair amount of my working time asking people to empty their email trash, their in and out boxes, etc. Plus I'm always looking for the most efficient PDF creator...a lot of Word and Excel documents are saved as PDF for posterity. All this takes disk space. Disk space is cheap. Tape drives are expensive.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Mark , I have all of that and more at work, This is not work, I do this for Fun. I don't want a lot of rules when I'm having fun. Fun is a break from work. Don't make this work make this fun .</p>

<p>BTW - at my company, we save both the word or excel and a PDF of it. We only send out PDF so that they are unchangeable We save the PDF sent out.as a exact rcord of what was sent.</p>

[pcnilssen]

<p>Today is Wednesday. Let us in today's thread show that we are capable of showing good photos (as we always do) but at a conciderable less file size.</p>

<p>Happy Wednesday everybody!</p>

[darko_vrsic]

<p>I have to agree with Richard: "Words don't take much bandwidth. I think any delay is the images." Comments (text) part of the thread 40 are 229 KB while pictures are 22 MB. So comments are about 1 percent of all load. We shouldn't spare the words, we should put lower size limit for images and somehow force that limit.<br /> <br /> There is one option for people who frequently refreshing thread only for reading the comments. They can disable automatic loading of images in web browser. That way thread loads in seconds. Maybe this is the solution for Lex also.<br>

<br /> <br /> Where's 41, I'm ready with picture only about 100 KB big! :-)</p>

[finimage]

<p>Hi,<br>

I've been following the Nikon Wednesday thread for sometime, only recently having the courage to post to it. Perhaps I'm fortunate to have a reasonable connection, load up time for the full (#40 thread) was perhaps a minute?. The Moderators having load time issues is a big problem, especially as they do this on their own time, unpaid. Is there anything Photo.net can do to assist, I assume they moderate other threads also?<br>

On the workings of the thread. By limiting submissions to photo.net content, a smaller image could be posted to the thread at a max size (100- 200kb) would appear to offer the best compromise of image quality over file size. This image linked back to the photographers portfolio where comments can be made. A counter under the image on the thread recording the number of comments made would give viewers a heads up to what was tickling the general masses fancy or at least stimulating discussion, it's down to personal choice or curiosity to follow up the comments. This does give a moderation issue in that each page cannot be easily scanned on a regular basis for malicious content, though from what I have seen on this site it is not an issue to be overly concerned about, self policing and reporting of this kind of activity would have to fall to the individual participants of the thread. There is also the question of amending the web coding to accommodate this method, which as has been pointed out is not really feasible for just one thread, it would need to be a global solution within the community...in my opinion not easily implimented not desirable.<br>

As we have seen self regulation of posted content can fall over. The Thread is hosted under the No Words banner, perhaps we could try following this ethos for a while, jumping out to our favourite images of the week and making any wordy comments directly to the photgrapher, this does not aid the community in seeing comment made and advice given, save for our own images should they attract attention.<br>

Personnally I'm happy to follow the second option but only as a fall back to the current regime which I like, have no issue with save my slightly misplaced comment at the foot of Thread #40. Participants undertanding and following a flow would aid moderation if there was the ability to lock out photo postings say after Saturday to allow those who have connection availability issues or just not able to post until weekends to participate. This opens the thread to crit only from Sunday through Tuesday. Most people will have the photos in thier cache so reloading of the thread should not be so painful.<br>

Just thoughts...I'm in the "it's not broken...don't try fixing it" camp. Beyond some user education, perhaps in this case a few (but please not too many) extra rules, would help nurse the thread through it's growning popularity.<br>

Nikon Wednesday is the best thread I have see on any photo site. Many thanks to Jose for starting it and to Shun & Lex for thier time keeping it on the straight & narrow.<br>

Regards<br>

Finlay</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>As I said earlier, it doesn't bother me too much that it takes some time to download those Wednesday threads. Just download them on one browser window while you do something else on the computer (on another window) or off the computer.</p>

