Recap August 29 Social Potluck Meeting

The August 5th Thursday meeting was a social potluck meeting with approximately 13 people attending. There was a slideshow of members’ photos, announcements by Clay Leben and Mark Laussade, and a raw development software comparison demonstration by Verlon Smith. We has lots of great food including three pizzas brought by Clay.

Meeting Format Changes – Clay Leben

Clay described the changes which are going to be made to the normal monthly meetings.

The club members have expressed a desire to have all their submitted photographs critiqued, so the September 5 meeting has no speaker in order to allow a full meeting for these critiques. If this change proves popular, the upcoming 3rd Thursdays will have a guest speaker presentation and/or tutorials and the 1st Thursday meetings will be reserved for competitions.

There was a discussion on whether these 1st and 3rd Thursday meetings should be open to the public or for members and guests only. No decision has been made (yet).

Competition Changes – Mark Laussade

Mark described the changes to the photo competition. The Competition Committee will introduce a 4-member jury panel (3 jurors and an alternate) to critique and score the September submissions. Three judges will submit a score for each photo, and one of these three judges will give a critique. The fourth judge is an alternate used for photos which belong to one of the other judges. In other words, the judges will not judge their own photos.

Mark has purchased three keypads which will be used by the judges to automatically score each photo. Mark also has new competition software which will rank the photos according to the judges’ scores.

Each month the jury will be recruited from the club’s most winning and experienced members.

Mark mentioned a web site which contains “the 12 elements of a Merit Image”. The 12 elements explained on this page can help everyone take and process better photos. The judges will use these elements to evaluate the competition photos. The web site can be found by clicking here.

Raw Development Software Comparison – Verlon Smith

Phil Hawkins gave an excellent lecture on August 15 on using DxO Photolab to process raw images. Verlon was curious how DxO compared to other raw processors, so he conducted an experiment with other software programs including:

• Apple Photos
• On1 Photo Raw
• Luminar 3
• DxO PhotoLab2
• Capture 1 Pro 12

Verlon has provided a PDF with the details of his experiments. Download the PDF file from the next paragraph to see his opinions, results, and recommendations.

Member Slideshow

The slideshow highlighted NAPfS members’ work. All members were welcome to participate, regardless of award status (or not) from previous meeting contests.  Six people submitted 21 photos:

• Carol Acurso (4)
• Clay Leben (4)
• Daniele Gambassi (4)
• Ed Peet (4)
• Mark Laussade (4)
• Nagaraju Gajula (1)

Here are the 21 photos: