Federation

Plan/Strategy

Summary:

Setting a target of August 2007 for completion of at least one PDI event, 3 of 15 Federations (EAF, NIPA, NWPA) will not meet the target, and one (SPF) may not. The other Federations have varying experience, some of several years.

This enquiry was mainly about static PDI, but Federations also report that AVs have switched to digital, usually on an earlier timescale.

CACC

CACC has run its AV competition using digital projection for 3 years, and will not now accept AV in slides. In 2007 we will replace one slide competition within our Final/Exhibition day with projected digital, using the same equipment as for AV. There are no current plans to replace our slide championship (Warwick qualifier) or slide league (Rosebowl).  Mark Buckley-Sharp.  6/7/06.  See on CACC site for documented recommendations for PDI

EAF

At present the EAF does not have a strategy set out for organising digital events. However, the matter has been discussed generally and the Committee is keeping up-to-date with digital events held by Clubs within the Federation and also those organised by other Federations. Following the recent EAF Club Print Championship, at which we used video/digital projection for audience viewing, the question of projected image events is being discussed more widely.  Stan. Searle.  6/7/06

Update:  Cambridge CC in EAF has run a PDI event for several years, and this covers about 40 Clubs. Therefore there is significant expertise within EAF.  Feb-07

L&CPU

The L&CPU held an individual PDI competition in Mar-06, with over a 100 entrants and some 400+ images using PicturestoExe. We are actively looking at some bespoke software to do this.The event lasted 2 hours and ran trouble free. We are going to run the competition again in 2007, and then in 2008 we shall be holding a Club competition for PDI within the L&CPU Annual(Prints, Slides, and PDI). The rules haveyet to be finalised. The L&CPU will not be purchasing their own digital projector but would hire (possibly two) from the federated Clubs. I know of about a dozen Clubs who have or are going to hold PDI competitions in 2006. The format (jpg or tiff) and the type of projectors is still under some debate. Gordon Jenkins 12/9/6 (abriged by mbs)

KCPA

No formal response from KCPA. (by mbs 24/10/6). KCPA has been active in holding PDI events led by Roy Moore (Maidstone) and John Bowsher (Deal). These have attracted >600 entries.

MCPF

Currently we shall have slides and digital sections running in parallel, in two of our Federation Level Exhibitions, MidPhot and Photofolio. MidPhot qualifies authors to enter PAGB Photographic Distinctions. If, in the future, we find the majority of the work is entered into the digital section, then we may go over entirely to Projected Digital Images.

Our Slide Championship will remain as slides because it the qualifier for the PAGB Inter-Club Slide Championships at Warwick. Mary Jenkins 24/9/6 (abridged by mbs)

NCPF

In 2007 NCPF will introduce an Electronic Imaging section into their Annual Comps in April. In Sept. the 27^th International will be for Projected Images and will have a 4^th section added for E.I.  Jane Black.  21/6/06

N&EMPF

N&EMPF is running its first digital event in 2007. Open subject; colour or mono; any manipulation. Standards published for image size, file type, and filenaming. Peter Cheetham, 1/10/06

NIPA

Other than the annual Audio Visual Festival (next year will be the 3rd were digital will form the majority of the entry), we have not formally ran nor do we have any plans to run any digital competitions/exhibitions in the near future. The primary reason for this is one of logistics (i.e. finding individuals with the time to handle mixed media). At club level the opposite to the above is true with many of our clubs hosting internal and interclub competitions on a regular basis. In general our clubs are digital savvy, and without prompt from NIPA or anything at PAGB level they have established their own guidance. Most clubs now have their own digital projectors or easy access to same. Those with projectors range from 1024 by 768  LCD to the highend Royale. Ian Lyons (2/12/6) 

NWPA

At Federation level in North Wales there is no strategy as yet for the organisation of competitions involving projected digital images. A small number of clubs have now acquired projectors and are including PDI's in their monthly competitions. One club is thinking of organising an inter-club competition, but this is at the drawing board stage. Christine Langford, 27/10/06.

