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October 28, 2008

JungleJim shares PhotoPlus impressions

Nikonians Platinum member Jim Nichols (JungleJim) has had a very busy month of October. He has been on the road, starting the month at the 8th Annual Nikonians Photo Adventure Trip (ANPAT) in Yosemite Valley, and concluding with the PDN Magazine PhotoPlus Conference + Expo at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City last week. Jim was taking notes during his PhotoPlus Expo trip....


.....and he's graciously agreed to share them with us:

The show opened to the public on a glorious fall Thursday. I had the better part of the day to check out the show floor.
Nikon-booth_350.jpgUpon entering the Javits Center, Nikon Corp. had a very large area to the left of the doors and competed for my visual attention with the Canon booth. Guess all is as it should be within the photo industry. Also looking big were Casio, Sony, HP, Epson, as well as many of the accessory companies. All in all, I agree with the show publicity that there was much to see for all.

Although most of the major vendors had chosen Photokina to launch major product announcements, I did find a few to whet your appetite for NAS (Nikon Acquisition Syndrome or GAS (General Acquisition Syndrome). My major impression from the show was that video and still photography are on a road to a merger. Nikon with the D90, Canon with the EOS 5D MKII large pixel format model, as well as even Casio are showing their camera's video capabilities. I think all future cameras will be including these specs. It was not enough to know all the current digital terms, but now we will add many more videographer terms. I'm hoping Nikon soon shows us more full frame pixel models like the D3/D700 platforms or they might soon be seen as playing follow the leaders to Canon, Leica, Sony.

Notables from the show include:
LOWEPRO - www.lowepro.com (but not on their website yet)
A couple of new hardware products I found are the Lowepro "Classified AW" Series of 4 new bags designed by and for photojournalists. They looked to be a good, waterproof design with a unique design of folding top not seen another bags. Also introduced is the Lens Trekker 600AW which holds a 600mm with body or 800mm lens sans body. Nice if you have one of those.

BODABAGS - www.goboda.com
A new release for Boda Bags was a unique side holster model in both large and junior sizes. Check out their nice web flash product show.

VIDEO PERCH - www.videoperch.com
VideoPerch_350.jpgThis is a light and easy universal mounting arm. Retailing at $79, it allows a camera to be clamped to many surfaces with a flat clamp. Great for windows, edges, and other structures. Designed by a couple of golfers to hold a video camera, it is something I had not seen before. After my input and them seeing my Arca Swiss style plate on my D300, they agreed to add a non quick release option and will look into this new to them style of quick release.

BLURB - www.blurb.com
Here is what I found to be the best in class of the book self publishers.
The quality was incredible. A Softcover 8x10 book of 20 to 40 pages was $19.95! Also unique is that books are kept on line so orders can be placed directly at the website. The author does nothing but receive the income check. A real class act and a very busy booth.

DATACOLOR - www.datacolor.com
Dave-from-Spyder-Datacolor-_250.jpgI was pleased to run into the Datacolor Spyder support rep, Dave who had presented to the ANPAT 8 group at Yosemite.
He was displaying photos achieved with the help of their monitor and printer color calibration tools.
His booth included the new Spyder3Elite, which Datacolor is describing as the next generation in calibration accuracy, precision and speed.
Hint: There are rebates currently available from Datacolor for the Spyder products. Make sure you check the Nikonians Photo Pro Shop for this product.

CLEARBAGS - www.clearbags.com
This vendor is a leader in the Promote, Protect, and Preserve market. They showed a wide array of options to choose from.

SCANDIGITAL - www.scandigital.com
Here is a great way to move your film slides and video to DVD or CD. Send them all your old boxed up stuff and they convert it for you. (Although I did not see them at the show, www.scancafe.com is another option).

IMAGESPAN - www.imagespan.com and its affiliate LICENSESTREAM - www.licensestream.com
Here is a new company hitting the ball out of the park for integrated ways to "Register, Protect, Assign Rights, and License" your photos. A major issue for all of us is the ability to protect our rights after we take a photo.
This company has packaged it all together with their database. They also have an amazing application called IMAGE TRACKER which searches the web for copies of your images and alerts you to their use. Then you are presented with options to protect your rights for that image by email or letter contact to negotiate terms of use. This is a huge benefit for signing up for their service.

To wrap up, the show had everything for the professional on down to take, produce, print, publish and distribute images. There was a wide variety of web based services from starting/building/hosting websites. It appears there is much more to offer all of us in that area. A few that caught my eye are, ANIMOTO to turn pics into video presentations, MOODBOARD to offer stock photo sales, SITEDESIGNWORKS and LIVEBOOKS for site creation. I failed to mention that EPSON, CANON and HP all had big displays for printer technology that was truly brilliant and dazzling. Along with remote print companies like MPIX, and the book self-publishers, there is no excuse for not producing stunning hardcopy for yourself or for sale.
So -- grab your camera gear and get out there and shoot. Remember, the pixels won't do it by themselves.

Posted by flashdeadline at October 28, 2008 3:27 PM