As I write, there are no doubt a lot of people getting drunk. It’s Sunday night, and the PMA Australia 2008, held in Brisbane, is finally over. I was only there for two of the four days, and I didn’t even go to a single paid conference event. I was there in a role as a professional photographer come consumer, and as such I was there to suss out future directions, trends, and all the latest gear. It’s a highly personalised experience going to such an event, due to the incredibly diverse nature and levels of professional photography. I hang around the lower levels as it is, but that doesn’t make my perspective any less interesting. Here’s what I thought were some of the interesting bits.. (I’d be here for days to discuss it all)

Adobe – They placed nearly ALL of their focus on Lightroom 2 Beta. Sure, they plugged CS3 and a few other bits and pieces, but they seem obsessed with Lightroom. I am only just today evaluating the product for myself, but to me it sits awkwardly between and on top of other Adobe products. It’s not a full on cataloguing software like iView Media Pro (now Microsoft Expression v2, and more of that later), and neither does it have the browsing power and functionality of Bridge. It handles raw and dng files, and it does some local adjustments and non destructive editing, but in no way does it replace Photoshop. So what does it do? Well, I think the best explanation I got was from well known Photoshop author Mark Galer, who basically said that it was a work flow solution for some photographers, in some situations. To me it feels like it’s aimed at consumers as opposed professionals, but I’m still to really figure out how it works. What I do know however is that my test catalogue of some 3500 images (mostly jpgs and a few hundred raw files thrown in as well) fills up some 3.46GB of space. The images themselves only fill 8.45GB. Admittedly I have 1:1 previews built in to the catalogue, but it’s a whopping catalogue nonetheless. My old iView Media Pro catalogues covering over 10,000 images with full size previews were only 1GB! Go figure… I do like the design of Lightroom however, and I look forward to discovering exactly where it sits amongst the plethora of photographic software now on the market. All I can say however, is that Adobe are going real hard on this one, so I assume they see such a product as filling a very important niche or future direction.

One of Lightroom’s main competitors (or is it?) at least for professional photographers, is Expression Media. Microsoft has released version 2 of this software, and I would love to get my hands on a copy. But at $500 I’m not holding my breath. The first version was reportedly as buggy as a picnic at a dump, so a whole lot of improvements are needed. But iView Media Pro was the leading cataloguing software for photographers, and you can do a whole lot worse than having a company with Microsoft’s resources getting their hands on it. But it was ticked away in a corner stall, as part of Gekko Images‘ stand (they support it in Australia apparently). Did I win a copy Adrian?? 🙂 Microsoft have released Expression Studio as a direct competitor to the Adobe Creative Suite (well, sort of) but they have a long way to go to build a package capable of taking that particular behemoth on. Still, there are a few interesting sides of Expression and I will be keeping an eye on that.

Gekko Images also had other interesting aspects of their stand, plugging as they were, their “Creative 09” a hard-copy (& web) directory of local talent in Australia. Photographers, art directors and all in between. It sounds like a great idea to me, and they have a strong tie with the ACMP. Gekko is well worth having a look at.

Nikon stole the floor with a huge stand right at the very entrance, giving away huge bags to anyone who would take one, while Canon’s stand was a half the size and a lot simpler. I suppose you could argue that this just illustrates how far Nikon has to go to catch up, and that Canon thinks they can take it a bit easy. After all, they have the 1D and 1Ds Mark IIIs to brag about. Nikon’s D3 is not in the same class as far as I’m concerned. I had a play with the 1Ds Mk III with a 24-70mm on it, and it was amazing. The stuff dreams are made of.

And then there were the talks. I went to one on Friday with Marcus Bell from Studio Impressions, and while that was interesting and his work is awesome, the talk Yervant gave on Saturday was even better. It was just inspirational as hell and he had two hundred people crowded around to hear him. And I’m not even a wedding photographer. But he used the same lenses as I do, so that’s something 🙂

All in all it was an interesting few days. No really big new announcements or anything (well I heard Epson announced a printer, but I don’t care) but it was good to see the jostling of positioning in the digital market, and to see companies like Sony and Samsung suddenly going full on at the digital SLR market. Bit late guys.. Olympus was also reasonable well represented, whereas Pentax was hidden away as part of CR Kennedy’s stand.

Heavyweights like Hasselblad, and Leica and Phase One were also there, but really I don’t spend much time looking at $40,000 equipment. It’s just too hard. One upper level product I did look closely at were the Eizo monitors. Bloody unbelievable. It was just so obvious how good these monitors are. I’m saving up. Oh and if you’re in the market for some lighting, Kayell has a great special on a Elinchrom set-up for under $2000…

Mac were there as well of course, but I didn’t have time for them. I can’t use Aperture anyway….