SECRETARY'S NOTES
Oh dear! Is my face red. After the write up about the Club handbook you did not receive your copies. This is very frustrating as I had spent a lot of the winter compiling it, and the printers had the proofs in early March. After they had printed the Newsletters the press broke down. Bill held the Newsletters back for a while, but eventually had to send them out on their own. Of course the handbooks turned up about three days after the Newsletters had gone to the Leaders.
The best news this quarter is that we have received a very generous offer of film supplies from 3M Scotch because of the special relationship the C.R.C. has with them. We are now able to supply cassettes of 100asa; 400asa; 640asa Tungsten type; and 1000asa reversal film. The stocks we have are very fresh, being dated 1990. I have tried out the 100asa type and can not praise it enough. The colours are very true, shadow detail is good, and the film is very sharp. The 400asa type is slightly more grainy as you would expect, but is great for those times when you want short exposures in poor light conditions. I have not had the opportunity to try the remaining two types, but they have great attractions in their respective fields, and I am looking forward to getting a cassette of each in my camera.
In order to encourage you to send in contributions to the Newsletter, we will in future be awarding a 3M film to the member sending in the best article and the best letter each issue. So out with your pens and write to the Editor as often as you can.
In the past year members have bought about "1500 of Konica film and I am now getting requests for more and lots of reports on its high quality. The Club will continue to supply both bulk re-loads and cassettes of 100asa reversal film, as we have a very good relationship with Konica also. I have hopes that the 3M film will encourage more of our members to buy our film which now covers a very wide range of types.
In the last N/L I wrote a piece on whether or not you should keep a filter permanently on your lens, and while there is a lot of disagreement on that point there is another point on which everyone agrees; a lens hood is a must on your lens. It is even more important with modern Zoom lenses which often have 16 elements to reflect the sun!
talking of lenses there has never been a better time to buy the one you needed for a long time. The Photographic Trade are of the opinion that the future SLR lies in autofocus lenses and their shelves are stacked with dozens of manual focus types. They can foresee that some very good manual optics are going to remain unsold for a very long time. In consequence of this a lot of the large dealers are having lens clearance sales regularly. It makes the weekly Photographic Magazines worth buying at times.
The weather has improved recently and this should help you to put some film in your cameras and go out and record your local beauty spots. We all have somewhere near our homes that are worth a roll of film, so make the effort - its well worth it.
latest news from the magazines, Minolta 70001 camera. Its auto everything and programmed by inserting a computer card (£20). There are 10 different cards. At the other end of the scale there are throw away cameras from both Fuji and Kodak with 24exp print film in at £5 per throw.
Ron.