PDN Photo Plus Expo - Show Report Day 2

Day two of the Photo Plus trade show
Oct 19, 2007
David Schloss

It's a good sign for a trade show when the most disappointing thing encountered is the food at the convention food court. It should be (and probably is, actually) illegal to produce a meal with as much salt as was in the chicken with broccoli I consumed at lunch. It would have been better for my heart to have just eaten a salt lick—stick to the fruit cup.

Adding to my suspicion that the Nikon D3 would prove to be the big hit of the show, I write this while sitting next to a woman who just said to her colleague "Oh my god! I just saw the D3! I touched it, I touched it!" while bouncing up and down in extreme joy. Congratulations Nikon, you officially cause hysteria.

During my tenure as Technology Editor at PDN, I particularly loved to troll the show floor for those little gems that often miss the mainstream media, products made by companies lacking the ad dollars to take out a double-truck spread or plaster the Web with banners. I have found some of my most treasured photo gadgets in the aisles lining the periphery of the hall.

Take, for instance the Lensbabies lenses (lensbabies.com), a gadget I first found in a teeny booth and with which I fell instantly in love. That's also true for the JustRite camera bracket from Gary Justice, which is inexplicably almost impossible to find.

Of course, there are some real flops on display too, and I won't name-names here, but they're conspicuous for their lack of attendance. Big bowls of candy sitting idle on the tables is a clear sign of an impotent product.

Then there are products and services I never knew existed, like NILMDTS (Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep -- www.nowilaymedowntosleep.org), which provides "infant bereavement photography" as part of their national support group. I can't imagine a subject I'd less rather photograph personally, but one which so clearly can benefit from a professional organization designed to help a family through loss.

However, there's nothing like seeing a 10 x 5 booth crowded with people excited over some gadget or doo-dad, and that was the case with the light diffusers from GaryFong.com, on display in one of the more far-flung rows. People stood three deep to buy these hard-plastic light modifiers, which really seem to be a good solution to some common lighting issues. The Light Sphere seemed to be the hit of the show, but I'm fond of the interchangeable-panel based Whale Tail.

On the other side of the hall is the booth of Photofinder GPS, an eternal positioning device that'll work with any camera, and integrates rather nicely with GoogleEarth to help track images by location. The device just logs a continual stream of data points as one travels, and syncs those up with a camera's EXIF data. (www.merax.com/products/Photo/PhotoFinderGPST.html)

On the kitschy side of the scale there's Braggables, (braggables.com) a selection of bags that contain external slots for proud parents (or grandparents, or the criminally insane) to place photographs of their family members for all the world to see. Of course, you could also put non-hominid photographs in the pouches, but they're targeting themselves more toward the parent, and donating ten-percent of profits to pediatric cardiology research.

This launches me into my love affair with camera bags, and this show has a few notable new ones. First are the fashion-forward camera bags from jill-e (www.jill-e.com), which are self-described "fashion camera bags." While I might never put my gear in a charcoal brown leather bag, I can certainly see how the more feminine photographer might look utterly stylish photographing a celebrity wedding with these haute-couture sacks.

On the flip side is the Shoot Sac (shootsac.com) a minimalist neoprene lens-holding pouch that's designed to allow a working shooter to carry spare lenses without having to lug around an entire camera bag. The Shoot Sac fits neatly on the back or hip and provides convenient storage for lenses and some small select gear. The bags can also be customized with fabric covers for the photographer who likes to accessories.

On the hardware front, we're glad to see the new Spyder3 colorimeter from Datacolor, which is smaller than the Spyder2 but features a much larger measuring surface and is 30 percent faster at calibrating. More, faster, better.

Finally I'm drooling over the Seitz Roundshot D3 Panoramic camera, a robotic tripod/imaging device that creates a 360-degree image at 470 megapixel in two seconds. The first time I get a spare $37,000, I'm all over it.