Our next workshop night, on Tuesday 20th February 2024, has been designated a “Gear Night”.
For those of you unfamiliar with this concept (the last one was possibly before COVID), this night is where we focus on improving our familiarity with our camera equipment. But that’s not all, we also use this as an opportunity to swap/buy/sell gear amongst members – I’ll come back to this shortly.
Gear Discussion Groups
For the main part of the evening we will divide up into groups (tables) according to the make/vendor of our gear. Each table will have a designated member who owns the same brand of camera as the others on the table and will help lead the discussion.
To kick things off, there will be some prepared tasks that we will ask everyone to do – I hope this will inject a bit of fun into the exercise. More importantly, I hope this will get the conversation started at each table, and after those 6 tasks, each table can take the conversation forward according to the needs/wishes of the group.
Swap/Buy/Sell Gear
At some point in the evening, we’ll move over to the swap/sell/buy activity. If the gear involved is unique to a brand (e.g. Olympus), such as a lens, then this part of the evening may well start off at the ‘brand’ table. We’ll also have a couple of tables set up for selling ‘generic’ gear, such as tripods etc.
Advertising Gear For Sale
As preparation for the swap/buy/sell segment, members are invited (or even encouraged) to post items for sale on the club members Facebook group, or via the members email group (especially if there are more expensive items, such as lenses, camera bodies, etc.). The FB group is the preferred mechanism for advertising gear as each email to all members needs to be vetted and ‘sent’ which creates work for our team, so please only use email if you are not on FB. You may wish to negotiate a deal offline and simply use the night as an opportunity to exchange the gear.
To be crystal clear, any goods/monies exchanged through this event is a matter between the members concerned only – the club will not be involved in any way, and does not offer any warranties around goods, equipment condition, and/or advice on price or good value. Any and all issues relating to goods, payments etc., is a matter for the members involved only, and caveat emptor is advised. The club is only providing the opportunity for members to get together to ‘swap’.
This is usually a fun evening, involving a high level of interaction between members with ‘like’ equipment. There is a good chance everyone will take away something, if only the realisation that you really need to spend more time getting to know your gear!
I hope you are looking forward to it. I know I am. See you there at the Mount Waverley Community Centre, starting at the usual time of 7:30pm.
