Focus on Imaging may not be as big or as glamorous as PMA or Photokina, but the crowds were out in force yesterday, at least.
The Focus on Imaging Show is currently taking place at the Birmingham NEC until 5PM on Wednesday, 25th February. The home page of the Focus show is at www.focus-on-imaging.co.uk
Focus is a good sized event that combines big company exhibits, like those from Fujifilm, Canon, Nikon, Kodak, Adobe, etc., as well as retail vendors, like Jacobs Photo, plus numerous smaller companies as well as several photo magazine publishers. However, a few big names were not present, including Pentax and Olympus.
We visited the show on its opening day, yesterday, and here are a few scenes we saw at the UK's biggest annual photographic industry show:
Theatre presentations at the show are now commonplace. Here you can sit in on Adobe tutorials on the new Photoshop CS package, for example.
Archant, which publishes Professional Photographer magazine and Total Digital Photography magazine, had one of the more ambitious exhibits, with a mini cat-walk featuring some professional models. Unsurprisingly, the crowds flocked to the scheduled model sessions.
Above is a view from the the top of the Nikon stand, featuring its camera and lens gallery that is becoming a bit of a tradition at the show. In the foreground is a Nikon D1H fitted with an AF-S 400mm f/2.8 telephoto, equivalent to a 600mm f/2.8 lens when used with Nikon's current range of APS-sized sensor DSLRs. This picture was taken with an Olympus E-1 with a zoom setting equivalent to a 50mm standard lens.
In the first picture you can see a Noritsu banner near the centre of the frame. Here is the same banner as viewed through the D2H and 400mm f/2.8 from the top of the Nikon stand.
Again, through the 400mm f/2.8, here is (part of) a show visitor, shown in the full D1H frame. To gauge the scale, look at the original 50mm standard lens view further up the page. The person is roughly in the same position as the figure to the far left of the frame.
This is a 1:1 (100%) reproduction of part of the (2.7MP D1H) frame and apart from a little sharpening, this shows that you can actually read the text on the visitor's card – very impressive.
Battery manufacturers, like Energizer, see photo shows as important showcases for their products. This is because the current selection of up to date digicams that take AA-sized batteries are frugal enough to be used with alkaline batteries. Though it has to be said, you are much better off using rechargeable NiMH batteries in such cameras, leaving alkalines for emergencies.
Extensis rightfully has a lot to shout about its forthcoming version 7.0 release of Portfolio. This image archive management package now features a network server feature that enables you to let colleagues access your library of pictures.
Fujifilm formally presented awards to the winners of its recent travel photography competition and a gallery of entries was on display for all to see.
Highbury Entertainment, which publishes magazines like Digital Photographer, Digital Photography Buyer and User and Digital Photography Made Easy, also had a live on-stand photo studio demonstration – heavily featuring a variety of flash reflectors.
One thing that attracts a lot of visitors on the Sunday is the show bargains on offer from retail exhibitors like Jacobs, for example. I saw refurbished Olympus E-10s for as little as £399 and used Nikon F5 (film camera) bodies for £1,000+.
The recently married entities that make up Konica and Minolta had one of the more visually striking stands.
The show is a good place to get a demo of the latest Kyocera and Contax brand cameras, including a prototype of the new 10x zoom PRM400R.
Yes, even the Sally Army has a booth at the show and in the centre of the picture you can just see renowned imaging guru, Mike McNamee, mesmerising his audience.
Finally, if you are into some big telescopes, a couple of exhibitors had some really large ones for you to ogle at.
Did you go to the show this year? Let us know what you thought – did you see anything particulately interesting? Did you pick up a real bargain? Click on the feedback links to tell your story!
