ADAPS Competitions Formats?

[sunsworth]

"When our heads finally emerge from the sand, we will see an image projected onto a screen. A fleeting image from a fleeting process."

The problem with a digital projector is that they have the resolution of a sub-£100 digital camera. And that's before we begin to think about colour fidelity, contrast or dynamic range. I don't see any point in spending hundreds or thousands of pounds on equipment and then having all the technical quality thrown away. Personally I'd prefer to see a good print anyday. There are occasions when technical quality isn't important, but with digital projection you are presenting every image at the lowest common denominator possible and images that demand the highest standards will be presented in exactly the same way as those that don't.

Not all images are fleeting, apart from the great photographs that have been produced there are also the mundane ones that carry a lot of personal importance. Wait until a parent or close relative has died and then see how important any prints you have of them are, and whether having experienced the fleeting moment of viewing them you are willing to throw them away.

Finally, DPI/PPI are of no significance when projecting a digital image, only the pixel size counts.

I haven't voted by the way, as someone who is no longer a member I don't think that would be right.

[oakeycoke]

Well, I knew it would cause debate,

I'm sure many of the older members didn't throw their dark room stuff away because the club had one, in fact because they were able to use that darkroom, I sure that many went on to setup their own at home.

I bought an A3 printer to enter the competitions as it was the only feasible way to do so, my old A4 wasn't up to it and I realised that a good A3 print will always fair better than an A4 one. It cost £325 (Epson R1800) and I wont be throwing it away, though i admit to printing at A4 a lot to keep costs down.

I feel that a club printer and lessons around one like the photoshop lessons would be good for both newer and older members.

With regard to digital image projectors, yes we do come down to about 1.5mp for the best, but isn't that a fairer option for all, we are being judged on the photo not our ability to print it larger etc.


Also, this may seem stupid, but why project anyway, I'm here typing this on a 22" monitor that displays at 1680x1050, thats just short of 2Mpixel, however its contrast ratio is 3000:1.. In size its about 2" longer than a sheet of A3 in landscape mode and the same vertically.

So where is this leading, well it cost £225, so for a grand you could have 4 of these monitors displaying around the clubroom. Imagine that! we could suspend them down from the roof and everybody would be able to have a clear view

I'm sure many of us have visited (but not for long!) pubs projecting football etc onto a large 8ft plus screen with rubbishy quality and yet the 32" tv lcd's in many of the same places display a far better picture from the same viewing distance.

Digital photos are not just the future but now, and with regard to losing precious pictures, well dont we back up to hard drives and dvd/cd etc, we can then print out hundreds of them in years to come in glorious colour or black and white exactly like the originals, where those old black and white prints will now be sepia having been stored in a cupboard for so long.

[sunsworth]

Black and white photographs printed on 'traditional' silver based paper don't fade and are a perfect archive medium provided that they've been washed correctly when made. Colour prints from negatives are an entirely different matter unfortunately.

[HarryG]

I love prints, always have and always will. I love the time at end of a competition when I wander over and look yet again at the entries, but I am a realist and am aware that technology is changing fast.

Is it not true, that one produces a print (at some cost, Bert said on Thursday that it cost £92 for a set of inks for his new printer) then carefully mounts it, after which, it will be shown twice, once in the monthlies and once in the annual, before it comes to its resting place either under the bed, or on top of the wardrobe.

There it will remain in an ever increasing pile until nagging pressure from the wife forces a tearful journey to the local refuse tip for last good byes. What a waste.

When a judge examines an A4 print and says that "you can see noise in the shadows", I can almost hear someone at the back say “see noise, I can’t even see the print”. Can anyone tell me what bad definition looks like 20 feet away?

Thanks to Oakeycoke for the brilliant suggestion on using a TV

The use of a digital television never struck me before, a few weeks ago in Aldi, 42inch Hi Def ready televisions were on sale for around six hundred pounds, using one would enable a good competition night followed by News at Ten. Next time you visit Costco, look at the tvs and wonder.

A good debate with lots of sense.

[oakeycoke]

Me again,

Thanks yellow duster re the tv comments, it was only after reading steve's comments on digi projectors that I thought about computer monitors/tv's.

Though 42" lcd's do produce nice-ish pictures and are hd(high definition) ready they produce 720 or 1080 (horizontal)lines on the screen refreshed generally at 50Mhz.

