Online IIS gallery

[davidpretorius]

Not sure if Mike is planning this, but is anyone interested in posting every image we do to a central gallery section instead of those lovely images getting lost in threads. I am happy for it to be hosted on my servers. I would write a little program to allow voting on which is best image for the month etc.

Some feedback would be great and also some thoughts on how we catalog it.

ie
solar system
---->mars
---->jupiter etc
dso
---->nebulas
-------->NGC1234 etc
---->clusters
-------->NGC1234 etc

We need novices to quickly navigate to the pictures etc

when submitting, i am thinking of splitting into three sections.

1. beginners shots
2. guys like me and asimov, some tracking and hand held camera, or no tracking and webcam / camera but not both
3. guys with dedicated long exposure equipment, striker, eddie etc

need to have as a minimum for a submitted photo
seeing
transparency
scope
mag
camera settings
processing software

etc

it will be database driven, so anyone can query the database ie give me a list of the images taken of saturn using a barlow on a standard dob with a toucam etc

the site can hang off mine http://precons.com/iis/imagegallery or something like it, or i am sure we can get the iis website to redirect to this.

any thoughts would be great

[ving (David)]

hmm... a "shot of the week/month" on the front page of IIS. members pics section yeah, why the hell not

[toetoe (Peter)]

I think thats a good idea Dave, even a sketch/drawing section.

[davidpretorius]

yes any image, break it up into clear techniques so everyone can feel that they have a fair go. they are not up against eddie. they can pitch themselves against similiar equipment etc.

also, for noobies, they can easily see what can and cannot be done

[TidaLpHasE]

Great idea Dave, all the tips and techniques will be easy to find and put into practice.....

[iceman (Mike)]

mojo and I are already planning an image gallery to feature the great images people post in threads.
Hopefully we'll get started on it in the next couple of weeks, but no timeline is set for delivery at this stage.

We're tossing up using a freely available php image gallery and integrating with the site and/or forums, or writing our own to scrape the image attachments and display them as a gallery. Anyway, more info as it comes to hand.

[davidpretorius]

cool Mike, let me know if you want any help with a database driven version you can query etc. happy to write for free

also if space ie image size is an issue, happy to put them on my servers for free

[iceman (Mike)]

No probs, thanks for the offer Dave.

Disk space won't be a problem but thanks anyway. The gallery is a fairly high priority as a next feature for the site so we'll hopefully get working on it sooner rather than later.

[Striker (Tony)]

Sounds like a great idea either way.....

I'm voting for Eddie's image....oh wait a minute it hasn't started yet....lol

[ving (David)]

i actually really like your eagle neb pic tony!.

oh yeah... we havent started

[rumples riot]

Sounds like a fab idea.

[avandonk]

Could you consider versions of pictures much larger than 150k, say the best definition produced about a limit of 5M, with a choice of smaller versions.

[Striker (Tony)]

I dont see the point to go anywhere near 5MB....maybe a few hundred KB's if your after a image in full rezolution.

I dont think too many would bother downloading such huge files for just 1 picture.

I have compressed some of my huge 23mb files down to 300KB keeping full rezolution and cant see much of a difference visualy.

5MB would quickly take up some serious drive space.

[asimov (John)]

Yeah, I must say I wouldn't bother downloading a file that size.