Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2010: complaints taken 'seriously'

New rules should be announced as soon as the previous competition entry closes, so that anyone taking photos that year is on a level playing field. The subtext here is that the rule was changed without proper notification which seems very unfair. They would do well to delay its introduction by a year.

Agree with deltaflux!

I agree, utter madness... "a redesign of the contest's gallery at the Natural History Museum in 2009 prompted the increased demand for resolution" So I expect this means that all over the country if not the world we'll be seeing the removal of all those works of photographic art with a dimentions less than a 10MP, sorry chaps you've all lost the plot in the compertions department.It would be interesting to know what anyone from the National History Museum has to say on the matter. Bring to boil, simmer and stir occasionally.

I was considering buying a D3s, but its a mere 2meg over whats now deemed acceptable. should i put of buying it and wait for the next up grade in a year or two, im confused. In the days of film, were there rules to say that you had to use ISO 100 filmand not anything faster?. are we now not judging a photo but the camera we took it with?.

I was also surpised by the amount of MP's were neeed just to enter. I have a D70S...so my picture couldn't be entered.

That being said poor photograhers ( or lots of money ) photographers can't afford the cost. Was it listed the same for the youth devision. If so I guess they're were not many entries.

The one thing I Did like was that scanned images could be entered..even if taken with A Nikon SLR F100; and digitally scanned such as a slide or photo.

Can someone please confirm that the resolution or quality from an 18 meg camera using ISO 1600 is better than an 8 meg camera shooting at ISO 100 or that the quality from an 18 meg camera using a short zoom kit lens at the widest end is better than a fixed lens of the same length with an aperture of f8. We can go on trying to make comparrisons and obviously there is a need for a tiebreaker but that surely should be the subject matter and interest and not necessarily quality when the difference is minimal. I thought we had long since left behind the days of some pedantic judge disqualifying a photograph because when he examined it through an 8 x loupe one petal of crocus 56 in a bunch of 75 was out of focus. If the competion is about quality of print then bring back the old Ilford Print of the year competition. Content and its interest has to just outweigh quality if the quality is acceptable. See what your photograph is worth if its a 1meg shot but the only one of the assasination of Prince Charles. Come on technophobes and arty tarties how often are we told its not the equipment but the end result that counts

If you have a great image. this is what you do. Get a file from someone else who has a suitable resolution camera. copy your image onto the file in Photoshop or similar. scale the image to fill the frame. Delete the background layer. Save the image and he presto it has the camera info from the higher resolution camera.

that'll stuff em!

Re Brian Dicks The idea won't work as you are required to submit the original raw file if you get to the final stage of judging.

I think this is rediculous, for a competition that has a reputation to re-gain, this isn't the best way of going about it. For years I have been using a canon 30D, images from which I have had made up to canvases as large as 46 x 34 inches and have still been pin sharp, but this rule means that I can no-longer enter these images, however I could go out and take a photo on my compact digital (that doesn't take RAWS) and enter that. This is not helpful to up and coming or talented photographers. There is little or no difference in an 8.2 and a 10 megapixel camera. Ultimately, it should be about the images not what you can afford to buy. They made a big song and dance about the new rule of no captive animals, but kept this one quiet, you cannot expect everyone to run out and buy brand new cameras with only a few months to get images for the comp. A lot of photographers work very hard, spending hours in the field to get some amazing shots only to now be told sorry your images are not eligible due to the number of megapixels your camera has. No wonder they extended the deadline by a few days.

Seems the competition should be renamed...say Exhibition Display Photographer of the Year....I read only comments relating quality to size.... surely even the organiser of a commercial venture, as this competition has become, must realise size isnt everything.

Can anyone tell me why DNG images are not acceptable in this comp and only proprietary raw files are ?

Let me clarify the above statement. If you get to the prize winning stage, the comp requires you to submit the prorprietary raw image( from my understanding of the rules). I convert to DNG in the early part of my workflow so I don't have the camera's own raw files anymore. I don't understand why the DNG is not acceptable. Can someone enlighten me?

I have no plans to enter this competition but I suppose it's the old a good big one is better all over again. There is one point though perhaps about RAW and DNG. I like to use DNG because I'm tired of finding my software won't match my current RAW files. However I don't want to lose the RAW so I'm converting to DNG including the original RAW file - the embed original - . This might do the trick

Thanks for that. I'm still not sure why a DNG won't suffice, it's big enough for anything they would want to do. Do you think that you lose any quality or information when you convert to DNG? Can the raw e manipulate and the changes saved when converted to DNG? I just don't understand the logic.

i think this is a rediculous rule iv'e never entered the competition and both cameras i own are 10mpx and above but one thing is blatently clear pixel resolution has nothing to do with a well taken photograph as for enlarging photographs for large prints have they never heard of interpolation there's some very good software out there that makes pixel doubling virtually indistinguishable from the original ok it's not the best argument in the world but it's a solution

Preposterous decision. What is this? A deal with camera companies for selling more? Do you know what? Hack the EXIF and change it to whatever you want and then upsize the photo. Simple as that.

Reply to Pengu01: They insist on the proprietary raw format because of the rules on image manipulation. You're allowed to adjust white balance, saturation, curves etc., but you're not allowed to clone out the empty beer can floating in the pond next to the heron. I don't know about all raw converters but certainly with Lightroom I can clone out distractions and then export the image as a DNG. Mind you, having done that I can then rename the .dng file to .nef and Lightroom will still import it and open it without batting an eyelid.

Also, for the 2009 competition and I assume it was the same this year, they would accept images shot in jpeg or tiff originally. No way to tell if they've been manipulated beyond what's allowed.

What about us Pentax users that use DNG as the default raw format!! I've always used DNG in preference to PEF to avoid any software compatibility problems. Then when I import the images into LightRoom I re-encode to compressed DNG to save a wedge of disk space. Strikes me that these guys have not thought this through too much.

>>However, “all other factors being equal more megapixels will produce a better enlargement at large sizes. They have to draw a line somewhere.”

No they don't have to draw a line.

In reply to bigtench. The rules state that if your camera shoots DNG then it's fine.