PhotoPlus Expo

Unfortunately, for the first time in 3 years (I live in north jersey) I wasn't able to make it to PhotoPlus this past weekend. Any update from anyone who went? Is the LF world still represented?

lots of large format stuff. all the usual suspects were there. i chatted with keith canham for a while and looked at his gorgeous cameras (much nicer in person even than in the pictures) and hung out with the schneider guys right next door. i always learn a lot from them. didn't check out much other lf gear, since i'm not in the market, but saw lots of shiny things of every imaginable type.

you had look pretty hard to find anything refering to film ... digital things were everywhere. it really seems like a huge chunk of the commercial world lives and breathes bits and bytes already. i have to say i was amazed by some prints hanging at the canon booth. 20x30 prints made from a dslr that looked like top of the line medium format. they'd been taken with a zoom lens at f2.8.

apple had a giant booth where they unveiled their latest hardware and photo software.

i tried out eizo monitors for the first time (finally an lcd that i'd be happy to work with, but not happy to pay for).

lots of paper companies, both silver and ink.

was mostly there to give a seminar, along with mary virginia swanson, on digital promotion strategies for artists. popped in on a few other seminars, but they were mostly of the "and here's how i took this picture" variety.

I could be wrong, but I had the sense that the show was smaller this year. Polaroid did not attend. Nor did Visual Departures, which handles and important line of continuous lights, nor Cooke Optics. Some exhibitors, such as Chimera, seemed to have less floor space than last year. On the other hand, I don't recall what Apple was doing last year, but they were far and away the most prominent exhibitor this year. They had a very slick, big screen presentation on Aperture. In addition to Canham, Arca-Swiss had a large format booth manned by the owner of the company and the US sales rep.

I attended the show on opening day, Thursday 10/20. I think this was my 15th consecutive show, if I remember correctly, both working as an exhibitor and as an attendee. It was about as crowded as I've ever seen, which I consider a good sign that interest in photography is as healthy as ever.

Unfortunately, LF was even less represented than last year. Arca Swiss had a wonderful corner "booth". They are to be applauded for spending the money and effort to show up in classy style for what is essentially becoming a niche market. Schnedier was there as well with a quite visible booth, with Jack Dykinga (LF color landscape specialist mostly associated with Arizona Highways magazine) casually showing some lovely prints. I also saw Kieth Canham, a View Camera magazine booth (empty - guess it was lunch time), and some Toyo View cameras placed nearly inaccessibly in the Mamiya booth, which you would have to plow through the crowds to even notice were there, let alone try to handle one to consider a purchase.

Sadly again, the once giant Ilford had a much smaller exhibit, with a couple of small placards with pictures of their film line to even hint that they were in the film business, although in all fairness I did not talk to them one on one to learn more of their film manufacturing status.

As mentioned above, Apple had this HUGE exhibit, all in black, with a bunch of "apple-ites" walking around in black with apple logos, like Steve Jobs was Darth Vader or something. All to primarily hawk
the image management software Aperture, which acts (rather amazingly... okay, I said it) like a virtual light box.

The truly amazing thing to witness, for myself, are the strides Epson has taken in producing simply beautiful BW prints with their new line of printers (R2400, et al) which exhibit no color cast and an amazing D-Max. Lack of D-Max has been my biggest gripe with inkjet prints. No offense to Mr. Cone, but I have never been a fan of Piezography prints. This year was I think, the fourth exhibit I've seen which supposedly represent the best of the best of these inkjet prints, and they always look so flat, and the tooth on the print surface from using watercolor paper just looks so artsy-craftsy to me. But the Epson prints (examples were from Chris Ranier, AA's assistant before John Sexton and Alan Ross, and Greg Gorman) were stunning. They could have been printed on Oriental Seagull G3 (blue box) for all you would know.

Other than that. software, software, and if you looked really really hard, some software.
And really cute spokesmodels in the Westcott (lighting) and Phase One booths.

Horseman apparently was talking about a new 6x17cm camera: http://www.horsemanusa.com/SW617e.pdf

It will be interesting to see how they price it compared to Linhof!