FILM Photographer of the year

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excalibur2 said:
erm so what happens if you miss a month or two....are you disqualified?
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If I recall correctly you can enter as many or as few of the months as you like but as Cowasaki says you reduce your chances of winning the big prize :D
 
RaglanSurf said:
If I recall correctly you can enter as many or as few of the months as you like but as Cowasaki says you reduce your chances of winning the big prize :D
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Tough on the fair weather shooters in the UK ;) Also tough on colour shooters with 36 exp roll :) B/W shooters have it easy as in the past I either took a bit of film from a bulk loader or after a few shots from a roll, put the camera in a changing back with dev tank, and cut the film, pop in dev tank, cut new leader on film, then dev the film and all done in 1/2 hour.
 
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excalibur2 said:
Tough on the fair weather shooters in the UK ;) Also tough on colour shooters with 36 exp roll :) B/W shooters have it easy as in the past I either took a bit of film from a bulk loader or after a few shots from a roll, put the camera in a changing back with dev tank, and cut the film, pop in dev tank, cut new leader on film, then dev the film and all done in 1/2 hour.
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Now that's a good idea.
 
I'm not being deliberately awkward here, but frankly, if you can't dedicate the cost of a roll of film and processing to the first couple of months of the challenge then perhaps the challenge isn't your kind of thing.

In 2011 and the first half of 2012 I spent at least £20 on props pretty much every month - occasionally WAY WAAY more than that... It's my hobby, and I enjoy it, and it was worth every penny - even though I never recouped a red cent on it. I'm sure many others spent as much if not more in fuel/mileage on the vehicle getting to locations etc.

I'd dearly love to see people enter the competition - but if the cost of shooting film for the comp. is prohibitive for your personal circumstances, there's always digital (or not entering :shrug:)
 
TheBigYin said:
I'm not being deliberately awkward here, but frankly, if you can't dedicate the cost of a roll of film and processing to the first couple of months of the challenge then perhaps the challenge isn't your kind of thing.

In 2011 and the first half of 2012 I spent at least £20 on props pretty much every month - occasionally WAY WAAY more than that... It's my hobby, and I enjoy it, and it was worth every penny - even though I never recouped a red cent on it. I'm sure many others spent as much if not more in fuel/mileage on the vehicle getting to locations etc.

I'd dearly love to see people enter the competition - but if the cost of shooting film for the comp. is prohibitive for your personal circumstances, there's always digital (or not entering :shrug:)
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Well said that man.
 
TheBigYin said:
I'm not being deliberately awkward here, but frankly, if you can't dedicate the cost of a roll of film and processing to the first couple of months of the challenge then perhaps the challenge isn't your kind of thing.

In 2011 and the first half of 2012 I spent at least £20 on props pretty much every month - occasionally WAY WAAY more than that... It's my hobby, and I enjoy it, and it was worth every penny - even though I never recouped a red cent on it. I'm sure many others spent as much if not more in fuel/mileage on the vehicle getting to locations etc.

I'd dearly love to see people enter the competition - but if the cost of shooting film for the comp. is prohibitive for your personal circumstances, there's always digital (or not entering :shrug:)
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True what you say Mark, but the reason the "show us your film shots" is so popular is...... members are taking shots that they want to take. :)
 
TheBigYin said:
I'm not being deliberately awkward here, but frankly, if you can't dedicate the cost of a roll of film and processing to the first couple of months of the challenge then perhaps the challenge isn't your kind of thing.

In 2011 and the first half of 2012 I spent at least £20 on props pretty much every month - occasionally WAY WAAY more than that... It's my hobby, and I enjoy it, and it was worth every penny - even though I never recouped a red cent on it. I'm sure many others spent as much if not more in fuel/mileage on the vehicle getting to locations etc.

