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From the Imaging Resource archive, first published February 2005. Prices, availability and software versions may have changed since.
Live Tradeshow Coverage February 20-23, 2005 Orange County Convention Center, FL
Welcome to Imaging Resource’s Live PMA 2005 Tradeshow Coverage. PMA is the camera industry’s most important show of the year, and we covered it like never before. You may have noticed slight delay in getting some of the usual information up, which was due to our behind-the-scenes efforts to be more thorough than ever. As you can now see, that included the ambitious goal of producing streaming videos to give our readers the feeling of being at the show. There were a few snags along the way, but that’s to be expected in any new venture. Thanks to our friends at CamcorderInfo.com and DigitalCameraInfo.com for helping us up that learning curve. We’ve learned a lot, and hope to continue offering similar coverage of important events in the future. Meanwhile, we have a pile of products yet to post, along with more videos in the queue, so stay tuned. Check back often and feel free to look in the forums to discuss the latest news, photos, and videos.
See our new video coverage of PMA 2005. We get up close and personal with some of the hottest new cameras and gadgets. Words and pictures are great, but nothing can touch video for the sense of actually being there. Check out our video coverage of PMA 2005, it’s the next best thing to being there!
Can’t get enough PMA? Tune into Photo Talk Radio on Saturday, Feb 26 at 11am Eastern Time (8am Pacific) to hear Dave’s Top Five Picks from the show! (You can dial in and ask specific questions as well!)
PMA Wrapup – 23 booth reports, exclusive videos, and more
22:50 EST –
Our coverage of the Photo Marketing Association’s Spring 2005 tradeshow is now complete, and our PMA report pages have been finalised.
Amongst our detailed show coverage – our biggest yet from a PMA show – you’ll find a whopping 23 booth reports containing almost 500 images shot by Imaging Resource photographers around the show floor, and at side events such as Sneak Peek and Digital Focus. There’s also almost 100 other news items covering the products as they were announced, and the most interesting items we found in our treks around the convention hall.
A first for this year, we also provided video coverage of the show – allowing readers to get up-close with products and get an authentic feel for what a busy tradeshow like PMA is like in person. All four videos we’ve posted, covering the Sneak Peek event, Opening Day at the show, Canon’s Digital Rebel XT, and Kodak’s EasyShare-One digital camera can be found on our PMA 2005 Video Coverage page.
Following is a list of some of what we think are some of the most interesting articles and products from the show (of course, your needs may mean another product is more interesting to you – so feel free to browse through all the items and make your own list!)
To all of our readers who offered comments and corrections during the show, our heartfelt thanks. Our show coverage may be over, but you can still discuss everything we saw in our forums – and we’re already beginning our early plans for equally in-depth coverage of next year’s show. Until then, you’ll find all the latest digital imaging news on our news page, and you can expect detailed reviews of many of the products we saw at PMA in the coming weeks…
Booth Report: Concord
21:55 EST – Concord Camera Corp. showed a wide range of digital cameras on its booth at PMA – some brand new, and others announced late last year.
The company achieved a measure of success with its 3346z digital camera, a three megapixel model that won an award as the “Best Digital Camera under $100” in the DIMA Digital Camera Shoot-Out. For the DIMA test, a range of cameras from various manufacturers and product categories captured an identical scene in a live model studio. Prints were made of the images, not labelled to show which…
SeaLife universal external digital flash for dive photography
23:42 EST – Having reviewed a few underwater cameras, including a SeaLife ReefMaster, I’m always interested to see what they have up their sleeve. This time it was a universal digital flash designed to shed a little more light on a scene than most digital cameras are capable of. Since it’s universal, it can be used with most digital cameras in waterproof housings.
Most digital cameras use some sort of preflash to determine how they’re going to light a particular scene, and external slave flashes have to know about this and compensate for them, not blowing their one power burst on a preflash. The SL960D SeaLife Digital Flash has five preflash cancellation settings to work with many digital cameras. A flexible grip allows divers to aim the light strait ahead…
23:30 EST – When I saw it yawning over on the corner table, I thought it might attack. The Microtek ScanMaker 1000XL 3,200 dpi scanner is called “the highest resolution tabloid-size flatbed scanner on the market” in the press release.