SPF

Like many Federations our Audio Visual Days have been combined Digital and Analogue presentations for the last two years. We have also, for a number of years, shown Digitally Projected video or stills images of our Print Championship original images. During the spring we purchased a Canon SX50 XEED Projector, for use at all future SPF Digtally Projected events. Our next Scottish International Salon (April 2007) will have an extra category of a separate Digital File section, (with the same range of awards as our current Slide Section) which will be run under PSA and FIAP patronage rules. We also have a subcommittee charged with drawing up basic guidelines for the Clubs, and they are also monitoring the situation of the downturn in slides, and increase of digital knowledge to assess when would be a good time to introduce either combined (Slide & Digital) or separate competitions - obviously the entry from Scotland into our International Salon will give us a guide on this. Libby Smith 3/11/06

SF

In March 2007 we are staging an Inter-Club Digital Image Competition, this will be held at Newbury. Ernie Fullbrook of NEWDIG is leading on the organisation. Many of our Clubs are now using PDI for competitions etc.

Lynn Lambeth, 29/9/6

(refer on this site to Notes section and Federations for draft specification document produced by SF.)

SPA

The SPA had a very successful day when they organised their first digital competition last October (2006). We asked for a club entry of up to ten images but prioritising the first six.  This was to safeguard us in case we didn't have many images to show.  As it turned out we had an entry from 25 clubs so we were able to show the first six images from each club. The images were put onto a CD in TIFF format at 1400pixels wide and sent to our organiser who arranged with our digital guru to put the images in random order onto a laptop for showing on the day.  All the images were prejudged and on the evening a quick comment on each image was given with the mark. Commenting on each image does depend on who one invites as the judge. As this was our first PDI competition no awards were given but I believe this will be rectified for the next one which we will be holding again this year in October/November (2007). Carole Speight 3/1/07.

WPF

The WPF have a fairly straightforward strategy towards Digital Images which we have followed for a couple of years and that is to allow no distinction between Slides and DI, those competitions that we are in control of are entered on the basis of "Projected Images" and all entries are projected and judged as one panel with the judges choosing the acceptances and awards on the basis of the images they see and not on the basis by which they were produced. This was carried out in our International Slide Salon which operates under PSA and FIAP patronage and operates in line with their conditions, we were lucky to have the Chairman of the PSA Standards committee at our 2006 event which he used in order to judge the effectiveness of using both styles of projection in a single competition and he agreed with our belief that this was practical and fair for all entrants. We have also converted our Annual Welsh Salon to the definition of Projected Images and that found acceptance by our members.

It is only the "Ace of Clubs" which is our entry vehicle for the PAGB Warwick competition that we retain as uniquely slides as that is the PAGB requirement we have to match - we are however finding reducing support from our Clubs for this format; most of whom have converted to DI projection; if this decline continues we may have no option other than to convert this event to "Projected Images" and then help the Clubs chosen for Warwick to pay for the cost of producing slide copies until such time as Warwick itself changes. We took this decision because we didn't want Slide workers to end up in a ghetto of reducing entries but to maintain their ability to enter competitions for as long as they wish - similar to the large format slides we used to support in our Salons until the faded away. Roy Thomas (3/12/6)

WCPF

WCPF ran its first Inter-Club Digital Imaging Competition on the 2nd April 2006, 32 clubs entered and 100 people attended (oversubscribed). The next event is to be held on the 25th February 2007 in significantly larger premises.  Mike Wheatley (2/12/6)

[Tech Note: Entries <=1024x768; jpg; compressed to max 350K; 25 per Club on one CD, with a filename convention specified.]

YPU

In the YPU we had a digital image competition day open to all YPU Club members in 2005 and 2004. There were so many entries we had to restrict each entrant to one image only. These were held in October but we have not held one this year (2006) as we are having a change in our annual exhibition.

From 2007 our annual exhibition will have a projected image section covering slides and digital images. Maximum entry is 6 images, of which no more than 3 can be digital but all can be slides. Howard Tate, 26/10/6.

BPE

(British Photographic Exhibitions is not a PAGB Federation but is a collective of national exhibition organisers, many/most of whom are based at PAGB affiliated Clubs.)

At an annual meeting (Sep-06), all of those attending either have introduced or intend to introduce additional digital section or sections. None is adopting the combined Projected Image approach or has plans so to do. However, everyone is looking at the quantity of slides submitted in the various sections and are wondering how long separate sections can remain viable without reductions in quality. Peter Young, 12/9/06,