Photography News Issue 52

Photography News | Issue 52 | photographynews.co.uk

CameraClubof theYear in associationwith

Welcome to Round 4 of this year’s epic competition for all UK camera clubs. This month’s contest theme is about great light – and nothing but great light Camera Club of the Year 2017-18

Words byWill Cheung

There are plenty of contests, salons and challenges for camera clubs and photographic societies that get huge support – and rightly so because they challenge their members and there’s the chance of glory. Our Camera Club of the Year contest is a serious challenge, and those five clubs that qualify for the final shoot-out in the spring of this year will have to face something very different if they are to walk off with the title. ‘Daunting’, ‘stressful’ and ‘scary’ were some of the words used by the members of New City Photographic Society before going on to win last year’s shoot-out, capturing images with a range of Fujifilm camera equipment. To win, your club first has to qualify for the final by coming top of the pile in one of the five monthly rounds. Once we know the five finalists, the details of the shoot-out will be released simultaneously to them. Your club’s competition secretary (or whoever is going to enter each month) must sign up at photographynews.co.uk. Terms and Social networking plays a huge part in modern life and is a key need for many people who love to get their images online as soon as possible. Camera makers like Fujifilm obviously have a big role to play in this, so we are seeing more and more products with wireless connectivity for fast image sharing. The Fujifilm X-E3, for example, has the sort of feature set that we will see more of. It boasts the sort of exciting attributes you would expect of a Fujifilm X Series camera: the X-Trans CMOS sensor has a 24-megapixel resolution, there is a class-leading EVF, the monitor has touch functionality including touch AF and touch shot – all in a small, neat camera body. It has great connectivity, too, and is the first Fujifilm camera with Bluetooth capability. Before you can connect up, you need to install the free Fujifilm Camera Remote app from the App store or Google Play – it’s compatible with many Fujifilm cameras, not just the X-E3 – and then pair up the camera with your smart device. Now images can be reviewed and transferred to your device and from there uploaded to your favourite networking site, and all in a few seconds. Image browsing and transfer is just one of the Camera Remote app’s skills: turn geotagging on and it is possible to download location data from About Fujifilm

conditions are also available on the website. Any club or group is eligible to enter so long as there are at least five members. Online groups, internal company clubs and those clubs not affiliated to the PAGB are eligible to enter. Once you have signed up, go to ‘Members’ on the top menu bar and you will see ‘CCOTY’ (Camera Club of the Year 2017-18) on the drop- down menu. Select that, then register your camera club and followtheupload instructions. JPEG files should be at least 1500 pixels on the longest dimension and, preferably, in the sRGB colour space. A club can only enter one set of five images and the five images must be from five different members. Failure to enter five shots will mean the missing shot(s) scores zero points, so it is crucial to enter the full number of images. After the closing date, each picture will be scored out of 20 points by the experts at Photography News and the highest scoring club will qualify for the final. In the event of tied scores, for those two clubs we will ignore the

highest and lowest scores and average out the three remaining scores – the club with the highest averaged score wins. If scores are still tied, all five scores will be averaged out. When the issue with that month’s result is published, the scores for every picture entered will be published on the website and each member can see howwell they have done. There is no monthly prize apart from qualifying for the final shoot-out, and once a club has qualified for the final it need not enter again. Of course it can do so for the challenge and pictures will still be scored, but there is no

reward for winning in this instance. In effect, because each monthly contest is self-contained, ie. it is not a league systemover the period of the contest, you do not have to enter every month – perhaps it is a theme the club is less strong at. Clearly it makes sense to give yourself as many winning chances as possible, however. So, good luck. Read the entry details again, check out the theme and start gathering your entry. Qualify for the final and your club could be joining us for a very special photography event, with the title of Camera Club of the Year 2017-18 to be won.

X-E3

a smartphone and save it with your shots. And as the app’s name tells you, you can adjust camera settings, including exposure compensation, ISO and Film Simulation modes, then compose and take shots wirelessly from your phone/tablet.

Above The FujifilmX-E3 boasts Bluetooth for wireless image transfer to your smart devices.