Show Reports

One of the great pleasures of photokina is finding really brilliant new accessories. Some are completely unexpected. Others, you’ve wanted for years but have never been able to find—often because until now, the technology needed to build them has not been available.

A shining example (literally) of the latter, and the accessory hit of the show as far as I am concerned...

Whether you own a 35mm or digital SLR camera, a dedicated external flash unit can be a valuable accessory. Not many new models were unveiled at photokina, and three of the four were macro ringlights. These have been gaining in popularity for extra lighting in extreme close-up photography of products, nature subjects, and medical/dental applications, but they can also be useful for some...

Although digicams with built-in lenses still outsell D-SLRs by 10 to 1, market research indicates that 20 percent of consumers are planning to upgrade to an interchangeable-lens camera. As a result, most manufacturers are devoting significant R&D efforts to the D-SLR category, and we found some really desirable new cameras at photokina. The trend was toward more of the high-tech...

As the price of D-SLRs and high-resolution digicams drops to more affordable levels, an increasing number of families and serious photo enthusiasts want a better photo printer. We found lots of new machines at the photokina show, some with high-tech features such as Wi-Fi and Ethernet compatibility. Lack of space precludes coverage of every new product, but the following printers are worth...

The photokina trade fair held in Cologne, Germany, every two years has a solid reputation for previews and announcements meant to shake up the practices and worldviews of photographers, be they amateur or pro. This can come in the form of products real and imagined, with some making it to shelves and others just a wistful dream of designers and engineers who hope what they propose will become the...

This report covers back-up systems and all sorts of storage devices, beginning with USB flash (thumb/pen) and handheld devices. In terms of backup, there was only one hardware solution worthy of note, plus a related product that uses DVDs. Beyond that, there are the plethora of digital photo frames, making it one of the hottest product categories at this year's show.
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As is our wont each year we take to the aisles of the PMA Show, the annual and largest photo equipment show in the US, in search of new and innovative products for photographers. This year we had six reporters, including Jon Canfield, Jack Neubart, Jason Schneider, Robert Mayer, Peter Burian, and, new with us at PMA this year, Ibarionex Perello, covering their respective beats;...