<p>I udnerstand the fun people get from the Wednesday threads. To be blunt, I think most of the images are good but not great, and I post some very mediocre images there myself. But I can see why people enjoy getting praised on their (mediocre) images, and I won't spoil the party. I won't dish out undesrved praises; I simply restrain from commenting on the images there. If you wonder why I don't comment much; that is why.</p>

<p>I firmly believe that 100K-byte images are more than sufficient for the purpose of Wednesday threads; by far the majority of my images posted to photo.net are around 100K or a little less. However, I wouldn't use them to judge lens sharpness. If you think you need 150K or 200K, I don't think that is an issue either. It is those 500K, 1M and over image that cause most of the problem. Let's see whether self regulating can work. As I said just now, I'll try not to spoil the party, but if that doesn't work, Lex and I will figure out something else.</p>

<p>Incidentally, Josh Root informed us that dividing long threads into pages will soon be an option on photo.net, although I personally prefer one long thread, which remains as one of the options. Of course, dividing these threads into pages will not actually shorten the download time. That is why I prefer one long thead that gets downloaded when I am working on something else.</p>

[ilkka_nissila]

<p><em> Of course, dividing these threads into pages will not actually shorten the download time.</em></p>

<p>If only one of the sub-threads is open to postings and the earlier ones are closed, then moderators can just monitor the active thread for abusive postings, right? And this will download faster. I thought the problem was that in order to react to inappropriate text quickly, the thread has to be downloaded frequently by the moderators. The rest of us don't need quick download times as we can just download the developing thread once, make an image post, and then review the images the next day.</p>

<p>My impressions on Lil's example images: the 100kB image is considerably worse than the 200kB image even on a casual glance (the detail looks mushy and not crisp), whereas the difference between the 200kB and 300kB image is more subtle but still noticeable. To me the 100kB image would not be acceptable whereas the 200kB image is. However, many subjects contain less fine detail than Lil's example and those would work fine as e.g. 150kB images, but landscape photography would clearly suffer from a hard limit at 100-150kB. My this week's image (water polo) actually compresses quite poorly (the irregularity of the water surface with all the reflections etc. probably causes this) and the 200kB post I made (with save for web quality=80) is noticeably less crisp than the 350kB (save for web quality=90) original image I was going to post until I noticed that it is quite big. To me the crispness of detail (the water drops) is important to capture the spirit of the activity and the "feel" of the water.</p>

<p><em>But I can see why people enjoy getting praised on their (mediocre) images, and I won't spoil the party.</em></p>

<p>People have day jobs and still manage to go through their most recent images, choose one, and make a post of an image in just a few days time of its capture. There are many who post consistently very good images. This I see as the value of the thread; it is a temporally (fairly) coherent window into the world and shows how diverse things people see and photograph. Sure, many of the images are not masterpieces but that doesn't mean that the whole thread should be judged by the worst images (or that all images should be made look bad by excessive compression); by contrast I look and enjoy the best and scroll through the rest. To me (and I am sure to many people who post images) it is important that the presentation of the images is of good quality and I think 700 pixel wide and <=300kB are fair limits. I can't imagine it would be hard to program the limits into the photo.net software since it already recognizes the difference between 700 pixel wide and larger images.</p>

[stephen_asprey2]

<p>Just make it a limit of one pic per registered member and a max size of 200k Jpeg. Thats plenty for web viewing.<br>

The less work for moderators the better. This is a community after all.</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>The 300 kb upper limit isn't a problem. We just need folks to stick to it, preferably smaller.</p>

<p>A vertically oriented uncropped photo reduced to 700 pixels wide will be around 1050 pixels tall. A little large for my taste for this type of web display, but it isn't practical to limit photos to 700 pixels tall on these forums. So a vertically oriented 700x1050 JPEG of a sunset might need all of 300 kb to render the fine gradations without posterizing. Personally, I'd reduce my vertically oriented photos to 700 pixels high, but we don't have any such requirement and I don't see any need to impose another rule. I'd rather let folks make their own choices based on what best serves the community.</p>