Some lcd tv's also act as computer monitors and there lines per inch can be a lot greater when connected to a computer. I note that Scan have a 30" lcd monitor that actually has a pixel size of 2560x1600, which is over 4 mexapixel, but its £892 . Theres no way our laptop would support that resolution however the digital images would look pretty dam good on it.

I'm actually taking delivery of a Samsung 32" lcd tv this friday, it does have a monitor input but its resolution is only 1024x768, however it scores by having a 8000:1 dynamic contrast ratio and works at 100Mhz. Really thats only of use for fast moving tv action, for our purposes displaying still images the 100mhz doesnt really matter.

Thus if we used computer monitor lcd's we could show more detail from a photo, but also a 40" lcd tv screen would be great to look at from the back of the room. Swings and roundabouts!

This monitor I'm using is great for displaying photos, but when its used as a tv it artefacts somewhat because of the low resolution of tv signals.

The good thing is we are debating this and that can only be a step forward.

Oh nearly forgot, when the shows over we could watch tv, or quite simply watch a continuous slide show of the top photos (say the 8/10 and above) whilst having our brew, or even include the top photos from the previous months comp, its a few mouse strokes on the laptop to do this.

[sunsworth]

One other thing to bear in mind about the large TV/monitors out there is that they are likely to have a screen ration of 16:9 as opposed to the 'normal' photo ratios of 3:2 or 4:3, so quite a large area of the screen won't be used when viewing most photographs.

[Theo Dibbits]

Why use a laptop to project on a tv? Whoever is collecting the images simply burns them to a DVD. Display them using a high def. DVD player (about £ 200) If you use a programme like Nero you can even put the categories like portrait. pictorial etc. in and run them separately. That way you can go for the highest definition the screen will support.

The benefit of prints is that it does not matter whether you are using film or digital. The point is well made that maybe we should leave them on display in the club for a week so everyone has a chance to look at them.
Theo

[sunsworth]

My understanding is that an upsampling DVD player (as opossed to to a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player) takes the standard TV output - which I think is comething like 600 x 480 VGA for a 4:3 image - and interpolates that to the HD sized output (and that resolution will depend on what the TV is capable of displaying).

So in effect you are getting something similar to taking a 640 x 480 image in Photoshop and resampling that to the HD resolution.

Sorry for all the downers, it's just that I don't think digital projection is a high quality medium at the moment for still images.

[oakeycoke]

Theo,

I know what you are saying, thats why I questioned use of 'pics to exe' to display a moving slide show, most camcorders come with software for making dvd movies and in Vista, Windows Movie maker is included for free and it will write to dvd, unlike the Xp version. Putting still images into these programs is relatively easy, however you will find that they are compressed somewhat to fit the correct dvd size.

The maximum pixel size i can see to write a dvd is HDV 1080 which gives 1440x1080 pixel ratio 1.333. Thus to display these well you need a HD tv for 1080, and these aren't that cheap yet, but cheaper than a digi projector for the quality produced.

Around £1000 will buy a Sony 40" LCD, yes i know there might be some black area around the screen because of aspect ratios etc, but wow wont it be far better from the back of the room on competition night. ( We display prints on 20"x16" boards and there's usually loads of black space around the photo especially if its A4, in fact more than 3 times the black space to photo.) However an A3 print in portrait might be more of a compromise displayed digitally, but and its a big but, we will all be judged on photos that are the same size in their respect landscape and portrait format. {the real anoraks will now go out and buy an Olympus due to there 4:3 ratio and near perfect fit on tv/lcd screens}

Oh and the Sony I've just looked at has VGA and HDMI connectors so we could just connect the laptop to it, would be great for John's digi nights.

Also its pretty easy to collect the photos into a folder on a pc and display them as a slide show.

However I take your point for interclub competitions we would need to know in what format the photos would be displayed, ie 1024x768 or hd dvd etc.

Plenty for the committee to discuss on their next meeting lol....

Not got the 32" tv yet, but may be willing in the future to bring laptop, plus 22" lcd and see what people think. Dont think the wife will let me bring the new Samsung 32" TV!!

By the way this TV is £799 in Curry's but £495 from DigitalDirect.com, who are actually based in Farnworth. Curry's price match, but their model numbers are different (as also PCWorld and Dixons- same group).