I'd dearly love to see people enter the competition - but if the cost of shooting film for the comp. is prohibitive for your personal circumstances, there's always digital (or not entering :shrug:)
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(y)
 
excalibur2 said:
True what you say Mark, but the reason the "show us your film shots" is so popular is...... members are taking shots that they want to take. :)
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Thats fine Brian - I'm all for people shooting what they want, when they want to, and enjoying the experience - all I'm pointing out is that the POTY isnt necessarily for everyone - either film OR digital shooters - there are always going to be people who just want to shoot what they want, and that's fine, but for anyone who IS seriously considering entering a free to enter competition that has some (IMO) excellent prizes, then they do need to invest certain amount of time, effort and yes a little money to get a good result.

And if you don't want to make that investment - that's cool - and the "show us..." thread isn't going to disappear, is it...
 
My plan is to keep a list of the themes in my wallet and if I see something that may fit one of the themes take the shot and see what comes out. If it doesn't work, meh. try again another time.
There may be occasions when I have to think of something specific but generally I should be able to come up with 12 shots in 12 months just by taking pictures regularly.

Andy
 
TheBigYin said:
I'm not being deliberately awkward here, but frankly, if you can't dedicate the cost of a roll of film and processing to the first couple of months of the challenge then perhaps the challenge isn't your kind of thing.

In 2011 and the first half of 2012 I spent at least £20 on props pretty much every month - occasionally WAY WAAY more than that... It's my hobby, and I enjoy it, and it was worth every penny - even though I never recouped a red cent on it. I'm sure many others spent as much if not more in fuel/mileage on the vehicle getting to locations etc.

I'd dearly love to see people enter the competition - but if the cost of shooting film for the comp. is prohibitive for your personal circumstances, there's always digital (or not entering :shrug:)
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My biggest cost will be buy a new scanner before the end of the month :LOL:

Think I will have to go for some one hour developing services for some of the films, can't be waiting for the post to come at the end of the month and missing the deadline (unless film shooters have a little extra leeway to allow for development time??)
 
TheBigYin said:
Thats fine Brian - I'm all for people shooting what they want, when they want to, and enjoying the experience - all I'm pointing out is that the POTY isnt necessarily for everyone - either film OR digital shooters - there are always going to be people who just want to shoot what they want, and that's fine, but for anyone who IS seriously considering entering a free to enter competition that has some (IMO) excellent prizes, then they do need to invest certain amount of time, effort and yes a little money to get a good result.

And if you don't want to make that investment - that's cool - and the "show us..." thread isn't going to disappear, is it...
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No excuses for the guys in this film forum as it's so easy to enter comps now compared to the old days of producing a perfect print stuck on a stiff board neatly......it's only old farts like me that have lost the drive because of "been there done it" :crying: ....and the prints were like Christmas trees, once seen were thrown away (well eventually). :crying:
 
Basically the film section is a sub section of the main photographer of the year competition just like "non turbo" was for F1 for a couple of years or the different classes in rallying. Basically the overall rules are the same for everyone but some get switched for film where that is necessary. The cost shouldn't be prohibitive for anyone, technically you could shoot 3 images for each month over the next week and develop them all so the total cost would be about a fiver :D Seriously though if you are shooting 1 or 2 films a month then just allocating the end of a film to the competition shouldn't be an issue and you can take them out of sequence so if you see something for October then you could get that in March. Just remember that you can't then show us that image until AFTER October's results come out.
 
I've always found working to themes hard but i've got a few ideas, whether i actually get to shoot them or not is a different matter.
 
Working to themes is not particularly easy, granted. That said, with some pondering, it's not *that* difficult to bend the meaning of the title/theme to your own take. An idea I had the other day when looking at the competition themes for this year, specifically "parents", was that instead of taking the usual run-of-the-mill photo of a typical child/parent scene, why not take something like a seedling, just sprouting out of the ground, with a huge great tree directly behind it? With good composition and tasteful processing and choice of DoF, a photo like that would be hardly a stretch of the imagination in terms of link to the theme, and yet probably be fairly unique in the grand scheme of takes on that particular theme. I can see it now! tiny little sapling, just poking it's head through the ground, a few tiny leaves on it, surrounded by the slightly out of focus huge great oak in the background, touch of mist and the sun beaming through the oak. Got ages until that theme, so have enough time to find such a place yada yada yada.

