C.R.C. OPEN MEETING, 1993 REPORT

We are pleased to report that the AGM & Meeting was very successful indeed, and with an very high turn-out. There was 39 actual members and
including wives and children, was well over the 40 mark. This also included Alan Frame of Didcot, who has kindly brought the 3-4 print stands, every
year since we started these meetings.

Alan tells us that the print stands go back to the Original Didcot Camera Club, well before the last war. They have stood the time well but are now
starting to show their age, with a touch of wood worm. Hopefully they will remain to give us good service for sometime yet. We are very grateful to Alan
for the effort he puts in to bring these stands to us.

While the attendance was reasonably high there wasn`t as many prints and slide programmes as usual. However where it lacked numbers it certainly
made up for it in quality, as you will learn as you read on.

At the opening stages Harry Williams of Area 9 presented some excellent prints with one in particular, a B&W print, made from a colour slide, showed
no grain whatsoever.

Around the print exhibition were stalls with Secretary, Ron Croad selling the Club`s Konica film and some chemicals. Albert Raymond was also selling
had his A.R. Supplies chemicals. Jeff Mundell had a nice display of the equipment he uses for his `Triggered` cameras when taking wild life shots and
Kevin Craske had a good stock of 35mm plastic frames. Kevin also exhibited some nice colour prints with a few close-ups of his children done in a `sepia`
sort of colouring.

There was only one stall selling second-hand items and these were from Tony Chuter of Area 22. Everything was sold by the end of the day.

Although Tony didn`t have any A/V presentations this year, he did present a video version of the very successful programme about the war-ship,
WARRIOR, that he showed last year. The interesting thing is that the video transfer was made by simply `filming` directly off the screen. The absence
of any distortion being due to it being a two projector A/V and the video camera was able to sit centrally between them. The picture quality was very
good indeed. Tony hopes to produce a final copy to sell to the public. Those of you who saw the programme will recall how professionally both the
quality of the programme and the commentary were.

Refreshments were available as usual, but while Bill`s Daughter, Mandy, made up the food,she was unable to attend to the serving, and we are grateful
to Mrs. Sandra Craske and Mrs. Jane Mundell for taking this on.

As Mandy will not be able to do the refreshments from now on, we are particularly indepted to Mrs. Jane Mundell for offering to do next year`s
refreshments. We would also like to thank Mandy for the work she has done for these Meetings over the past 10 years or so.

There were only two slide presentations and an exhibition of prints this year, but as mentioned they were all quite excellent. Bill Crumplin apologised for
not being able to put on his planned programme. His car developed serious gear-box trouble and he only managed to attend by getting a lift from Jeff
Mundell and couldn`t include his projection gear.

Kevin Craske presented a superb A/V called At The Fair which he explains in full on pages 10 & 11, in this issue. Using two Kindermann projectors linked
up to home built electronics the programme ran very smoothly, presenting the hard work involved by fairground people, on erecting and installing the
many rides and stalls before the public can enjoy themselves.

Kevin caught both the erecting work and the working fun-fair very well and the choice of music caught the change in moods very nicely.

Margary and Kevin Maskell brought something quite new to our meetings. Most of you will be aware of the very fine printwork they have shown over the
years, and our meetings would be the sadder without them. However this time they set up a Print Stand (in front of the screen) with a row of lights to
present them nicely to the audience. But it was in the presentation where the surprise lay! Working as a team they presented the prints as a series, each
one leading up to how the next one came about. The prints were anything but straight forward printing from the negatives. They burned in, air brushed,
moved images about giving multiple exposures, moving flowers and even pieces of scenery around and printing in others to match up and balance a frame,
making the final print(s) quite unique. There must have been dozens of A4 sized prints exhibited, representing many hours of darkroom work and putting
their printing experiences together.

A final nice touch was that, where there were a number of prints of the same subject but showing slight changes, the audience was asked which one
they preferred and these were then put on display on the main print exhibit stands where they could be studdied more closely. We doubt if anyone saw
any of the joins!

Margary and Kevin are to be congratulated on not just their very fine photography and printing work, but on giving so much pleasure from a very
unusual and enjoyable presentation style.

After an interval Bill Reid presented a good number of slides from a recent winter holiday through parts of Eastern Europe. Virtually every transparency
was a railway picture, but made all the more interesting by being of different railways from East Germany, Zchecoslovacia, Hungary and Austria.

We started with some narrow guage steam-lines from Dresden to Kaital and another going up to the Zchecoslovacian Border from Cranzal to Kurort
Oberweissanthal with some nice snowy scenes. These loco`s are in everyday DR service and not preserved.

Interesting main line diesel-electric loco`s seen at Dresden were Russian built ones of 1975.

From a day spent in and around Budapest were station and yard scenes, broken up with some views around the City including the famous river Danube
with it`s massive Cathedral and the twin towns of Buda and Pest. Some street scenes and the city`s trams were included. A surprise was finding an East
Kent bus painted in London Transport colours and motif, in the middle of the town.

The final selection were taken in Southern Austria from Innsbruck ad the Tyrol down to Villach and the Italian and Yogoslavian borders. This was mainly
in search of a particular class of electric loco known as `Krocodiles` because of their long snouts, at each end. These very old loco`s, of West German
design (1950`s), can now only be seen in these parts and will soon be no more. They are now mainly used on `banking` duties in the Tyrol to the Italian
border at Brenner but can be seen on freight duties as far south as Rosenbach on the Yugoslavian border and at Arnoldstein on the Italian borders, Some
nice scenes of these loco`s were shown at these spots with a few taken in near arctic conditions high up in the Tyrol, at Kabeul & Saalfelden.

Railway interest was broken up by some snowy scenes at Badgastein, the well known Austrian Ski resort.

Also included was a few long-exposure, night shots, both of loco`s and outside scenes. These were all taken between 28-32 seconds, using, an 81B `blue`
filter on the lens. The timings were made simply by reading the seconds hand of Bill` s wrist watch. There is great latitude on taking these kind of pictures,
and perfectly good results will be had using the timings mentioned.

And so another enjoyable meeting came to an end. While we had a good attendance it would be nice to see many more of you there. The date and times of
next years meeting will be given October issue. Please make a date of it and do what you can to fit it into your diaries.

With the fewer slide presentations, this year, more time was spent with members talking among themselves and they appeared to enjoy this as much as the presentations. Being mainly a postal club we don`t get many opertunities to see and talk to each other and our annual meeting is the one time when you
can meet your fellow members and see and discuss the sort of work you are doing. We make no idle boast when we say that these meetings are very
informal, friendly and relaxed. Some real long term friendships have developed among fellow members who genuinly look forward and enjoy meeting old
friends once again. We would like `YOU` to to join us.

As mentioned, Jane Mundell will be arranging the refreshments next year and plans to come up with quite a substancial meal rather than a mixture of
sandwiches and small snaks and we are sure she would like to know just how many members to plan for. And of course Bill would like to know what you
plan to present. As soon as we give the date and times please let us know as soon as possible if you are going to attend and whether you can put on a
print or slide presentation or even maybe give a talk. Write or phone Bill (address and phone number on page 16) who will be pleased to hear from you.

To conclude we would like to thank everyone who attended this years meeting and all those who helped put it together. Their efforts are gratefully
appreciated. Here`s to an equally successful 1994 meeting.