2008 PMA Final Report

Introduction
The annual PMA camera and photography tradeshow was held in Las Vegas again this year. Since 2000, the first year I went, it’s gone back and forth between Orlando, Florida and Las Vegas, Nevada. Most camera companies and PR firms have their headquarters in New York and New Jersey. So PMA is an excuse to go somewhere warm as well as show off new products to their dealers and the press. Orlando is for taking the kids and family to Disney World. And Vegas is for grownup fun.

It’s always hard to summarize PMA and it takes a while to really digest all the new camera gear and process what I’ve seen. As far as big announcements and innovative technology go, it wasn’t the most exciting PMA ever. If I have to sum it up in a sentence, PMA this year was about digital camera refinement. The most exciting news and product at the show was Sony’s unnamed future pro digital SLR. If there was a winner, it was Sony. Of course, there were lots of other products to help you take and enjoy better photos. Read on to learn more about the most interesting and important new digital cameras and photo accessories at PMA 2008.

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“We’ll be in film as long as there’s a market for it.”

I heard this statement not once, but 4 times this year at PMA . And the people saying it were Agfa, Ilford, Fuji, and Kodak.

I met with reps from each of these companies while at PMA. Each one talked about their current film offerings, and their plans for the future (the ones they could share with me, anyway.) When I asked them if they were planning on staying with film for the foreseeable future, they each paused, looked me right in the eye, and said “yes.”

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As you’d expect from Sony, this will tag and map video as well as stills.

Another time-synchronising GPS, where you carry the GPS receiver and it tags your images with the location based on comparing the clock of the GPS with the timestamp in your image.
Unlike the ATP GPS Photo-Finder this does not require you to set your camera time to UTC.

The location of images is found by matching the time, but there are two adjustments; firstly the time zone set on your camera’s clock, secondly the offset of your clock from the UTC time that GPS uses. A simple slider control allows +/- 5 minutes adjustement.

The difference from other GPS units I found at PMA this year is that this supports video, hardly a surprise for a Sony product I think.

The supplied Picture Motion Browser will display your track on a map, with a thumbnail of the video clip at each location ready for you to click and view.