Catch my drift? :D

p.s., sorry, that wasn't aimed at you Rob, just the point about working with themes reminded me of it :)
 
I managed to bend something like 6 themes far enough to get my "spooky gothic props" to be appropriate... it's all about interpretation and imagination in the first stages...
 
I seem to remember that one of the themes is "macro" (must remember to print them off/write them down!). I know there may be other interpretations, but has anyone any suggestion for cheap lens solutions for macro shots on a Pentax ME/MX?
 
Get a set of Pentax extension tubes, if not a Vivitar Series 1 70 - 210 f3.5 version 1 by Kiron (look them up and you will see what I mean) produces a nice 1:2 (half life size) macro in the macro mode and can be got for about £40 in K mount.
 
ChrisR said:
I seem to remember that one of the themes is "macro" (must remember to print them off/write them down!). I know there may be other interpretations, but has anyone any suggestion for cheap lens solutions for macro shots on a Pentax ME/MX?
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Pick yourself up a reversing ring, probably about a tenner on a well known auction site. Instant macro lens, manual only though.
 
RaglanSurf said:
Pick yourself up a reversing ring, probably about a tenner on a well known auction site. Instant macro lens, manual only though.
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I clicked on that to say the same thing but you had already done it :D
 
Right I am getting excited about this comp, so I just read through the rules and for digital it would appear that Raw to Jpeg conversion PP is allowed and sharpening after resize is allowed. On the NO PP months, you can do RAW to Jpeg conversion and all that is associated with this and sharpen after resize and in other months you can do reasonable PP with cropping, straightening, colour correction, sharpening etc.

Then when I read the film section rules they do seem to change for people that have their film developed and scanned by a third party, which I read as, you cannot do anything once you get your scans back.Am I reading this the wrong way. When I get my negs and scans back am I allowed to do what all the other participants can or am I restricted to the scan I receive back and just post that as my entry.
 
medwaygreen said:
Then when I read the film section rules they do seem to change for people that have their film developed and scanned by a third party, which I read as, you cannot do anything once you get your scans back.Am I reading this the wrong way. When I get my negs and scans back am I allowed to do what all the other participants can or am I restricted to the scan I receive back and just post that as my entry.
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No one can tell if it's a home dev and scan OR done by someone else ;)
 
excalibur2 said:
No one can tell if it's a home dev and scan OR done by someone else ;)
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You can if you read the Exif and the scan is done by a commercial machine costing £00000,s (y)
 
excalibur2 said:
No one can tell if it's a home dev and scan OR done by someone else ;)
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Well, not many of us have Noritsu scanners! Appears in the metadata as "camera" I think, for many of my scans...
 
medwaygreen said:
Right I am getting excited about this comp, so I just read through the rules and for digital it would appear that Raw to Jpeg conversion PP is allowed and sharpening after resize is allowed. On the NO PP months, you can do RAW to Jpeg conversion and all that is associated with this and sharpen after resize and in other months you can do reasonable PP with cropping, straightening, colour correction, sharpening etc.

Then when I read the film section rules they do seem to change for people that have their film developed and scanned by a third party, which I read as, you cannot do anything once you get your scans back.Am I reading this the wrong way. When I get my negs and scans back am I allowed to do what all the other participants can or am I restricted to the scan I receive back and just post that as my entry.
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In post 10, S162216 (Sam) said much the same thing:

Minimal post production is quite ambiguous though to be honest and no PP will make it almost impossible to get a proper scanned image - any scanned negatives or slides will need to have curves/levels and sharpening at the very least to get a viewable picture as the scanned image will come out low contrast and soft; it is a well known fact that anything scanned needs to have some work done on it. If a commercial lab scan it then they will do a similar thing and likewise if you wet print and scan it then you have to select a contrast filter the for multigrade paper unless you want it to be dead low contrast.
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Cowasaki replied (post 11) :rules:

That is fine so long as the negative is available should anyone complain that there was an exessive amount of work done. Even with the digital images colour correction and sharpening are acceptable.
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So I'm planning to work by those rules. Somehow, given the standard of entries in the 52s, I don't think anyone's going to be making me take a drug test! :shrug:
 
Basically we are just trying to make it fair. If someone is downright underhand they might be able to get away with things but we are trying to set rules that are right for the competition. Dodging and burning for example whilst creating a print is a skilled technique so it is being allowed whereas dropping your image into photoshop isn't so skilled. I'm trying to create a film photographer of the year competition that finds the best person/one that worked hardest etc.

