Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Castingtinsoldiers.jpg

Casting tin soldiers

Reason: A picture series that clearly illustrates the process of casting molten metal in a mold. The enc is high, which offsets any lack of artistry in the image - we are creating an encyclopedia, right? ;-) (Tech note: blown highlights are inevitable when shooting shiny metal.)
Proposed caption: Tin soldiers, approx. 65 mm (2 1/2") high, being cast in German molds from the early 20th century. The two mold halves are clamped together, and the metal (an alloy of tin and lead, heated to approx. 300°C / 570°F) is poured into the mold. When the metal has solidified, the mold is cracked open. Sprues (pouring channels) and extraneous flash (metal that has penetrated cracks and air channels in the mold) are seen in the third image, and have been removed from the castings in the last image.
Articles this image appears in: Casting, Molding, Tin soldier
Creator: Janke

Support as nominator Janke | Talk 07:52, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment It's very informative, and the technical quality is very good, but the individual images don't seem all that artistic, but rather functional. It illustrates the articles it's in very well, of course, but I kind of like Featured Pictures to be a bit more interesting to look at in their own right, and I'm not sure this image does that. Adam Cuerden ^talk 08:23, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support Set (of individual pictures). Neither is an individual fractal artistic still we feature them and in particular we featured a set of fractals. I suggest breaking them up and explicitly nominating them as a set. It is a nice piece of work, with great setup and lighting. The images in combination assist a great deal in understanding the process, and the uniform style of the series looks very professional. --Dschwen 08:57, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Neither image really indicates how big/small the tin soldiers are. Up until the last image, I imaged the size to be 10 cm (4 inches), but on the last image, they only seem to be half this size(?). – sgeureka ^t•c 12:09, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Ah, forgot that. The soldiers are about 65 mm (2-1/2") high. Added to proposed caption now. They do look smaller in the last image, since it is a wider shot in order to show both halves of the mold with one of the handles. --Janke | Talk 16:03, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. If the casting process can coherently be described as consisting of these four steps, then why not combine the four images into a single larger image with the four numbered steps identified? Spikebrennan 17:22, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- It's not quite that simple. The fist pic really isn't a "step", it only shows the molds. The actual first step is assembling the mold, then in turn: melting the metal, pouring, let it solidify, opening the mold, removing the casting(s), let them cool, cutting the sprues, cleaning off flash. No need for a photo of each of these steps, is there?. Sure, these pics could be numbered, but is that really necessary? (BTW, this is a single large image - there really is no use for the separate images, they need to be together...) --Janke | Talk 17:29, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Disagree, individual images allow for a more flexible layout. You can allways arrange them together using Wikimarkup but you cannot take your composite easily apart. --Dschwen 11:30, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - OK, fair enough. If there is a consensus to make this a FP, I can upload the separate images. --Janke | Talk 15:43, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support Highly informative, good caption, and interesting. ~ Veledan • | T | 19:24, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Very enc, enough to make up for only okay artistic value. It's sets like this that are the reason we have a Wikipedia set of featured pictures and a different set at Commons. Zakolantern 21:47, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support We need more of this sort of high quality, instructive, educational illustration in the encyclopedia, so it gets my support despite a few minor gripes: lighting should be all the same throughout; if you used the flatter lighting of shot 4 throughout you'd have fewer blown highlights; the final shot could be cropped much tighter to the figures, as the molds aren't so relevant. I agree that if promoted it should be a set of four separate shots, not least because it's tough to show a 4:1 vertical shot on the main page. Good work! mikaul^talk 16:24, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support - good technical quality and exceptional encyclopaedic quality.--Svetovid 11:40, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support Enc outweighs minor technical flaws.--Here T oHelp 15:51, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support, it's the type of image you aren't likely to find many alternatives, and it's nice to be able to provide four images all of the same mold - rather than having to show each step in a different lighting, of different subjects and different time periods. Solid photography, though slightly lacking in technical mastery as mentioned. Sherurcij ^{(Speaker for the Dead)} 08:17, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted Image:Castingtinsoldiers.jpg MER-C 10:28, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]