[Paul Jones]

There's some good points being raised here.

I think the fact that the recent creative landscapes competition slide section was won by the only entry about sums things up for the future of slide competitions.

Some of those that have still use slide film, and will be precluded from competitions if the format is all digital.

So, is the 35mm slide format dead for next year's competitions?
Do we have anyone else in the club who still shoots slides?
Is Walter the only one?

We do still feel that there should be prints at competitions, there is nothing nicer than to view and touch your own creations.

Prints. Because getting the picture from a digital file to paper still requires printing skills that are part of photography even when you use an outside lab.

... to produce a decent print at home does cost a small fortune especially if you use an A3 printer. The print process is so complex, monitor calibration, print profiles etc that its not easy to get in print what you see on screen.

Some interesting points raised about prints.
Are prints an integral part of photography?
Is printing one of the skills of photography?
Do people take photographs to print or just to view on PC/DVD?
With the cost of cameras, lenses, etc photography can be an expensive hobby - is the additional cost of printing too prohibitive for some members?
Are all members working on colour calibrated monitors?

I'm all for digital image projection as its a fairer and cheaper means of producing photos for judging.

Certainly cheaper. But I don't understand what you mean by 'fairer'?

When our heads finally emerge from the sand, we will see an image projected onto a screen. A fleeting image from a fleeting process.

I don't really understand this. Who's heads are in the sand?

The problem with a digital projector is that they have the resolution of a sub-£100 digital camera. And that's before we begin to think about colour fidelity, contrast or dynamic range. I don't see any point in spending hundreds or thousands of pounds on equipment and then having all the technical quality thrown away. Personally I'd prefer to see a good print anyday.

Why use a laptop to project on a tv? Whoever is collecting the images simply burns them to a DVD. Display them using a high def. DVD player (about £ 200)

Some interesting comments about digitally projected images.
Is it a viable option now, or is the technology not up to it yet?
What would be the cost implications to the club?
Again, are all members working on colour calibrated monitors?

I haven't voted by the way, as someone who is no longer a member I don't think that would be right.

Hi Steve - we appreciate that it's hard for you to get to the club due to your work. As it's a web poll and you're one of the most active members of the ADAPS Message Forum there's no reason to my mind why you shouldn't cast a vote.


Does anyone else have any views about club competitions and the direction in which the club should head?

[oakeycoke]

Paul,

With reference to 'fairer' the following:

1) The printing stage is removed, and as already stated the ability to print out what you see on your monitor even when calibrated isn't easy. Its another stage in the process that I wouldn't personally call photography and subject to lots of variables, i.e paper, inks, software and hardware. (working in photoshop is probably akin to film and darkroom, but inkjet printing isn't, there's not a lot of user control)

2) Everybody will be displaying images at the same resolution and size, e.g 1024x768 on the same screen, its my belief that an A3 print will always be more eye-catching than an A4 of the same subject so long as sharpness etc is maintained. The judge last night commented a few times that he would have liked to have seen some of the prints larger. - There wouldn't be this advantage with digitally displayed images, we would be judged on images of the same size (obviously with the exception of letter box style)

- - - -

Having just set up the Samsung 100Mhz digital TV about 20 mins ago I would say that the technology is well up to it. Let me clarify that, I'd much rather see a 32" or 40" good LCD Tv displaying photos at competition nights than the present setup, from an audience point of view...Now as a judge (I wish!!!) then it might be different, as there would be some difficulty in checking sharpness, noise in deep blacks etc on a digital screen at 1024x768, but see below.

Not unconnected with this was something I noticed with one of last nights prints.. From where I was sat and even at about 3ft distance the Robin picture was superb , when I looked about 1ft away I think, though I maybe wrong that the magic wand or magnetic selection tool had been used around the top part of its head as some of the feather ends were cut abruptly. Now if I'm right, and if not I apologise then this would be to blur the background slightly so the robin was more distinct and jumping out from this background, which it was.
Now a judge might see this in a print but not digitally due to the resolution, but should it be seen would it lose points because of this---- with a critical judge I think yes, but I don't think it should.
Its what a photo looks like at normal viewing distance that counts, not going up to it within a few inches and picking out minor flaws.