I am looking forward to the film entries :D
 
cowasaki said:
Basically we are just trying to make it fair. If someone is downright underhand they might be able to get away with things but we are trying to set rules that are right for the competition. Dodging and burning for example whilst creating a print is a skilled technique so it is being allowed whereas dropping your image into photoshop isn't so skilled. I'm trying to create a film photographer of the year competition that finds the best person/one that worked hardest etc.

I am looking forward to the film entries :D
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Thank you for the reply Darren, that clarifies the situation completely, I would not know how to go past the basic stages anyway:D

Richard(y)
 
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To remove the fuji info in the scan is so easy...............................once you bring the shot up in explorer, click properties, and at the bottom click on "remove properties and personal information" and away you go.
Well I couldn't be bothered altering anything and if I was to enter the competition I'll just do what I have been doing most times for years (as home scanning is boring) i.e. A supermarket does the dev and scan and I adjust the scan to my liking as it's usually too bright, sometimes too vivid and sometimes too much contrast....if it's against the rules then that's that.
 
I look forward to attempting to complete a full set of images for this competition - I might need to withdraw my participation in the other "12" section, but this sounds more fun. I think I have a Macro lens somewhere...
 
edmundator said:
I look forward to attempting to complete a full set of images for this competition - I might need to withdraw my participation in the other "12" section, but this sounds more fun. I think I have a Macro lens somewhere...
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What camera system are you using ?
 
s162216 said:
Get a set of Pentax extension tubes, if not a Vivitar Series 1 70 - 210 f3.5 version 1 by Kiron (look them up and you will see what I mean) produces a nice 1:2 (half life size) macro in the macro mode and can be got for about £40 in K mount.
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Aha... I've got a very old Tamron 85-210 with a "Macro" setting, I now remember! I've never attempted to use it before... it appears to be not strictly macro, but close.

I've also bought a 3x "close-up filter", not sure if this is a great idea, but it's simple to drop into the bag. Took a shot today, but of course it'll be a week or so before I know if it's horrible! And...

RaglanSurf said:
Pick yourself up a reversing ring, probably about a tenner on a well known auction site. Instant macro lens, manual only though.
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Will possibly get one of these as well! Thanks folks!
 
ChrisR said:
Aha... I've got a very old Tamron 85-210 with a "Macro" setting, I now remember! I've never attempted to use it before... it appears to be not strictly macro, but close.
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The word 'Macro' on most zooms is a bit of marketing really, most of the time they don't even do 1:4 of life size, the one I mentioned is a little exceptional as it does actually reach half life size and can be taken up to 1:1 with a short extension tube.
 
cowasaki said:
What camera system are you using ?
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A mixture of Pentax Spotmatics, Olympus OM10 & OM4Ti and a Yashica T4. The Spotmatics get the most use, although I'm buying a few more OM Zuiko lenses.
 
I'd love to make 12 prints for this but with a newborn I'm going to struggle to make one print. Good luck to those of you entering and well done to the powers that be for coming up with the separate film comp.
 
Kev M said:
I'd love to make 12 prints for this but with a newborn I'm going to struggle to make one print. Good luck to those of you entering and well done to the powers that be for coming up with the separate film comp.
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They don't need to be prints. Scanned negs will suffice:D
 
I loaned my scanner to a friend. Besides, I hate scanning negatives with a passion!

Still, I might be able to make the odd print throughout the year to post.
 
I've never entered a photography competition of any description, and have decided now is the time.

Going to go film rather than digital, as it's my first love.

I will certainly fall into the 'it's not the winning....it's the taking part that is important' category. But will be fun and a good motivation to get out and try something different.
 
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