Folks passing by marveled at its potential uses. With all the 13 x 19 printers coming on the market, it was nice to see a scanner approaching the same size. Two models are available, one with a Transparent Media Adapter for scanning transparencies like X-ray negatives, and one without. Perhaps more interesting are the film templates, which allow for batch scanning of negatives or slides all in…
18:25 EST – Pentax, one of the big five film SLR manufacturers, now makes two digital SLR cameras, and they’re building their digital-specific lens collection just about every show.
What caught my eye at PMA 2005 was a lens I’d previously missed, announced last December: the Pentax DA 40mm F2.8 Limited lens. I’m not too far behind though, because it’s just started shipping in February. Its small, flat profile earns the name “pancake” lens, giving the already small *istD and *istDS a more snag-free presence; great for small camera bags or backpacks. Its nine-blade diaphragm is…
17:35 EST – Every year at PMA, we see a couple of products that are just so cool, we want one yesterday if not sooner.
This year, one such product that’s on News Editor Mike Tomkins’ wishlist is the Wacom Cintiq 21UX pen display. Based on a 1600 x 1200 pixel color-accurate 21.3″ LCD display, the Cintiq 21UX offers not only a beautiful image, but the ability to retouch your images with a pen that’s used directly on the screen itself. The pen has tilt sensitivity, and can detect 1,024 different pressure levels…
PRESS RELEASE: New 21.3″ Wacom Cintiq is World’s First Interactive Pen Display with a Seamless Surface, ExpressKeys, and Zoom/Scroll Touch Strips
16:41 EST – Other Key Features Important to Photographers, Designers, and Artists Include 1,024 Levels of Pressure Sensitivity, Pen Tilt Sensitivity, and High-end LCD Color Accuracy VANCOUVER, WA., Feb. 15, 2005 – Wacom Technology Corporation today announced its eagerly anticipated Cintiq 21UX interactive pen display that allows users to work with a pen directly on a 21.3″ color-accurate LCD. The Cintiq 21UX… (More)
Booth Report: SanDisk
16:34 EST – On SanDisk’s booth at this year’s show, the company presented a number of new storage products that set new capacity highs, or brought new features to make them easier to use.
Amongst the announcements of interest to owners of products based on Sony’s Memory Stick Duo media were the two gigabyte Memory Stick PRO Duo, bringing the company’s offerings to 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1GB and 2GB cards. SanDisk also introduced a new line of high-speed Ultra II Memory Stick PRO Duo cards, available in 512MB, 1GB and 2GB capacities. For owners of Secure Digital-based products, SanDisk…
15:59 EST – We don’t spend a lot of time on camera phones here at Imaging Resource, but every once in awhile a company does something we recognize as interesting, and relevant to the digital photography industry overall.
Sprint PCS’s expanded PictureMail online service is just such a product, offering easy organization of not just photos taken with the camera phone, but all digital photos on a user’s home computer. The integration goes further, with EPSON joining in to provide a print-at-home solution. To enable this functionality, Sprint has placed the Samsung MM-5600 as the central hub, because it integrates a…
15:18 EST – Rollei USA had quite a few announcements before this year’s PMA show, including a restructuring of the brand in the US market.
Rollei’s digital camera products have been available in Europe and Asia for some time now, but they’ve been rather harder to come by in the USA. That is apparently set to change, with Rollei USA LLC being restructured. The company announced US availability for four new digital cameras, three of them being five megapixel models with either 3x or 4.8x optical zoom. The remaining model is a four megapixel…
12:37 EST – Wrapping up Concord Camera Corp.’s PMA announcements are two new digicam models aimed at impulse buying by first-time digicam users.
The Concord 4042 is a $99 four megapixel CCD-based camera with a 36mm-equivalent fixed-focal length lens. It offers both an optical viewfinder and 1.5″ LCD display, and stores images on either SD cards or 16MB of built-in memory. Power is supplied by two AAA batteries. The lower-cost 3047 model, which will cost $79.99, offers a three megapixel CMOS imager and 44mm-equivalent fixed focal length…
19:50 EST – On the booth of Hi-Touch Imaging Technologies this year, we saw an impressively wide range of dye diffusion thermal transfer printers, including one model that offered the rather unusual ability to print a true, reflective (shiny) gold color.
