This is the time of year that people from all over the world gather at the mecca of photography known as PMA (Photo Marketing Association) Convention.
This annual convention has become a showcase for everything photographic. All the bigs are there, Nikon, Canon, Olympus ... the list goes on & on. Everyone is there for one reason, they want to know what the latest, greatest gadgets for making pictures will be. It seems every year, more & more of those gadgets are digital. It honestly makes sense, the entire industry is turning digital.
Let's look at some of the facts; Kodak stopped making consumer film cameras nearly 2 yrs ago and just this last year announced that they were discontinuing their B&W film production.
Date line Germany; Agfa-Gavert closes its doors in 2005. Polaroid corp. in financial trouble 2004, the list of film related casualties goes on and on. What is the verdict of all this bad press? Well it's simple really, if you don't own a digital camera, you will soon.
The members of PMA are very aware of this and are quickly producing products ranging from cameras & printers to cell phones and wireless devices to carve out their own niche in this fast shifting technology.
So what's hot for 2006? Well some of the hot ones include cell phones with better cameras or is it camera's with better cell phones? The line is getting harder and harder to see. Among the hotties is the Sony Ericsson K800. Man what a cool camera phone. Boasting the ability to blog online as well as produce a 3.2 megapixel image from it's Sony Cybershot camera, this little beauty will allow users to make prints 5x7 or larger easily from the camera's phone! It has a xenon flash built in and auto focus too. With a price point of about $350 to $400, you are spending about the same as you would if you purchased these two items separately, but you only have to carry one!
There are also new consumer Point & Shoot cameras. One of the notables is the Casio Exilim Ex-Z850. Casio has kind of blazed their way into the digital camera market. Offering high megapixel rated cameras with great features at truly competitive prices, this Casio is a force to be reckoned with.
This great little pocket camera sports a 3x optical zoom, 8.1 megapixels of recording chip and something we really love, manual settings! The whole camera can easily fit in your shirt pocket and when you do whip it out to take a few snaps, people will marvel at it's stunning 2.5” view screen. Street price about $400.
Lets not for get the pro am market. There is plenty of buzz about the new line from Olympus, E-330. For those between the amateur and pro markets, this is a great camera. It allows you to pack it away neatly but also offers interchangeable lenses and a flash sync of up to 1/4000th of a second in Super FP mode. In addition this camera is unique because if offers a live Mos capture sensor that allows for live action video viewing when the shutter is depressed. It does this by using a Porro Mirror setup to move the image to a video sensor. Traditional “SLR” systems have a single mirror that must move into the viewing path to capture an image. With the Porro Mirror configuration, this movement is not necessary. Very cool feature. With 7.1 megapixels at your disposal and interchangeable lenses, this is a very handy little gadget. Priced at about $1000 for the body alone you need to be in the “pro-am” market to appreciate this little gem.
For our Professionals in the house, you know I had to talk about the Nikon D200. Introduced late last year this entry level pro camera is awesome. With a magnesium alloy body, and about 90% of the features offered in the higher priced Nikon D2x, This is a working pro's camera! It offers 5 Frames Per Second (FPS) shooting speed with a 10.2 megapixel chip recording up to 37 jpeg or 22 RAW images before the buffer slows it down. It offers 2 color profiles for shooting, the standard sRGB or Adobe RGB, and boasts a top shutterspeed of 1/8000th of a second with a 1/250th of a second flash sync. We love this camera so much it is now the primary camera we shoot with. Introduced in November of 05' this camera is a great addition to the Nikon family of cameras and for the die hard Nikon fans out there an awesome step forward.
We see the D200 in the digital line doing for Nikon what the FM & FE series of cameras did for their film line. It will become Nikon's work horse so to speak, offering the best of both worlds, pure pro power with functionality.
PMA is the premier photo related show of the year. This year, 91 new cameras were introduced as well as a myriad of other photo related products. If you want to check out the latest and the greatest of what the photo industry has to offer, we suggest you visit www.pmai.org or, for a quick review of some of the items we talked about here try www.pma-show.com. Either way you won't be disappointed. - aloha
