Timothy Martin:
Noah Tingey:
It also has some corner stars that have been wrecked by blurx:
You have to be very careful with these types of judgments. These things could be real--a small, faraway PN or a tiny (from our vantage) reflection region. At this length of integration time, both things are quite possible--and over the breadth of this field and given it's location, almost inevitable. As for the noise in the background, I find that you just can't please everyone. The presence, amount, and character of noise that is deemed proper is all over the board and as best I can tell, there's zero consensus on it. In the end, for me, the best way to judge an image is by looking at what the photographer intended--the whole field. In this case, Jeff's image knocked my socks off. I hope he'll keep submitting it various outlets and contests. People need to see it.
My thoughts exactly. After all, most photography, even from the masters, such as Ansell Adams, etc. are judged by prints. It is only this sub field that seems to demand the ridiculous. Because these are digital images, I can see viewing these at full field on a large monitor, or say 2X on a smaller monitor, but only to establish that the field ought to work at a decently large scale. I have seen some landscape/asto images that are just absolutely stunning and would easily show up on any glossy magazine of mass consumption, yet when looking at the stars, corners, etc. are horrible at 600X because of all sorts of irrelevant issues. As long as these "defective" subjects add up to a perfectly stunning Milky Way, etc. so be it. But I think that for some images, the purpose of the image is to invite close scrutiny, and therefore the judges should make a sensible judgement as to when that matters. To me, the full field presentation (or just a bit more) should be the best way to do so.
Dark Matters Astrophotography:
In the past 365 days, only 208 of the IOTDs were unique users. That means ~43% of IOTDs are from users who have been awarded multiple IOTDs in the past year. Now I'm sure many of those are well deserved, but 43% is a lot. That's almost half. As someone who doesn't pay attention to these types of stats, I have to question the influence of nepotism among the judges at 43%. As you said in the FAQs, humans are involved, which means inherently the judging will be flawed.
For this post, I will only comment on the one point above. In the past, I had suggested that the IOTD be somewhat limited. That someone who is awarded an IOTD is thereafter restricted to a period of time where they are not eligible. Maybe months, or more. Even I shudder a bit at proposing this again, so I am not sure I can stick by this suggestion. But if it is really true that there are far more IOTD qualified candidate images than there are days in a year, then logically any of the ones that did not get awarded could have been selected without presumed damage to those who are ineligible to those who are in a blackout period, right? It offers the chance to get more people awarded. If that sounds sort of like socialism, yikes!
Now for other related comments:
What is clear is that those who have access to professional gear and location certainly have the ability to crank out many award winning images in a short period. However, that is
only true
if the judging parameters are heavily weighted toward that sort of image for whatever reasons. What extremely large aprature, longer focal length images can show, is some details and at the scale that most amateur optics simply cannot. But they are also extremely limited in field scale, essentially limiting many outcomes to very detailed, almost textbook like anatomy diagrams. Yes sometimes these
can make for fine art. But very often, and very soon (because of image presention/saturation) the danger could be that only the technical details of images will be the judging criteria. I also think that saturation of data by these pro rigs may just start falling out of favor. Example, a full-frame edge-to-edge image of the Whirlpool galaxy, is great. It is also a dime a dozen. On the other hand, a very sharp very widefield image of the same in a deep field of stars and other galaxies is a completely different wonderful! Only that can convey the scale and loneliness of the Cosmos. And the framing options are also much more free, especially if another galaxy is brought into the field. Given the two, I know which one I would vote for!
The statement above, about how the judging criteria putting pressure on the participants can be detrimental to the development of imagers here on AstroBin, especially to the newer members of the art, is that the judges' criteria becomes the driving force to those who seem to be here to win an award, some even stating that this their primary reason. Hence the vitriol that seems to arise in forums that discuss IOTD. What I've seen commonly, extremely commonly now, is the application of BXT (and other tools) in a manner that clearly is overdone. But what is obvious, in these images, the purveyor of the image is clearly trying to make their image look like images that had data collected from a professional rig, or even the Hubble! I often will look at the aperature of the scope to see if the image is even believable. But what depresses me is that I am seeing this more and more from not new astrophotographers, but from those who have been doing it for many years. Well that competition is only going to get more intense. For years, as a bit of a poke at those who have professional rigs, I have stated that the time will soon come when some will be able to afford rigs in orbit. Just to alert people here, TAIC just had a presentation on just that. With the lowering of costs to orbit, I suspect we will have someone do just that soon enough!
My solution to this has been to not participate in IOTD etc. I am here only because of my friendships that I have cultivated and for the possibility of finding others who have like interests. That said, I have no problem if there are those who do participate, or even if that is their sole reason for being in astrophotography. And I love seeing the IOTD, and now the notifications that images and imagers who I have liked have images selected for consideration in my alerts. All I suggest is that buyer beware! If one truely wants to excel at art, try to learn to develop your own art. Emulation is fine for a while, especially when learning the details of complex processing. But at some point, break away and do your own thing.
It would be appreciated if you would refrain from undermining the discussion with baseless off-topic claims, so we can all move forward and enjoy reviewing and discussing these images professionally and ethically.
