Camera clubs and covid-19

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Dominic
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Hi all.
I was just wondering how everybody's camera clubs are moving forward in these covid-19 times.
It's our closed season at the moment, but we restart in September (allegedly).
We are trying to gauge the probable attendance with emails to the current members. We are also trying to jig the program to include more outings, where social distancing will be easier.
We are only a small club, 30-40 members and have the space in our hall to keep our distance.
 
I’m not in a traditional club as such, but I am in a group that meets monthly. We’re going to continue to meet on Zoom for the foreseeable as we bring along prints for discussion and critique. Given that a big part of this is getting close up to prints and handling them, we can’t make it work like we normally do and a number of people are over 70 or shielding. We’re going to continue to monitor it on an ongoing basis.

As an aside, I have done a number of talks to clubs over Zoom and have one coming up on 2nd September so looks like the virtual stuff will continue for a while yet. This is understandable given the typical demographic of camera clubs which in my experience tends to be 60+.
 
My club has 120 members so little chance of achieving the separations in the hall which has not yet opened anyway. We now have a full programme of Zoom lectures and competitions up to the end of the year and hope to revert to using the Hall in 2021. Our Federation have listed the many presenters and judges who are happy to work by Zoom. One thing to note that you could choose a presenter or judge from much further away as no travel is involved. The biggest casualty will be prints as they require manual handling. I only hope that this does not kill prints permanently. A few weeks ago we had an inter-club competition by Zoom with another club in a different part of the country which worked well.

Dave
 
One thing to note that you could choose a presenter or judge from much further away as no travel is involved.

This has been quite liberating - I’ve given Zoom talks to 2 clubs in the East Midlands, somewhere that is way to far for me to travel normally. I still prefer doing them in person, but not having to drive 30-60 minutes (or more) each way like I do normally is much more convenient.
 
We've adopted Zoom in our club. I use it for work and the comparisons between colleagues' behaviours and that of club members is eye-watering.

We have been able to keep the programmes going into the summer, but it has played havoc with the Print analysis competitions. Judging and Presenting by externals has gone down very well. The only loss is the break-time banter.
 
Thank you to for taking the time to reply. It's seems that zoom is becoming an ever more popular way to keep clubs going. We have discussed this, but the there wasn't much enthusiasm for it.
 
Local club has used zoom or a variation with digital images pre sent to a judge. Another club has 4 talks scheduled for september and is opening then up to non-members again via an online option
 
It's been difficult getting members to embrace zoom in our club. We've set up a members area in the website and self judged some competitions. This week our chairman will judge in a zoom meeting for the first time and we'll see how it goes. I hosted a quiz to try and break the ice with it, so we got a few members on board.
 
We closed early, normally April but early March this year. We're suppossed to be back in Septmeber but I don't think it will happen. There are some Webinars and Zoom chats planned but that's it.

A good year for a sabbatical me thinks.
 
Thank you to for taking the time to reply. It's seems that zoom is becoming an ever more popular way to keep clubs going. We have discussed this, but the there wasn't much enthusiasm for it.

We know it will not be popular for some of our members but this will not stop us running the events for the majority. We have only one member who is technically unable to deal with Zoom and hopefully a young relative living with the member may sort this. Some of the rest will be reluctant because they want to meet their friends live but they will need to understand that it is not possible and they will have to adapt. One of the issues is that many do not use the right platform. You do really need at least a Laptop and for a presentation or competition is quite feasible to connect to a large TV screen.

Dave
 
I imagine a good many camera club members will be reluctant to be out and about.
If my local club is anything to go by where most of the members are rather ancient.
 
Sounds like most clubs are the same. Mine included. We have around 40 members.
They set a forum up and we have zoom meetings and the normal comps. Average turn out is 15 members.

Gaz
 
Use Breakout Rooms?
We do in work, but in the camera club such things as video telecons are a new thing and we still are learning the technology - you can tell it is new for most members as they haven;t quite mastered the fact that their 'behaviours' stand out quite a lot in Zoom, or they haven't set their camera properly....
 
Being more serious now I do wonder if some clubs have had their mainly elderly membership depleted by the virus.

I gave up going to my local club a couple of years ago, at the time I was in my fifties and one of the youngest there.
 
I'm not a member of a camera club, but used to play guitar regularly, doing this together online with Zoom is not possible due to the latency issue, however we have maintained contact by meeting up on Zoom for a weekly chat which has helped maintain relationships.
 
We have just paid for a 12 month commercial Zoom license. So we will now be able to schedule our events and breakout rooms. For most of our events, we will only give the password etc. to members though we will still invite potential members to take part by accessing our website, FB or Twitter account. We also hope to encourage members by considerably reducing the subs this year. We are also fortunate that not all our members are old and the knowledge and enthusiasm of our not so old members is proving very valuable right now. Maintaining contact is vital and we issue an email Newsletter every week but this started well before COVID 19. We also run a monthly on-line competition which has been running for ten years and attracts 50-60 entrants from members each month. If anyone has new ideas which work for their club, I would be interested to hear.

Dave
 
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