Photokina 2002 Show Report
Welcome to the Photokina
2002 show report. The Photokina 'World of Imaging' trade fair is the biggest
of its kind anywhere in the world, it takes place every other year and
is located at the Koln Messe in Cologne, Germany. This years show ran
from 25th to 30th September and was open between 10 AM and 6 PM.
Note: This is not designed to be comprehensive
report of the entire show but rather a look at the new digital photography
related products announced and shown at Photokina.
Photokina 2002 Show Report Summary
Photokina 2002 was a true reflection of how far digital
has come and how it now dominates much of the photography industry. You
couldn't turn a corner without seeing a digital camera or related solution,
digital cameras took dominant positions on all major manufacturers stands
and several new products were announced.
At the consumer end there were very few totally new products,
most of the 'new' digital cameras announced are really refreshes of existing
products with either larger pixel count image sensors, new features or
both. There was also very little announced at the show, most of the cameras
in this show report (and thus seen at the show) were announced (or leaked)
at least a week before the show opened.
At the professional / serious amateur end of the spectrum
things are much more interesting. Photokina 2002 marked the advent of
the truly commercially available full-frame 35 mm digital SLR (it could
be argued that this plaudit belongs to the Contax N Digital but this camera
seems to be having a hard time making it to market and will always be
a niche product).
Canon announced the eleven megapixel full image frame
(36 x 24 mm) EOS-1Ds and Kodak announced the fourteen megapixel DCS-14n.
We weren't that surprised to see Canon going down the CMOS route, and
the image quality we've seen from a pre-production camera looks very good
(click here). Without
doubt though Kodak stole the limelight and surprised everyone with the
DCS-14n, not only full image frame (36 x 24 mm) and fourteen megapixels
but a CMOS sensor! Better still the camera is relatively compact and lightweight
and has an expected street price of just $4000.
Sigma and Foveon managed to make another big splash by
giving SD9's to journalists and allowing them to go out and shoot their
own samples. This certainly generated huge amounts of interest on this
site, so much so that we got our hands on the camera for a second time
to update the cloudy weather samples of our first shoot with some much
better samples (click
here).
Our top six stands
(rated by overall quality, size, product availability and
staff)
- Sony
- Canon
- Olympus
- Kodak
- HP
- Nikon
Key Products
In summary we considered the following as the key digital photography
products at Photokina 2002 (alphabetical order) - covered in more detail
on the following pages:
- ACDSee 5.0 **
- Canon EOS-1Ds **
- Canon PowerShot G3
- Contax TVS Digital
- Kodak EasyShare LS443
- Kodak DCS-14n **
- Lexar Write Acceleration
- Minolta DiMAGE 7Hi
- Olympus C-50 Zoom **
- Sigma SD9 **
- Sony DSC-U20
** My personal top products
Alphabetical Index
Manufacturers New Products Index
Other sites reports
Click
here for Imaging-Resource's Photokina 2002 show report
Click
here for Letsgodigital's Photokina 2002 show report
Last Show - Photokina 2000
Click
here for our full report on Photokina 2000
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