[Leica] PMA report

[don.dory at gmail.com (Don Dory)]

OK boys and girls, PMA was just a little shrunken from years past.  Two
years ago the trade floor took up two floors in Las Vegas.  This year they
took up a larg part of one floor, of course they threw in a touchy feely
designer model store, and lots of large open spots to sit down and enjoy the
lack of exhibitors.

Film stuff: Fuji announce two slide films, a new Provia 400X I think and a
new 64T.  Both much more than new and improved Tide.  They had a number of
very well done very large prints around demonstrating detail, color,
sharpness, gradation, and a certain luminosity because it was largely shot
on film.  Fuji's chairman in a keynote speech talked specifically how Fuji
was committing large sums of R&D into the film business and how important
the print was to the individuals involved as well as the industry.

Epson showed the V700 which is a flat bed scanner capable of 6400dpi
optically on a scan bed covering 8X10.  Film holders would include 35mm
through 8X10.  Price point was $549.  Silverfast is the interface software.
At a $799 price point you also recieved a better software package and an
adapter to scan in a wet mount.

Hasselblad was off in a small room showing off their good stuff to people
who could write checks so I can not report on the Zeiss offerings.

Now that I have bored 80% of the list, the other important things at the
show included some pretty intense wars in the RAW converter business.
Bibble was showing their latest which had  very good noise reduction that
could be targeted at just that level of shadows where you found
objectionable noise without a significant loss of detail.  Apple was all
over Aperture which seemed more of a work flow aid.  Adobe must feel some
heat as they spent a lot of time talking about their competing product,
Lightroom, which can be downloaded as a beta from their site(Mac only at
this point)

Nik has improved their filter suite so that it is easier, faster, and
more connected so that you can do some pretty amazing things really fast.
They also have a new plug in for Nikon View? that will do some amazing
things in NEF.  There is some very smart programming going on with seamless
ability to wash parts of the scene lighter or darker more or less contrast,
color casts in selected portions of an image.  Global corrections at the RAW
stage are now becoming localised adjustments.  Hopefully this will leave
Beta soon.

HP has seen the Epson light and was showing a very promising wide carraige
pigment ink printer that would have archival results on a wide variety of
third party papers.  Individual ink carts so you no longer spend money on
wasted ink.  B.D. take heart, the prints on a large number of paper surfaces
looked very good.

Canon was doing the same, but the color gamut was not as large and
color looked good, but was not accurate according to some very knowledgeable
people I know that might have a horse in the Epson ring.

Interesting advance for Epson printers, a small English company, Innova was
showing an inkjet paper that looked exactly like Illford Gallerie glossy air
dried.  Great feel, wonderful deep dark Dmax, fabulous feel of depth.  At
the same booth was a bookbinder www.booksmartstudio.com that not only had
workshops but could also be hired to bind some prety wonderful books at a
very reasonable cost.  B.D needed something exactly like this for his west
coast wedding.

Hannemuhle also showed a wonderful paper that looked as good as the above.
I think that inkjeters just moved into the mainstream and out of the artsy
world.  No more excuses that you like the fuzzy look of 100% rag paper.  You
would have to see the black blacks and smooth gradation to real looking
whites.  Depth to the image that in the past only came from wet work.

Serious users might look at the new line of monitors from Eizo Nanao.  16:9
format to keep the pesky tools on screen, wide range of individual color
adjustment as well as the lux, color temperature, and gamma.  Gamma actually
set at the factory so neutral is neutral.  The extra color adjustments mean
that when you calibrate you monitor on the advanced settings you can dial in
exact color at a variety of midpoints, not just 0, 128, and 255.

Likewise, Wacom was showing off some new tablets, Intuos, with keys and
sliders on the sides that you can program.  Want a quicker way to adjust
brush size than the brackets?  Use the slide keys that allow rapid or
precise changes.

Now on topic, the kind friends at the Leica booth were very gratified about
the high volume of visitors that were not just lens kickers.  Also, they
seemed pretty sure that the dM would hit around Photokina.  They did do some
exploration at the price points but the previous numbers seemed in the right
range.

As far as P&S cameras, everybody had more pixels(8 being pretty common under
$500), bigger screens(2.5" very common), image stabilisation on most models
over $300, and higher ISO's available.  Fuji was the most aggressive on the
ISO front with some pretty convincing displays showing useable 1600.  Sizes
have generally come up from the SonyT7 which might have been too small.

SLR's were pretty quiet although one of the keynote speakers was wondering
when his D200 would ever come.  There was some genuine interest in the new
Olympus with continuous viewing.  Comments from dealers indicated they liked
the upgrade path from P&S and also the margins they could make.  Canon of
course was packed all the time with people looking at the toys.  Nikon had a
full house, but never got to the zoo stage.  Nikon's new 105 Micro was very
nice and the image stabilization will make some interesting changes in how
macro gets done.  Nikon also showed a very cool ring light set up where you
could add up to 4 small flashes on any part of a ring that mounted on a
lens.  Weight your light, no problem.  Want to imitate the big boys with
fashion ring lights, easy as taking out the old check book.  TTL easy, you
bet.

Tina, Canon's new 85 F1.2 will make you mad you bought the old one.  Much
faster AF and a very nice manual focus throw as well.

More as I get sleep.

Don
don.dory@gmail.com