Hi gang, I spent this week-end at the booth of BioFoto (www.biofoto.no), at the Norwegian Photo Expo (http://www.fotomessen.com), with the occasional excursion around the hall to get some general impressions. If you have no interest in stuff like this, here's the point to stop reading.
About a quarter of the expo was dedicated to photo exhibitions. Margaret de Lange and Frans Lanting both had a big presence, and for the rest there were Norwegian photographers of more and less interest. BioFoto had a corner to themselves, where I was allowed to put up a few of my Antarctica pictures and a couple of snow crystals. My original idea was to fill the space entirely with Antarctica and South Georgia pics, but I'm glad I diversified. The snow crystals attracted far more attention than the others. Mostly down to their uniqueness in the exhibition, I think. Just a few plaster walls away, Pål Hermansen had a broad wall full of emperor penguin shots; made with a digital Hassy and printed in 1x1 meter and upwards. Fat chance to compete with that... :-) A breath of fresh air in the exhibition was also the wall with shots from the students at BILDER - Nordic School of Photography. Very different, very diverse, and full of youthful energy. A lot funnier to watch than both de Lange and Lanting, IMHO. The Norwegian market is small, but with proportionally many strong buyers, so it may yet have some relevance for trends in larger countries' markets. There were both photographic and photo-related businesses present. Print shops, software vendors, and photo gear peddlers and distributors. Nikon had a big section with lots of competent gear people, skillful photographers and loads of gear to try out. Same thing with Canon, Elinchrome and a few other brands. Sony's stand was mostly for show, but sported a fair selection of photo gear nonetheless. Samsung had a huge section with nearly nothing in it. Leica was relegated to a modest corner, together with Tokina and Tamrac and some chinese brand of tripod I've never heard of before. Olympus had no presence at all. Pentax was represented by the former Norwegian distributor Fovi, the chain store JapanPhoto, and the current distributor Focus Trading. The former had a small booth with loads of gear for sale. The latter had a chunk of floor the size of Sony and Samsung together, promoting a long list of brands, including Zeiss, Panasonic, Pentax and Tamron. Pentax had a modest representation with two 645D and a couple of lenses, some K-x, K-r, K-5 and compacts, and a selection of the K-mount lens lineup. Nothing could be bought over the counter, however. Every sale was referred to either JapanPhoto or Fovi. Fovi also had a 645D available for fondling. JapanPhoto, however, pushed Mamiya's 33 Mpx alternative at a very aggressive price. Neither sold a single MedF camera through the whole expo. Not even to me. :-) But both the K-5 and the 645D attracted a fair amount of attention, and have apparently earned the respect of both Nikon and Canon peddlers. Jostein -- http://www.alunfoto.no/galleri/ http://alunfoto.blogspot.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
