Grants talk:Project/Rapid/Mompati Dikunwane/Camera

Hi Mompati Dikunwane, thank your submitting a rapid grant request for a camera and a laptop. We want to learn more about the size of your group and the plans you have that would be improved or made possible with this equipment. Please answer the questions below:

1. Can you give us more details on how many people you expect to share this equipment? It would be helpful if you could share user names or ask the users in your community to comment on the proposal so that we can learn more about them.

Hi KHarold (WMF) i would like to take this opportunity to express deep gratitude for acknowledging our request.

• The equipment is going to be shared amongst all community members contributing to Wikimedia but we will be looking at how active a member is and how dedicated they are in wanting to create more content on wikipedia.The following members are the ones to start using the equipment as they have been available and showing interest in wikipedia meet-ups we had in the past (Wikipedia Wednesdays):(Mompati Dikunwane,Mogende,StellaKube,Harrison-Montsho,Keamogetswe Tokwe,Khutsafalo Kadimo,Joseph Joseph,Monica Dira,Thato Makhale Molaodi).

1. Please share an example of how a laptop would have improved one of your recent editing events.

• In situations where we have to go to places without libraries and or where there is no equipment to use in adding information to Wikipedia for instance after doing an Oral workshop where we have to interview people to gather some information we will need the laptop to put information into wikipedia using an internet dongle provided by orange Botswana (Internet moderm).

1. How will people learn about the equipment, and how will you select people to borrow items like the laptop or camera?

• A Record book will be created which will help the each member to check if the equipment is in use by another or not. The record book gives details about the item collected, the date of collection,purpose of item collection, the item return date and the signature of the user. See the page here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Equipment_Record_Book_for_Wikimedia_Botswana_Volunteers

1. Do you have a project or event page where you and your community are documenting the topics, places, animals or events that you would like to photograph?

• Yes but we have not documented a lot of stuff we have been discussing by word of mouth, more documentation will be put on meta about what to photograph and other topics to look on to. Please see the Url here for the project we are planning dubbed the Wiki-tswana Ghanzi,Maun and Kasane Photo journey.
  https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikitswana_Ghanzi,_Maun_and_kasane_photo_journey#WIKI-TSWANA_Ghanzi.2C_Maun_and_kasane_photo_journey
  stay tuned.

1. If you had to choose between a laptop and a camera, which item would be more helpful for your community?

• A camera will be chosen as we need a good quality camera to take good quality pictures of buildings, we have been using bad cameras (Phone cameras), poor lens individual cameras which will make our contributions to be deleted from Wikimedia commons because of their poor quality. Adding on the link below shows one of the pictures used in the Gaborone article, the quality is not good at all so we need changes to that, the picture link is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaborone#/media/File:Gaborone_Montage.png

Thank you so much.
Best

Mompati Dikunwane

We hope that these questions will help us get a better understanding of how your community would use these items, and how they will be used and shared within the group. Please let us know if there is some additional information that we should be aware of. Thank you, --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 22:23, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Equipment choice

I have some comments regarding the choice of equipment:

1. The Canon EF 75-300mm lens is generally considered to be a very bad lens. Moreover, its utility is very limited for shooting buildings. Do you really need it? If you really need a telephoto lens, the Canon EF-S 55-250mm STM is much more suitable for the Canon EOS T6.
2. The Macbook is an expensive and slow computer. The processor, in particular, is very slow. You may be able to get a better photo editing experience with a cheaper but more powerful non-Mac computer.

Good luck! Dllu (talk) 01:01, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi Dllu, Thank you so much for your suggestion, i think i will change the camera lens from my choice of the Canon EF 75-300mm to the Canon EF-S 55-250mm STM because we want good quality images of buildings to be uploaded in Wikimedia commons, thank you again for that great suggestion.

• I agree with you that Mac is expensive most particularly for a starting group like ours, so we decided to change the brand to hewlett packard(HP Pavilion 15.6" Flagship Laptop PC, Intel i7-6500U Processor 8GB RAM 1TB HDD 7-hour Battery Life Wide FOV Webcam DVD±RW WiFi Bluetooth HDMI Windows 10). This laptop has high processing speed (intel core i7) with a great random access memory of 8GB and Hard disk drive of 1 terabyte which is a good space for working with our projects.
  

Please see below the laptop properties:
6th generation Intel Core i7-6500U Processor 2.5GHz with turbo boost up to 3.1GHz, 4MB L3 Cache; Intel® HD Graphics 520 8 GB DDR4 SDRAM (1 DIMM) Memory; 1TB 5400 RPM Serial ATA hard drive 15.6" diagonal HD 1366 x 768 SVA BrightView WLED-backlit; Front-facing HP Wide Vision HD Webcam with integrated ; dual array digital microphones; Full-size island-style keyboard with numeric keypad; HP Imagepad with multi-touch gesture support mouse SuperMulti DVD Burner; 1x1 802.11ac WLAN with blutooth 4.0; 10/100 base-T Ethernet network; 2x SuperSpeed USB 3.0, 1x Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0, 1x HDMI, 1x RJ-45 (LAN), 1x Headphone-out/microphone-in combo jack; 1xMulti-Format Digital card reader, B&O PLAY with dual speakers Windows 10 Home; 2-cell 41 WHr lithium-ion prismatic batter, Up to 7 hours of battery life ;Dimensions: 0.89 in (H) x 15.06 in (W) x 9.56 in (D)Weight: 4.27 pounds; Color: Silver.
the laptop is available in amazon website: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LXMFXO5?psc=1

Comment I don´t really understand, why you want a 55-250mm lens. A DSLR is prepared to use different lenses, what you primary need is a 18-135mm (this is 200mm!). You cannot handle 250mm *1.6 (400mm!!) out of the hand, therefore you always need a good tripod! The best lens combination would be the Canon EF-S 10-18mm 4.5-5.6 IS STM together with Canon EF-S 18-135mm 3.5-5.6 IS STM if you really want to work with a DSLR. Both you can use without a tripod. But actually, maybe a closed camera like a Canon PowerShot G3 X, Panasonic Lumix FZ72, or Sony Cyber-shot HX400V (just to name three of many), would be much better for beginners (It is not a must to zoom-in the maximum!). And most of those Bridge cameras are cheaper and have less weight. The image quality will be ok. BTW: no image will be deleted on Commons because of poor quality! --Hubertl (talk) 11:29, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

BTW: I have this combination Canon EF-S 10-18mm 4.5-5.6 IS STM together with Canon EF-S 18-135mm 3.5-5.6 IS STM and a Canon Consumer DSLR (700D). Even with my professional lenses (other camera), I always use a tripod! --Hubertl (talk) 11:38, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Funding decision

Hi Mompati, thank you for submitting this request and for answering all of our questions on the discussion page. We are extremely pleased to see that you are planning activities and projects in your community again, and have recently approved your request for funding to host a series of Wikipedia Wednesday events. We are open to funding a camera or a laptop for your community in the future, but we would like to see how the Wikipedia Wednesday grant goes before we approve additional grants. Once you have hosted a few of the events, we can discuss your communities priorities for additional resources and/or equipment. Thank you again for your hard work and attentiveness on this request. We are very much looking forward to working with you on your Wikipedia Wednesday project. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 23:41, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Comments on re-opened request

Hi Mompati. It was nice talking with you last week to learn more about the Wikimedia community in Botswana, your activity plans and priorities for funding. We understand that at the moment, a camera would be most useful for the group since most of the new contributors are interested in contributing to Commons and access to computers is easier than high-quality cameras. I have a few comments/questions below.

1. As a professional photographer, as well as someone who travels a lot and takes photos of monuments, I find that a lighter-weight mirrorless camera or high-end point and shoot is much more convenient and produces just as good quality shots as a dslr. More often than not, I leave the dslr at home these days. I would seriously consider Hubertl's suggestions above in terms of looking into a more compact camera. Here are some good reviews of the different options for a point and shoot or mirrorless camera. I would strongly suggest going this route if most of the users are just learning about photography. If you really think a dslr will be utilized by the group, I recommend the Canon EOS Rebel s12.
2. It sounds like the group is prioritizing documenting new buildings in a number of towns. Have you also thought about documenting historical monuments or other content that will be valuable for the encyclopedia?
3. We will not be able to support the purchase of a drone. We would like to see how the camera is utilized (in terms of both quality of content and number of community members) before more investment in equipment. We also believe that that there is a lot of content that can be captured without a drone that can be prioritized and focused on.

Please let me know if you have questions about the above. Best, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 04:07, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi Alex , i enjoyed the conversation/ recommendations you an Kacie gave me last week, I am really happy and motivated by your support in all ways. Have you ever looked into the monument that we once captured here?
I will opt for the dslr Canon EOS Rebel s12 you suggested, seems to be good.

Thank you so much for your recommendations.

Best
Mompati Dikunwane

Hi Mompati. Please update the proposal page and we can move forward. Best, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi Alex I have updated the proposal page. Thank you

Best
Mompati

Approval

Hi Mompati. Thank you for the updates. We are approving the camera, backpack, and tripod. We would like to see how the camera is utilized by the group before investing in additional expensive lenses. A large zoom lens like the one proposed is fairly limited in its use. It is not fast enough for moving wildlife or sports. We believe the 18-55mm lens should be pretty versatile for your needs. If the group is using the camera frequently and has mulitple projects planned where a zoom is necessary, we can fund one then. We'd also recommend not buying a used lens with no warranty. Best, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 19:41, 25 September 2017 (UTC)