Swimming with the Razorfishes

Friday, October 21, 2005

Went over to the Photo Plus Expo at the Javits Center today. Good fun.

Sensual Silver
click for high-res

Apparently someone at SanDisk thinks having these sexless, featureless things writhe around the exhibition floor will help them sell compact flash cards. Or maybe they just enjoy humiliating out of work actors. I would love to have been in the marketing meeting when they came up with this idea.

All the usual characters were exhibiting: Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Adobe, Epson, Kodak, HP, Konica Minolta. The Nikon booth was crowded, but the Canon area was positively packed; people seem rather excited about the 5D and the new 24-105 IS L. There were a few interesting things at the show:

  • With very little arm-twisting, A Leica rep committed to a September 2006 delivery date for a digital M Series body, at which point I became visibly excited and had to cover my nether region with my 24-70mm zoom, for modesty's sake. This is the first time I have heard anyone official commit to a date for a digital M; I'm really quite excited.
  • Leica's new D-LUX 2 is actually quite a nice little camera. Smaller than I thought it was.
  • The editor of View Camera was there. It was nice to say hello and tell him how much I like his magazine.
  • Lensbabies had a relatively large booth. I was surprised to see them there in force. They must be selling a lot of those things.
  • Apple's Aperture looks pretty cool, particularly on dual 30-inch displays. Apple also had a surprisingly huge booth with a nice 50-workstation tutorial area. The seats were filled and the tutorials were all booked; it looks like people are interested in Aperture.
  • Lots of paper vendors were there. People must be making quite a few ink jet prints.
  • The Stock Artists Allicance was there. Interesting organization. One of the reasons I got the 5D was so I could get serious about shooting some stock photos. I'll certainly give the SAA a closer look.
  • White House Custom Color was there, but I missed their booth. I'm sorry I didn't see them; I'd like to see some good samples of their printing.
  • Hasselblad's H2 is a nice piece of equipment. And those lenses are no joke. Arca-Swiss cameras are also quite nice.

Lots of good stuff.

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