RUTHIN CAMERA CLUB Advice on entering Digital Projected Image Competitions.

Media to be used for submissions
Please put your image files (up to three per competition) onto either of the media listed below, for transfer to the Club computer. Put ONLY the images you want to submit onto the media, so that we do not have to sift through a lot of photos to find the ones you want to enter.  Files must only be JPG, and not Tiff, Raw or PSD.

USB Flash memory – this is the fastest and easiest to use.  You should consider buying one of these devices, they are so useful for transferring data between computers, and are cheaper than CD’s after a few uses. Windows sees them as an extra hard disk and you just “click and drag” to copy files to and from them. All media is handed back to you at the same hand-in evening.

CD-R.   Note that some CD writing software is “multi-session” write, and a computer other than the one used to write the CD may not be able to read it if a session is left “open”. The multi-session needs to be “closed” or “finalised” to make it readable on any computer, (follow the on-screen options on your computer, to do this). CD-RW is not acceptable because other computers (judges') may not be able to read it.

Naming the image files
The image files MUST be re-named by you to the following format:-
“Title_xxx”, where xxx is your member number. Your computer will add the correct file suffix (.jpg). Your member number (issued with your printed programme) is 3 sets of 3 digits. This allows you to have different numbers on each image in a competition, without the judge knowing that the author has entered more than one image.

Here is an example of an image named ready for a competition : Old stone bridge at sunrise_789.jpg

Size of Images and Files
Images must be sized to no larger than 1400 pixels horizontally by 1050 pixels vertically, this being the native resolution of our projector. Images smaller than this will be projected with a black background to fill the screen.

Your images remain with the club for a determined period at full resolution, and if selected may be used in battles against other clubs (still on club's computer) before being wiped from the club computer and any CD used for transfering images to judges. A thumb-nail low resolution copy of the image is then archived for club use if needed.

If you would like help with re-sizing your images, either generally for printing or for competitions please e-mail the webmaster on this site or ask a member in the club - if you like the style of some of our competition winners, I'm sure they would help you too.

Colour rendition, a note for experts
Most consumer cameras use “sRGB” colour space, but some photographers prefer the larger range of colours offered by Adobe RGB and their workflow may use this colour space. Be aware that an image in Adobe RGB colour space may have incorrect colour rendition when viewed on the computer used by the Judge. It is best to submit competition images in sRGB.

It would make this website more interesting if more images were 'given' to the site. Since internet browsers only display at 72 pixels/inch, an image of maximum 800 pixels high or wide would be welcome. As webmaster, I do not have access to competition images and rely on members' donations !