<p>Only after this discussion started did I find out that photo.net will offer page views as an option for browsing discussion threads. That will be a big help. Even folks on dialup should be able to skip to the last page and attach their own contributions without having to wait for 20+ MB of photos to load.</p>

<p>Anything that helps maintain accessibility for everyone who wishes to participate is okay by me.</p>

<p>And we don't need any additional rules. The existing guidelines are plenty. Not everyone reads those, so adding more won't reduce problems.</p>

[alex.held]

<p>Lex wrote "Only after this discussion started did I find out that photo.net will offer page views as an option for browsing discussion threads"<br /> <br /> Thats great!! And the only way IMHO to solve the problem, specially thinking in the near future.<br /> <br /> A year ago the thread had around 20 to 25 pictures, now around 130. A this rate of grow, <br /> we will have 250 or 300 pictures very soon and more perhaps.<br>

The idea to close the thread when it takes to long to load would result, then, in a almost only european thread. Strange early birds in Bronx or Buenos Aires, late ones in LA may have the chance to post a shot but for the rest of the american continent people will be imposible to post something. <br /> <br /> I thanks Lex & Shun for their great work and for trying to ensure the thread as accessible as possible to all but on the other hand Photo.net is not 911. Its a Image based website and will always be slower to somebody (how many?). Try to get nba.com in a dial-up! it takes ages!<br /> thanks Alejandro</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>Here are direct links to Lil's two image versions:<br />100K Bytes <a rel="nofollow" href="http://lilknytt.zenfolio.com/p858490508/h2e69cd78#h2e69cd78" target="_blank">http://lilknytt.zenfolio.com/p858490508/h2e69cd78#h2e69cd78</a><br />300K Bytes <a rel="nofollow" href="http://lilknytt.zenfolio.com/p858490508/h2ce1889d#h2ce1889d" target="_blank">http://lilknytt.zenfolio.com/p858490508/h2ce1889d#h2ce1889d</a><br /><br />I placed each on a separate browser window and compared them side by side. At least I don't see any noticable differences since they are small JPEG images. As Mark L. Cooper points out above, you have to look around very carefully for a long time to find any minute difference, and that is not what people tend to do when the objective is to appreciate an image.</p>

<p>What I am not interested in doing is to keep checking image sizes all day long in these threads. I think I have more important and more interesting things to do. Hopefully people will learn to self regulate and cooperate.</p>

<p>At the bottom is the 200K-byte version of the image I posted to this week's Wednesday thread. Do you notice any difference from the 82k-byte version?</p>

 

<P>

<CENTER>

Top: 82K-byte version <br /><img src="http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00U/00UgIt-178563784.jpg" alt="" />

</CENTER>

</P><div></div>

[liljuddakalilknyttphotogra]

<p><strong>Thank you Ilkka for noticing</strong> . How anyone who's involved in photography can not notice the mushiness & loss of detail in the under 100Kb version is surprising to me. I was personally chocked when I saw the difference.<br>

I showed my husband the three shots last night fast telling him what I had done but not pointing out any problems or anything. The minute I loaded the under 100Kb picture my husband jumped. He saw it immediately. Granted he's a Camera Operator/Steadicam Operator in Film & TV. But I did not point out a single thing & that shot changes drastically.<br>

Maybe it's because I have a 24" screen - who knows. I will do my best to stay under 300Kb as I did this week. There are shots where this can be done easier. But I will not present a mushy with no detail photo in the thread. If I can get away with something around 200-250Kb I will do so. But that third example would not ever make it into any thread as a representation of something I wish to present.</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>I should point out that photo.net does not want to add a size limit such as 300K bytes to attached images because sometimes there is a need to post larger images. Josh Root discussed that with us before and bandwidth is not a major concern at this time. For most threads, an occasional 500K-byte image is not an issue because very few threads have so many images attached. Our Wednesday threads is a major exception.</p>

<p>Additionally, frequently people hot link in outside images that are not hosted by photo.net. Those images will take time to download also but photo.net has no control over them.</p>

[joseph_leotta]

