ACC WEBSITE HEADLINES October 2008, Vol. 1, Article 2
“Digital Competition Projected for 2009” by Mike Berner
Where did Digital Photography Competition begin? Well, it began with the first digital imaging device. In 1961 two men (George Smith and Willard Boyle) working at Bell Labs were trying to devise a new memory storage medium for computers. What they invented was the CCD (Charge Coupled Device) which would record images digitally. While it took them only about an hour to design the device, it wasn’t until 1970, nine years later, that they completed the development of the first solid state video camera. And by 1975 they had produced a unit suitable for broadcast TV. Fast forward to1981: Sony produces the first digital still camera called the Mavica. It recorded a 720,000 pixel image using a floppy disk as storage medium. Ten years later (1991) Kodak produced the first professional quality digital camera. It was called the Kodak DCS 100 and it was based on a highly modified Nikon F3. The camera back was modified to incorporate a 1.3 megapixel sensor, the motor drive was replaced with a unit housing the rest of the digital electronics, and the image storage unit was a separate device connected via a cable. We’ve come a long way since then; ten to twelve times as many pixels and self-contained removable storage media and all in a package the same size as professional quality 35mm film camera with performance to closely match film. For many years camera clubs and regional associations have been offering competition in print media and slides. This is still the predominant method of competing for prizes. We have four competitions each year with a very high level of participation frequently approaching 150 images. It was suggested that I poll the membership to find out how many are shooting digital and how many are still shooting film. I was amazed by the results. While there is one member who shoots only film (and most of that is B&W), I thought that there would be a lot of members like me who shoot primarily digital but love their film cameras and frequently use them. Boy was I wrong. There are only a few of us that do that. Far and away most of the members who responded, and I got an outstanding response level, are shooting digital and printing the images for competition. We are about to embark on a program including digital competition. We started about a year ago when someone mentioned a computer program to one of our co-presidents and he asked me to look into it. The program was called PhotoContest Pro and we purchased it and did a lot of experimenting. It proved to have some serious limitations. At about the same time, CACCA, our regional association of camera clubs also began looking at digital competition. We mentioned our experience and the people in charge of digital at CACCA contacted the creator of PhotoContest Pro to see if necessary modifications could be made to accommodate our regional scoring system. Unfortunately the answer was that it would have to be completely rewritten and that was not practical. In the meantime the CACCA team had been experimenting with a different digital competition program called ClubViewer. It has a much more dificult user interface, but it did most of what we needed to run competitions our style. Also, it could be modified to conform to CACCA requirements without a complete rewrite. Where do we stand today? There are a lot of issues regarding projecting digital images, none the least of which is related to projected image size and device (computer and projector) calibration. PPI (pixels per inch – display media) and DPI (dots per inch – print media) are not the same thing but a discussion of that is beyond the scope of this article. However, it has been decided that for digital image competition the maximum image width will be limited to 1024 pixels, and the maximum image height will be limited to 768 pixels. The reason for these restrictions is that projection equipment capable of higher resolution is prohibitively expensive. What’s next? Well, we are preparing for our own Digital Projection Competition in the near future, probably in spring of 2009 or at the very latest autumn. And in March of 2009 we will be hosting a CACCA Digital Imaging Competition.
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It used 2 CCD’s; one stored luminance data and the other stored chrominance data. Interestingly it was really not a still camera but a video camera that took a single frame at a time. Today most good quality digital still cameras use a CMOS chip (Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor) for imaging because they are lower in noise and use very little power. 
Arlington Camera Club