Tuesday September 16, 2014

Photokina the worlds largest photo trade show kicked off today in Cologne, Germany.  This show is held every other year and is the launch point for many new and groundbreaking products. Michael and I arrived in Cologne on Monday and after a good nights rest explored two of the seven halls.  I have been coming to Photokina for 20 plus years and at one point the show filled 11 halls.  Times have changed though.  Kodak, Agfa, and Fuji at one point had their own halls. These are massive buildings and in many cases two floors.  Of the two halls we visited one hall was dedicated just to Leica. Yes, times have changed.

Our coverage today is of Halls 1 and 2.  We’ll be exploring the other halls over the next four days and one way or another we will get through all of them.  There aren’t too many surprises to write home about so far.  Many of the manufacturers prior to the show made announcements of new products and as result there aren’t any real surprises except to go see what was announced.  We have numerous meetings set up and have had a few today.  We’ll give you highlights on these as well as a video below.

When we arrived at the show we were trying to gauge the hot new products of the show.  Frankly there were not a lot.  Nikon, Canon, Fuji, Sony have all made minor announcements of products. Mostly new lenses or upgrades to existing camera lines.  For Canon it was the 7D and Nikon the the 710.  Phase One announced an upgrade to Capture One from 7 to 8, and introduced the IQ150. The big news and buzz generator has come out of left field with Samsung and their new NX1 camera.  We’ll be visiting with Samsung and will bring you more news about this camera after our meeting. It’s a 28 Megapixel camera with some amazing specs.

One of the entrances was a giant globe and floor made up of thousands of images

An Interview with Richard Schleuning of Zeiss About
the New Loxia Lens Line for Sony FE Mount

and…

An Interview with Jim Malcolm of Ricoh / Pentax
About Customer Service in The U.S. and Canada

on the New Medium Format 645z and Other Pentax Cameras

Total Running Time = 5 Minutes
– Filmed with the Sony A7s –

What We Saw Today

ALPA was our first stop today.  It just was there at the bottom of the steps in Hall l2.  There was a good crowd around the booth as they showed off their products.  Seems the technical camera for medium format is still quite popular. New for them this show are a number of new adapters for the FPS Camera shown above.  There was also news that ALPA has made a partnership with Phase One regarding elevating the functionality of Phase One backs with ALPA Cameras and lenses.  We hope to have more details on this soon.  For the latest you can visit theALPA Photokina Page.

The Nikon Booth was packed.  Visitors were interested in the newest cameras and lenses that Nikon has announced.  The NEW Nikon D750 has some very impressive specs and folks were lined up three deep at the counter to see it.  There was a lot of Nikon glass to see and try out.  The newest lens, the 20mm 1.8 was very popular and will surely see a lot of pre-orders.  A lot of interest was also aimed at the Nikon D810.

The Nikon booth also had this robotic arm with a Nikon on it doing some cool live video.

What’s A Trade Show Without Some Fancy Dancers and Acrobatics At The Epson Booth

No it’s not Google Glass….It’s Michael Trying Epson’s Virtula Reality Glasses…hmmmm Michael Is A Trend Setter

The EPSON SC-P600 13 Inch Printer

Epson’s Dano and Michael

The Epson booth was huge.  Seems everything at Photokina is huge.  There were a lot of thigs happening at Epson like high-end commercial printers, but the one bit of news was seeing the SC-P600 printer working.  This is a brand new 13 inch printer that was just announced.  It has not been announced in the US yet though.  Most likely we’ll see it at Photoplus.  It was also great to see everyone’s good friend Dano Steinhardt back with Epson.

The Olympus 40-150mm With Tele-Extender

Olympus 7-14mm Underglass

We were very impressed with the Olympus booth and especially being able to try out the NEW M.Zuiko ED 40-150mm F2.8 Pro lens.  I have already ordered this lens and it will compliment my 12-40 Pro lens I use now on my Olympus.  It has one of the coolest lens shades we have ever seen.  Twist it one way and it comes off, twist it the other way and it retracts on itself over the lens.  You have to see it to appreciate it.  Our photos show it both ways.  The 7-14mm lens was under glass and should be available next year.  There is also a 1.4X Tele-Extender available for the 40-150mm lens. The 35mm equivalent, if you are interested, is an 80-300mm lens.  In about a week you can expect to see a firmware upgrade to the EM-1 line that has enough specs to really impress.  Kind of like getting a new camera.  Most interesting will be in-camera perspective control.  Stay tuned on this one.

Michael filming the interview with Rich using his Sony A7s
and the new Zeiss Loxia 50mm f/2 Planar

We had the chance to sit down with Rich Schleuning form Zeiss and talk about some new lenses they have been releasing lately.  These new lenses as well as a lot of other things we have seen at the show give rise to the fact that lens makers as well as specialty product makers are taking mirrorless very serious and especially the Sony Full Frame platform.

A Table Full Of Zeiss Lenses To Look At

Michael Trys One Of The New Otis Lenses On His Sony

A few years ago no one would have expected to see Leica in the strong position they are in now.  The Leica booth is the best booth at the show.  An incredible showcase of the latest Leica Camera and related items.  The NEW Leica S system is something to behold.  While it won’t ship until March 2015 it boosts the fastest frame rate of any medium format camera as well as 4K video.  Leica’s booth has one the most incredible photo exhibits I have ever seen.  Andrew Kaufman has certainly resurrected Leica to be a giant in the industry.  They never lost track of what their heritage was all about.  Most impressive.

The NEW Leica S Set Up for 4K Video

Phase One made a few announcements today.  Capture One 8 has been released.  It boosts a number of new features like a new processing engine, improved live view, better cataloging, improved local adjustments and much more.  The software is now available as a subscription or regular license purchase.  In addition they also announced a NEW IQ150 which is a 50mp digital back essentially without the WiFi of its big brother the IQ250.

Minox Shows Off Its 5.1 MP Digitl Camera.  Sure IS Small!

The HC Cam, a Tilt Shift 14-24mm Shown On A Sony A7

Sometimes you find the coolest things where you least expect to.  Such was the case with the HCam from Hartblei.  Stefan Steib the CEO is one amazing energetic engineer producing some amazing products. The HCam is one of those.  We plan to get one of these and give a full run-down of its capabilities in a future posting.

Michael and Stefan have a bit of fun putting the HCam To The Test

One Amazining Piece Of Engineering

A NEW Ballhead and A Pretty Cool One At That…
We have One For Testing And Will Report More Soon

CAPCAMAnother Interesting Find.
Not For everyone, But It Takes Camera Automation To A New Level

And, Finally For Today … Look What’s Still Around

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