Monthly competition- an idea

[arvensis]

Hi all,
I was thinking that we should do a monthly photograpy competition. The winner having their picture appear on the home page of Wild About Britain. Comments?

Mark

[John]

Excellent idea. It is a format used by many forums and works well.

The only problem (and this is not a critiscm) is that digital can't really compete against DSLR so perhaps a Digital every other month with DSLR in the other months so there are 6 competitions a year for each discipline.

[Fourwings]

Originally Posted by John

The only problem (and this is not a critiscm) is that digital can't really compete against DSLR.

I have to say that I don't really agree with that as a broad statement John,
I think it really depends on the subject matter, I readily conceed that DSLR gives the photographer a much better option and a chance of a good image when photographing birds & mammals at distance, but certainly in my own specialist field of Dragonfly/insect photography I strongly feel that digital can hold its own against DSLR, I would certainly put my "Dragon" photos up against any DSLR image of the same subject, the latest pro-sumer compacts are more than capable of producing stunning images of exactly the same quality as DSLR's, you only have to view all the excellent images in our gallerys to see that.

As for the competition Idea - I think its excellent, I just wouldn't like to be one of the judges as the quality of the images submitted to the site justs seems to get better & better

[Helen]

I am inclined to agree with fourwings. When I took insect/close up photos, my digital gave as good as any dslr. I think you have demonstrated this perfectly with your excellent dragonfly pics in the Gallery.

Competition? A good idea, yes, especially when different categories are applied (e.g. using the categories of the Gallery as a starting point).

[John]

Originally Posted by Fourwings

I have to say that I don't really agree with that as a broad statement John,
I think it really depends on the subject matter, I readily conceed that DSLR gives the photographer a much better option and a chance of a good image when photographing birds & mammals at distance, but certainly in my own specialist field of Dragonfly/insect photography I strongly feel that digital can hold its own against DSLR, I would certainly put my "Dragon" photos up against any DSLR image of the same subject, the latest pro-sumer compacts are more than capable of producing stunning images of exactly the same quality as DSLR's, you only have to view all the excellent images in our gallerys to see that.

As for the competition Idea - I think its excellent, I just wouldn't like to be one of the judges as the quality of the images submitted to the site justs seems to get better & better

Hi Fourwings

Don't get me wrong, I totally agree with everything you have said but if each competition was run where the type of image you mentioned was in with a chance everytime then I would have to say that there wouldn't be much variety in the subject matter of each competition.

Competitions should normally be run on a theme and a lot of themes suit digital photography and a lot suit DSLR. In a lot of areas DSLR wins hands down.

The type of images you mentioned are fairly equal in quality by both disciplines so if that is the type of photography that will be used in every competition then I will concede that there need not be different competitions, but is that the way you want to go if this competition gets off the ground.

[StuartDH]

I think that a regular competition would be great and I guess it might be best to just see how things go at first with the difference in digital and DSLR entries.

Just looking through the top rated pics I see that we've got a good mix of cameras, but if it looks like the DSLRs steal the show in the competition then we could always have an extra category for non-DSLRs

After Christmas we'll have a look at ways that we can run the competitions and judge the entries - either by everyone voting, one WAB judge, an invited guest judge and possibly blind submissions so that no-one knows who has submitted.

As always, we're all ears for ideas.

Stu

[Diane]

No one has yet pointed out that DSLRs ARE digital.

Perhaps what is meant is DSLRs compared with compact or prosumer digital cameras.

I don't think DSLRs have any advantage over the other types of digital camera. I've seen excellent photos in magazines taken with non-DSLR digital cameras, and you know, John, what can be done with digiscoping compared with the more limited range of a DSLR. It all depends who's behind the camera!!

[LonesomeTwin]

Surely once the pics are compressed for the web the advantages of DSLR's will be er.. blurred?

From what I've seen of Fourwings shots the difference must be marginal at best anyway. Besides, Dianne's right it's not what you got, it's the way that you use it!

[Boddie]

This is a good idea Arvensis

I think there are some fantastic pictures on here that have not been taken with DSLR's. A pictures 'quality' is very subjective and perhaps parameters should be set so that a number of considerations are taken into account to assess the winner. For me this is more important, but I hope the idea of a competition is not poopoo'd by the DSLR / non DSLR 'argument'.

I would suggest a subject matter which may stimulate cross disciplines and encourage forum users to concentrate on perhaps funghi one month, emigrating birds another month, insects etc etc, then everyone gets a look in and hopefully broadens their portfolio and therefore general interests.

Its just an idea guys, but for me it would be great to have some guidance on what to look for at certain times of the year and the photography competitions 'rules' could cater for this.

[Tursiops]

Competition - good idea as long as there's a category for absolute beginners
T