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Results and Interpretation >>>> View the Results Here <<<< Interpreting the Results This year's results were judged by five full-time professional photographers, all with reputations in the industry. The criteria of sharpness, highlight/shadows, and noise were all considerations, as opposed to last year's bake-off in which the scans were judged on sharpness alone. "There's so much more to scanning a good photograph" I kept hearing over and over... and it's true, so that's the reason for this year's approach. Keep in mind that judging on sharpness alone has pitfalls, thanks to the imprecise science of optics, sharpening software, and gamma. That's why I chose five pros to rate everything... they know their stuff. Something to note is the poor placement of some high-end scanners, and the higher placement of mid-range in comparison to last year. It does NOT mean this bake-off is flawed, but rather that operator skill playes a more important role in rendering a final image. Sharpness isn't everything! Numbers All five judges' ratings are averaged out for each entry, in addition to an "overall" score by the judge... all numbers having equal weight in the averaging formula. The highest possible rating is 40. None of the judges have seen other judges' ratings or remarks, so there was no "group mentality" or prejudging. Unlike the Olympics... ;-) All scan uploads, judging, and results presentation is thanks to a cgi-bin Perl system I programmed just for this purpose; it saved me hundreds of hours compared to last year. That's it - We're Done This will likely be the last year for the scanner bake-off, mostly because participation dropped somewhat from 2004. Which is odd, because the 2004 results page still gets up to 100 hits a day from all over the world. Perhaps if film scanners are still around in a couple years, I'll do this again. I'd like to thank all those that helped out, and escpecially the judges for contributing their time with no compensation. A big thank you to Darwin Wiggett, Mark Vitaris, Julian Ferreira, Dr. George N. Nyman, and Danny Burk. Please visit their respective web sites (click on their names...) and spend some time getting to know these great people. So go ahead and bookmark this site, and you have permission to link to anything in the bake-off area if you wish, as I plan on being around for a while... this bake-off has turned out to be a reference site for many. It's been my pleasure putting all this together the last couple years. Cheers, and happy shooting. Jim Hutchison p.s. No-one knew this, but the anonymous entry was mine. ;-) ...via Paypal. It's easy and secure. Thanks in advance! Typical Disclaimer Stuff |