The robin was superb and well worth 10/10.

Do we go up to an advertising hording in the street and look from 4 feet away and say, its crap its blocky/pixelated etc. No we look from 30/40 feet away where it was designed to be looked from.

Also look at ephotozine etc where photos are only displayed at 600x400 pixels approx , 400,000 visitors a month and 63,000 members. Constant judging at small resolution?

If we see flaws at the normal viewing distance then thats a different matter.

So roll on the 32 or 40" tv for comps, then even the audience at the back will be able to see something.

[Paul Jones]

With reference to 'fairer' the following:

1) The printing stage is removed, and as already stated the ability to print out what you see on your monitor even when calibrated isn't easy.

2) ... its my belief that an A3 print will always be more eye-catching than an A4 of the same subject so long as sharpness etc is maintained. The judge last night commented a few times that he would have liked to have seen some of the prints larger.

Thanks Phil

I hope no-one thinks my head is in the sand, but I can't help thinking that this could be seen as a wish to 'dumb down' (pardon the expression) everyone to the same level.

It could be said that different people within the club are at different 'levels' with their photography - complete beginner; experienced; very accomplished; highly skilled, perhaps even semi-professional...

It could also be said that people have reached those higher levels through a committment to their hobby, combined with a willingness to learn, study and 'put the hours in' to get to grips with the craft of photography - be it taking perfectly exposed slides and prints; perfecting their darkroom skills; setting up a calibrated digital workflow and learning how to produce a decent inkjet or lab-processed print.

Some people have chosen to invest in A3 printers, as indeed some people have also chosen to invest in good quality cameras, lenses, computers and accessories. I wonder whether under the proposals being discussed these people might feel that they are being penalised for the fact that some other members only have A4 printers and therefore, in the eyes of some judges, their prints might not have as much impact?

Following recent comments, I started this debate by asking whether the 35mm slide format for competitions was dead. I wonder now whether those who enjoy making prints will soon be considered dinosaurs...

[oakeycoke]

Paul.

I agree with everything you say, I'm not intending to dumb down, I believe a good photographer could produce a credible image from a good mobile phone camera, it might not be a 10/10 in competition due to the resolution etc, but it would be an image with that certain something. The composition, lighting etc would be there.

I invested in an A3 printer as well, mainly for competition purposes and there's no doubt when you get it right and print out a 'Good un' then A4 pales by comparison.

At this time I still believe we should have prints in the competitions and probably for a good many years yet, because though I would prefer digital only I appreciate that people have spent time, committment, money and energy to develop good prints.

If we have projected Digital images then I'm sure there will be a lot more entries in that category if only on a purely cost factor.

Prints will always be around, you can hang them on your wall and they will last for approx 100yrs-ish, its a bit difficult with a slide or digital image for that matter you cant really keep a projector on, but I bet its not long before the small digital viewers you can buy increase in size and you can have your own slide show on a wall with thousands of pictures on view.

We had got to the stage where people where sending off digital images to be converted to slides to enter the slide comps, when really this is similar to what we are doing with prints from digital cameras. We have a digital image why not just project it.

I think you will agree that the highly skilled members of the club (of which there are many and I'm not one. I'm still learning every week) who can produce a brilliant print at A4/3 can also produce that same image for digital projection. They are still going to be there for the likes of me and others to aspire to even if the resolution of their images are reduced somewhat for digital projection.

[keith richardson]

I have been following this discussion and one point that comes up from the previous posting is whether size matters print wise.

When you invest in an A3 printer, 'mainly for competition purposes' have you felt that the investment was worthwhile? did you see an instant move up the competition leaderboard and was this down simply to the improved size of the prints do you think?

I have only been to a few competitions so haven't yet noticed a trend of favoritism towards A3 over A4 but I would expect if you had the same picture in direct competition it is obvious which would look better between the two. I wouldn't for a minute suggest that someone who submits an A3 does better because of this or suggest that a lack of success was down to using A4, but would I be wrong in this assumption?

Maybe the more experienced members competition wise could offer their views.

Thanks, keith.

[thomasru]

Hi Just got back off holiday and saw the poll re future of competitions. I'd just like to say I still shoot film (slide) and have 4 films ready to send for processing I have not entered the monthly competitions this year but really hope that Slide is still in for the annual next year

TomR