The whole point of software for camera clubs is that scoring night should feel effortless. Here's a walk-through of running one score entry session with Camera Club Score — from opening the app to publishing results — in five minutes flat.
Before the meeting: 60 seconds of prep
Log in, click Competitions, and hit Add competition. You need three things:
- Name — "Round 3 — Nature Print" or whatever your programme card says.
- Judge — the visiting judge's name, so it prints on the sheets and certificates automatically.
- Type — Print or PDI. That's it.
Save. The competition is now visible in the running order screen and the public portal. You're 40 seconds in.
Setting up the running order: 30 seconds
Open the competition, click Live Entry, and hit Add all photographers. Every active member appears in one click, pre-sorted by ID number.
Prefer to control who's competing? Add them one at a time from the dropdown instead. Or if you've already got a running-order CSV from another system, upload it — Camera Club Score maps the columns for you.
Once your list is set, click Lock order. This freezes the sequence so nothing shuffles around mid-session (nothing worse than the grid re-sorting when you're two thirds of the way through the pile). A padlock badge appears on the competition so everyone can see it's committed.
The judging session itself: however long the judge takes
This is where the tool earns its keep. The Live Entry grid is built around a single principle: the person on scoring duty shouldn't have to look at their hands.
Press Enter and you jump straight to the next row's score field (skipping the image title, which the judge has usually already read out). Type the score. Enter. Type the next score. Enter. Enter. Enter.
Every keystroke auto-saves. If the wifi drops, the app quietly queues changes and flushes them when you're back online — you never lose a score. If the browser crashes, refresh and you're back where you were.
- Enter — next row's score
- Tab — next field in the same row (e.g. placement)
- Up/Down arrows — jump between rows
When the judge picks their placements, tab across to the placement column and type 1, 2,3. Done. No dropdowns, no radio buttons — just keyboard.
After the last image: 30 seconds to results
Click Results. That's it — the leaderboard for this competition is already there. Photographers are ranked by score, ties are automatically marked, and placements are shown as coloured chips.
You've got three things you probably want to do right now:
- Print the judge's sheet. One button on the Results page produces a clean PDF — score column, placement column, judge's name at the top. Handy for the club's paper records.
- Update the season league. Nothing to do. Season Stats already includes tonight's competition — the totals recalculated the moment you saved the last score.
- Share the results. The public portal has already updated. Anyone with your club's portal link can see tonight's results on their phone, no login required.
End of season: the certificates workflow that saves an evening
At the end of your season, head to Season Stats and click Certificates CSV. You get a ready-to-mail-merge CSV containing every image that hit the club's top mark, with columns for Code, Name, Competition, Image Title, Score, Judge, and Place.
Open your certificate template in Word, point Mail Merge at the CSV, print. If Alice has three perfect-score images across the season, she gets three separate certificates — each with the correct image title and competition.
Committees have told us this alone saves them a full evening every year. We believe them.
What we deliberately don't do
Camera Club Score doesn't upload images. It doesn't host photos. It doesn't manage payments, do EDIs, or handle inter-club battles (yet). We think there are already good tools for those jobs, and stacking too many features into one app is usually how good tools go bad.
What we do — competition management, scoring, season standings, and a public portal — we try to do exceptionally well.
Try it with your next competition
- Free for 30 days — no credit card required until you convert
- Set up in under two minutes with your existing photographers list
- Works on phones, tablets, and laptops — no app to install
- Export everything at any time; nothing is locked in
Sign up at cameraclubscore.com and try it with one competition. Worst case, you spend five minutes and go back to your spreadsheet with a clearer picture of what's possible. Best case, judging night gets a lot quieter.