Show Reports

On the following pages we've assembled reports that act as mirrors on the state of the art of photo and imaging gear today. While the reports themselves cover numerous recently introduced products in various categories they also tell us how taking, making, and sharing images has changed. Compare this report to one made in past years and you'll see a radical...

Weird stuff is my favorite category at any show: the things that don't fit into sensible categories, but are useful, or unusual, or yes, just plain weird. Some manufacturers of weird stuff rejoice in being called weird (they are often the most fun of all) but others sometimes flinch and say things like, "Um, we'd prefer to be called, er, unique." At a...

Must-Have Photo Gadgets
Another edition of the biggest photo show in the U.S.A. has come and gone. As always in recent years, it was huge with thousands of products being hawked for photo buffs of all types. Even so, a number of people I spoke with thought this show was noticeably smaller in size than prior annual PMA trade shows and I would have to agree...

While our reporters were assigned specific product categories to cover for the show, we also requested that they pick what they considered their favorite product of the show. The product didn't have to be in their area--indeed, the product could be a prototype or something that wouldn't appear in any real way for the near future. So here's the Shutterbug...

"New at PMA `05: Film!"--Headline in Convention Daily Newspaper

In the entire history of the PMA show this is the first time no new 35mm film SLRs were introduced, so ya gotta wonder what the dude who wrote that was smoking. According to the British Journal of Photography, the manufacture of Contax and Kyocera 35mm film cameras has...

"Don't call 'em D-SLRs, in the future all SLRs will be digital."--Overheard at PMA

A recent New Yorker cartoon showed a salesperson demonstrating a digicam to a customer. The caption read something like, "This light comes on to tell you when the camera is obsolete." A lot of digital SLR owners feel like that from time to...

One trend has continued unabated since the first Shutterbug's Photography Buyer's Guide: As the number of digital cameras has increased, the number of scanners has decreased. My guess is that while the presence of camera-phone manufacturers at PMA 2005 does not bode well for the future of lower end point-and-shoot cameras, they will have no impact whatsoever on the...