Congratulations to all winers and place getters, the standard really does improve every year in leaps and bounds.
Re the rent-a-gear issue. I find myself swinging to and fro on this, being involved in both sides. Everytime this comes up new aspects appear.
Peter and Jase both give very convincing arguements, but I think it is just different perspectives that seperate them. The "knowledge" vs "skill" angle is interesting. I would place "skill" as important in the "value" of an image, "knowledge" not so much.
Ironically, the knowledge/skill divide is down to gear cost. With a PME/RCOS combo, with tools such as Pempro and Tpoint, and following manuals to the letter, proper set up is assured, and it stays that way after set up. Thats what you pay for, this is applied knowledge learnt from manuals, not so much a "creative" input.
Setting up a typical Meade/Celestron/EQ6/G11 on the other hand (for a comp entry), requires "skill" and constant tweaking and attention, results vary wildly with the amount of time and intuition applied, this effort is arguably "creative" requiring "skill".
The internet automation/renting aspect is irrelivant, its a technical interface, true, horrendously difficult (that I know for a fact
), but there is no image quality or creative or gear set up or image capture skill difference between a PME/RCOS/ST11K operated locally or via the internet. If it was set up by the imager, it only requires following manuals, a purely technical endeavour.
So, I would say that with entries that involve top shelf equipment such as the PME, wether its is self/locally set up and operated or rented is irralevent, basic set up is the same and well defined, its right or wrong, no creative input.
Equipement somewhat less than this requires skill that counts in an image evaluation, so Jase and Peter are both correct, some gear requires skill others require just RTFM, in the 1st instance it counts, in the 2nd, not.
Image processing and composition IMO is the real differentiator after the above is considered, so maybe it just gets to gear level, not wether it is rented or not.