Shaftesbury Camera Club

UPDATE Nov 2018: Noted High contrast edges, e.g. trees against sky, were showing a halo similar to oversharpening.  Reduced BrillColour from 8 to 1, well below the as-delivered setting of 6.  Also reduce Brightness from 1 to -3 to respond to comments about overall brightness: still able to see 1% step patterns near 3% and 97%.

UPDATE Mar 2018: Noted Reds were dull & biased towards brown. Adjusted R hue and sat a touch, and increased BrillColour and Sharpness.  We also now have a test image and reference print from Marrutt.  Settings as at Nov 2015 except as amended in colour…

This projector is a 4200 Lumen 1920 x 1080 pixel high definition projector.  It has a x1.5 zoom lens that facilitates quick image resizing so that we can use the full 6 foot wide screen for either 1920×1080 (16:9) or 1400×1050 (4:3) projection.

The main settings “as delivered” and as we have currently set for PDI are tabulated below.

Important note!  Just because you’ve checked these using (say) HDMI as input, they won’t necessarily be right when using a different input source such as VGA!!!

Aspect ratio & Zoom lens…

• The native resolution is 1920 x 1080 pixels which is a Full HD 16:9 format.
• If the projector is positioned with minimum zoom to fill our 6 foot screen, then the zoom can be increased until a 1400 x 1050 image also fills the screen.
• The projector has been pre-loaded with a SCC test target so this, focussing and general alignment can all be completed before any video cables etc are attached.

Compatibility with Samsung laptop video chipset

• The Samsung inbuilt display is (like the majority of medium cost laptops) limited to 1366 x 768 pixels so projecting the desktop simultaneously on both laptop and EH415e will not prove satisfactory.  There are two alternative options…
• 1)  Only use the projector and disable the laptop display by using either “Windows key” + “P” or mouse right click on Desktop background to select Screen Resolution and choose Multiple Display = Show desktop only on 1.  The laptop should then drive the projector at its native 1920×1080 resolution.  Main disadvantage of this is that it is difficult to view the keyboard (e.g. scoring) in a darkened room.
• 2) Use the dual display capabilities of the laptop video chipset by choosing Multiple Display = Extend these displays.  You can then check that laptop is “1” and the projector “2” using the Identify button: generally 2 is to the right of 1 but if this is inconvenient, you can drag and drop to swap the two screens over.  If a third screen appears, select it and then choose Remove this display from the drop-down list.
• With dual displays, you can drag and drop programme windows using the conventional top bar of any window between the two screens.

Dicentra Dual screen facility

• Recent updates to Dicentra have improved how it handles dual screen environments.  Version 4.6.107 now detects dual screen with two pop-ups asking for one to be dragged to the projector screen and one to be dragged to the laptop.  Note that some Dicentra pop-ups may appear on the projected image while others appear on the laptop.
• When running a competition, it can be helpful to open an empty text document on the laptop display to provide some keyboard illumination.
• As Dicentra has to be set up during the Competition Rules with the projected image size, unfortunately it is not then possible to properly preview or practice the competition on the laptop alone as about 12% is lost from both the top and bottom of the image – but you can at least check image order, titles etc.  As a work-around, there is an icon on the desktop PREVIEW DICENTRA COMPS that opens to give a shortcut to the internal Dicentra folders that with care can be  browsed as a slideshow.
• For more details on dual screen and Dicentra, read an up-to-date User Manual (Chapter 10).

MAC HDMI Video Colour Spaces…     (added 11/1/16)

• Our Windows PCs output RGB16-235 colour space for HDMI inputs as it recognises the projector as a monitor.
• However, Macbooks apparently recognise any 1920×1080 HDMI device as a video product and accordingly default to a YCbCr colour space (the digital equivalent to YUV) which results in an unusable image.  Two options exist if this happens:-
•    a) Use VGA cable
•    b) Change the Colour Space on the projector under Menu/Image/Colour Space to either Auto or YUV

Dicentra Workflow for internal Competitions (E.g. Shuffell, PDI of the Year)
[Team (eg LvG) or Inter-Club Comps need a different workflow!]

Status: 1st draft Dec 2015

1.  Dicentra Organiser Plus  – DOP  [One day may be integrated into Dicentra]
Rules/New  Create comp name e.g. “Shuffell Trophy PY2 Dec15”
Closing Date same as Comp Date
Images  2pp,  1400×1050 for new projector
Randomise Every Round
Files     Seq No_Image Title_Full Name
Variations    just ignore
Scoring   (ensure half mark is ticked!)

