PMA 2003 Show Report
 Welcome
to the dpreview PMA 2003 show report. The Photo
Marketing Association Annual Show was held this year at the Las
Vegas Convention Center between the March 2nd and 5th. The annual
PMA trade show is the photography industry's most important annual event,
it's the place where the hottest digital photography products are announced.
As usual we have also included several products announced
at CES 2003 (suffixed [CES]), the main reasoning behind this is that these
products will join products announced at PMA 2003 to make up a manufacturer's
2003 product line.
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 PMA.
PMA 2003 Show Report Summary
This years PMA shows how far the digital camera market
has come and how quickly it is still growing, we have had almost twice
the number of announcements of this time last year, with Canon and Sony
virtually replacing their entire range during the show. It was also refreshing
to see other manufacturers aiming for the digital SLR market, Pentax with
their *ist D and Olympus finally showing some 'E System' product, although
I was disappointed that Olympus didn't tell us more about this. I'm sure
we'll get more on the 'E System' in the months to come.
One show topping product must be the Canon EOS-10D for
its superb new metal body, vastly improved AF system, swathe of other
improvements and a drop in price which can only be good for consumers.
In addition to this there's Fujifilm's extended dynamic range FinePix
F700 (we're looking forward to testing it), the feature packed Sony DSC-V1,
Kodak's impressive OLED display on the LS633 and Pentax's "dark horse"
products the Optio 450 and 550 (five times optical zoom!).
Key Products
In summary we considered the following as the key digital
photography products at PMA 2003 (alphabetical order).
- Adobe Album 1.0 (Probably the best Photo collection tools)
- Canon PowerShot A70 (All the features of a PowerShot G1 at
a great price)
- Canon EOS-10D (The best just got better, a metal body, and
cheaper too)
- Casio Exilim EX-S3 (Due to become a new best seller for Casio)
- Fujifilm FinePix F700 (First SuperCCD SR digital camera, improves
dynamic range)
- Kodak EasyShare LS633 (For that beautiful OLED screen)
- Nikon Coolpix SQ (Pocketable, funky and daring)
- Nikon DX 12 - 24 mm AF-S DX F4.0 G lens (Nikon confirms its
D-SLR future)
- Olympus 4/3 Digital SLR 'E system' (at last something tangible,
although still no specs)
- Pentax *ist D (at last another entrant to the digital SLR market)
- Pentax Optio S (Small yet still familiar, unique lens system)
- Pentax Optio 550 (Feature packed, ultra-compact, five times
zoom, five megapixel)
- Sony DSC-V1 (Feature packed, ultra-compact, four times zoom,
five megapixel)
- Sony Memory Stick Pro (At last some storage relief for Sony
digital cameras)
New Product Index
Our previous PMA show reports
Other PMA 2003 show reports
Here's a selection of other PMA 2003 reports around the web.
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