Every two years the international photo trade descends upon Cologne, Germany, to show their wares and vie for bragging rights over who has the highest megapixel count, greatest zoom ratio, or most archival fine art paper. It is also the place where prototypes are kept under glass or shown in curtained back rooms and where alliances are made and broken. For example, at this year's show we were greeted with the news that Leica bought a majority share of Sinar Bron from Jenoptik.

Our team of reporters once again did a stalwart job of gathering reports from this year's show, a task made even more daunting by the complete reorganization of the many halls that make up the show. While space in our pages precludes reporting on all the new products, what follows are brief summaries of what caught our collective eye. We will certainly follow up with pertinent tests once gear becomes available.