<p>ok - I don't know anything at all. I am doing something wrong. When I resize my pictures they physically get smaller. How do you keep a photo the same but yet reduce the file size?</p>

[sjoerd_leeuwenberg]

<p>Hi,<br>

Don't wanna make this a contest of who can compress the worst picture, but I think Shun's picture is not the best example. The smaller version has extra shadow and text and still the difference is hard to see. I will include a picture with some high detail and high contrast side by side (left is 198kB originally right is 96kB originally). Saved as a HQ jpg afterwards I know.<br>

I think the difference is easy to see (when you know the original), but the impact is also lower. A test with compression twice at different resolutions Full res->intermediate->700 wide made things a lot worse. So how you prepare the jpg and which program you use also counts for a lot. I think most (99%) of the pictures (especially horizontal 700 wide) never need more than 200kB.<br>

just my second cent</p><div></div>

[liljuddakalilknyttphotogra]

<p>Joseph - I'm not great at this but I'm willing to help - - send me an e-mail & I'll explain it to you as explained to me. Well - I can help if you have photoshop that is....</p>

[jose_angel]

<blockquote>

<p>When I resize my pictures they physically get smaller. How do you keep a photo the same but yet reduce the file size?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Perhaps others could have the same question: Roughly speaking, a JPEG image implies compression. The level of compression result on a bigger or smaller filesize (Kb). You can change the filesize by compressing the image, whatever the physical dimensions it has (pixels). These are two independent parameters.</p>

<p>If you have a NEF file, you need to convert it to JPEG for posting, e.g., here in phot.net. After resizing (pixel size) you will save it as JPEG (.jpg), and then, you must choose the resulting desired quality... maximum, high, medium, low... the lowest compression the higher filesize, and the less noticeable compression artifacts. A higher compression will result on a smaller filesize but on noticeable JPEG artifacts.</p>

<p>This is what we`re discussing here. The optimal filesize to image quality ratio.</p>

[liljuddakalilknyttphotogra]

<p>I have only one final thing to say on this subject & I feel very strongly that I need to.<br>

Part of all this has caused one thing with me - for the first time since joining this forum I feel unhappy & unwelcome on this forum.<br>

Sad day for me indeed. :-( I know I'm overly sensitive to many, but this is not a day I envisioned. Especially not on a subject where so many find enjoyment.<br>

Sad day ........</p>

[oskar_ojala]

<p>BW images take JPEG compression more poorly than color images, since the eye is more sensitive to luminosity variation rather than absolute color variation.<br>

A typical screen is only about 2 lpmm when the eye can resolve 3-8 lpmm at a typical viewing distance, so mushiness will easily look bad, particularly since the eye is quite sensitive to acutance in edges.<br>

Solution: limit the sizes of images (I mean this as self moderation). Granted, posting these small images provides a subject matter challenge, as I don't usually take my photos with the intention of having them small, but that makes the selection process more challenging. It's all an intellectual challenge anyway, my goal is always to have a photo taken in the last 6 days.</p>

[joseph_leotta]

<blockquote>

<p>Part of all this has caused one thing with me - for the first time since joining this forum I feel unhappy & unwelcome on this forum.<br />Sad day for me indeed. :-(</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Good job to all who stirred the pot up. Hope your thread loads quickly. <strong>If it not broke don't fix it. </strong><br>

<strong>I</strong>t wasn't broke because some people have slow internet. At home I have a cable modem which is great, up in Vermont I only have dial-up. Know what - I enjoy the threads equally in both places. Good things are worth waiting for.<br>

<strong></strong>Looks like it broke now. I also have very funny feeling about this weeks thread. <br>

Over in the thread one person even asked where the comments are? He asked if they were in a different thread. The comments are down tremendously. </p>

[birdied]

<p>Part of all this has caused one thing with me - for the first time since joining this forum I feel unhappy & unwelcome on this forum.<br />Sad day for me indeed. :-(</p>

<p>I, too, may be sensitive, but the above sums up my sentiments. </p>