2. DOP  Process/Organize
Browse to Dropbox via Desktop
Hopefully there won’t be any wrongly named files, esp names with missing/extra spaces/etc!
This creates Folder “Comp Name OUTPUT” somewhere on Desktop with jpgs renamed as 01_Image Title.jpg organised into sub-folders by entrants full name: hence need for their names right!!!

3  Dicentra main programme [Rules should already be there]
Select comp from dropdown list
3.1 Setup/Load Entries…
Browse to “Comp Name OUTPUT” on Desktop, select any one entrant folder
Tick “Set All” & Select
3.2 Setup/Make Competition…
3.3 Test by… Competition/Run Comp   Ignore wrong screen size
If happy….
File/Reports/Printable Reports/Blank Scoresheet
Don’t Split into Rounds
Scoresheet is on Desktop as .rtf file

For Notes on using dual screen when projector connected, see Comp Admin on website.

SCC have been developing better ways to select images to represent our Club in external competitions.  The traditional method has been to appoint a small Selection Committee which rather isolates the rest of the club from both the selection process and the subsequent competition.  What we are now doing is to try to use the power of the internet to allow the whole membership to participate fully in the selection and to email us with their own personal votes.  These will then be processed by an automated spreadsheet to generate our list of print or PDI titles.  The first version of the spreadsheet allowed us to have up to 9 people selecting and we have stretched this to cater for up to 30 members.

The outline process is as follows:-

1) All candidate images (normally high-scoring ones from internal competitions during the previous 12 to 18 months) are numbered together with their scores, titles, and author, and these are stored in Dropbox.  An invitation containing a link to the Dropbox images is emailed to participating members.

2) The participating members then email the numbers of their selected images back to us.  We don’t need any order of preference, titles or anything else.  Just a list such as   6, 9, 14, 16, 17, 22, 38, 44, 45, 48 is perfect as we can enter these into our spreadsheet by copy and paste rather than having to retype.  (You can also ring us with your list if really necessary.)

It is important that members do not deliberately include or exclude their own or their partners images: all images should be fairly considered in the context of the competition and other candidate images.  Also be aware of the need not to exceed the maximum number of images from any one author.

3) The spreadsheet then computes the total votes and lists the images in descending order.  The adjudicator then checks the list (e.g. in case there are too many images from one author, or there are too many similar images) and makes any final adjustments before compiling the club’s official competition entry.

  If you wish to play with the spreadsheet (which is still being refined), you can download a copy by right clicking and saving this link… Multijudge Mk3_Blank_Oct14  .  It has been developed in Excel 2003 so should work on later versions.  As we use LibreOffice (the totally free alternative to MS Office) on the club laptop, we intend to create a version for this also.  The spreadsheet has three tabs at the bottom: one for entering votes, one for the results, and one with some notes and instructions.  Any comments are always welcome.

Chris

These files are used to create competition print labels in association with Word (tested on v 2003).

Crib list for labels for print competition

label Print of Y 13-14

Pof Y prints

In brief:

1. Place 1400×1050 copies of images in Internal Comp or External Comp folders on desktop & use these to compile any new competition in Dicentra.
2. Archive copies after home competitions extracted from Dicentra (1024×768) in Scored PDI folder.

To archive after home competitions:

1. Export competition from Dicentra with marks at beginning, Title and Author,

e.g. (007.0)_Surfing_Karen Green.jpg

2. Put into a folder with name of competition date and Underscore Subject (e.g. Shuffell PY2 Jan14_Street) under Scored PDIs. Delete the slideshow and thumbnail folders, transfer the images into the parent folder and delete the image folder.  For external competitions delete other club’s entries.

3. Select all, open in Faststone, batch convert and rename *_$P (don’t resize or any other options!).  Output into a working space sub-folder in the flat file folder.

4. Copy 8.5 and over into the appropriate folder, move all the images into the flat file so these can be easily reviewed when selecting high scoring images in any future external competitions.

updated Mar14

The SCC projector settings are available as a pdf file Projector EX615 Settings_v2 and were fully updated in Jan 2013 to reflect the changes made in November 2013.

For easy reference, the main settings are reproduced here… Continue reading →

The principal keyboard and mouse commands used in the DiCentra PDI Competition software are shown in the attached image.  A version of this is attached to the “mouse mat” in the laptop carrying case.