We’re not sure exactly how useful the average user would find this ability to be, but it certainly offered the ability to add an interesting (and very eyecatching) touch to photo prints, and we can’t remember seeing a consumer printer that offered this feature before. Also new was the FotoDazzle S300, a stylish-looking 4″ x 6″ 300dpi CMY printer that we wouldn’t mind seeing on our own desk….
18:29 EST – Creo Inc.’s big news in the runup to this year’s PMA show was that the company is in the final stages of acquisition by imaging giant Kodak, in a deal valued at some $980 million.
Creo’s board has recommended the acquisition to shareholders, and the deal looks set to go ahead – meshing the company’s strengths in digital pre-press products and its commercial printing customer base with Kodak’s own (already rather impressive) portfolio of digital imaging-related products and services. The Creo booth showed large posters created from scans made using the company’s scanners and…
17:42 EST – Adobe may not have had any new announcements in the runup to this year’s PMA show (the most recent announcement being updates to the company’s RAW converter products), but there were still plenty of interested customers eager to see live demonstrations of Adobe software products.
The Adobe Camera Raw plug-in and DNG Converter products were recently upgraded to offer support for the Canon EOS 20D, Canon PowerShot S70, Canon PowerShot G6, Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II, Konica Minolta DiMAGE A200 and Konica Minolta MAXXUM 7D cameras. On the Adobe booth, the company demonstrated the ‘Elements’ versions of its Photoshop and Premiere applications – Photoshop Elements being a photo editor…
17:21 EST – Following on from the previous article, Concord Camera Corp. has announced two new ultracompact digital cameras at PMA which we’re only now getting time to mention.
The Concord 5040 is a five megapixel CMOS-based camera with a fixed-focus, fixed-focal length lens. It offers no optical viewfinder, instead featuring only a 1.8″ LCD display. The camera stores images on either SD cards or 16MB of built-in memory, and draws power from two AAA batteries. Announced alongside the 5040 is the ultra-compact 5042 model. Unfortunately we’ve been unable to obtain detailed…
Another video – A tour of the Kodak EasyShare-One!
17:00 EST – One more video (two more from PMA yet to come), this time a look at Kodak’s unique EasyShare One camera/wireless photo sharing device.
Here’s a video tour of a product that we first saw back at the CES show in January, but it’s since moved further along the development path, apparently on track for retail availability in June. Kodak’s done an excellent job of focusing on what consumers actually do with their cameras, and the EasyShare One is the latest example of that. Designed for “Power Sharers” (think of families with a new baby,…
16:59 EST – ACD Systems’ booth at PMA promoted the company’s latest versions of its award-winning software line, including both ACDSee and the ACDSee PowerPack.
ACDSee 7, announced last October, is a powerful photo management tool that supports 50 photo and multimedia formats, including RAW file support for Canon, Fujifilm, Kodak, Minolta, Nikon and Olympus cameras. It offers basic image editing features, as well as the ability to create slideshows and prints. The ACDSee 7 PowerPack includes ACDSee itself, along with ACD Photo Editor 3 for image editing,…
Tokina Lighting Company: Handy, stowable “studio in a box” solutions.
19:18 EST – A line of lightweight, portable lighting setups were among Dave’s favorites at the show.
Tokina Lighting Company: Handy, stowable “studio in a box” solutions. A line of lightweight, portable lighting setups were among Dave’s favorites at the show. Lighting is one of the toughest things for amateur photographers to get right, and the difference between good and bad lighting is blatantly obvious. People selling products on eBay know the value of good-looking product photography,…
19:00 EST – Our Photo Marketing Show 2005 Spring tradeshow coverage is continuing unabated, with updates aplenty and more articles on the way.
The show may have ended on Wednesday afternoon, but there’s still a lot more to come here at the Imaging Resource. As well as the articles you may have seen posted over the last day or two, a good selection of our existing booth report articles posted while the show was running have now been updated to include further photos and commentary. Updates we’ve recently made include the following booth…
GREAT black & white *and* color prints: A closer look at the HP 8570
18:08 EST – HP’s new 8750 printer offers archival color and black and white. A three-tone black system yields beautiful gradations and neutral grayscale across the tonal range.
HP 8750 – A Printer for Fine-Art Black and White AND Color. HP’s new 8750 printer offers archival color and black and white. A three-tone black system yields beautiful gradations and neutral grayscale across the tonal range. We posted the press release for this printer back when we first received it, but I wanted to give it a little more play on the news page, as it looks to me to be a pretty significant…
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