PMA 2005 Show Report

Welcome to the Digital Photography Review PMA 2005 show report. The Photo Marketing Association Annual Show was held this year at the Orange County Convention Center, Orlando between February 20th and 23rd. PMA is the photography industry's most important annual event, it's the place where the new year's hottest digital photography products are announced.

Note: This is not designed to be comprehensive report of the entire show but rather a summary of the new digital photography related products announced around and shown at PMA.

PMA 2005 Summary

PMA is normally the biggest show of the year but this year was noticeably smaller and quieter than normal, there were both fewer products and fewer people at the show and several larger names had fairly small stands. There are probably a number of factors which caused this, not least of which that over 100 new products were announced at Photokina 2004 which was just five months ago. That said we still had a great time at the show and got to meet all our industry friends. Here are a few statistics from the show (from our point of view):

• Show report: 18 stands, 227 images, 2,700 words posted live from the show floor
• News: 90 news articles posted since January 20th
• Products announced: Over 65 new digital photography products (major manufacturers)
• Site stats (19/Feb - 23/Feb; 5 days): 2.5 million visitors, 14.5 million pages read
• Forums (19/Feb - 23/Feb; 5 days): 74,390 messages posted

PMA 2005, our Top 8 new products *

1. Canon EOS 350D / Digital Rebel XT (Digital SLR) [preview]
2. Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5
3. Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H1
4. Nikon Coolpix 7900
5. Olympus IR-300
6. Sigma DC 30 mm F1.4 Lens
7. Olympus ED 35-100 mm F2.0 Lens
8. Canon EF-S 60 mm F2.8 Macro Lens

* We really couldn't see TEN innovative / very good new products so reduced our list to EIGHT

New Product Index (65 total)

Please note that all of the above products are brand new and just announced, our 'NEW' indicator simply marks those products which have been added to this list within the last three days. As usual we have also included several products announced at CES 2005 (suffixed [CES]), the main reasoning behind this is that these products join those announced at PMA to make up a manufacturer's new line-up.

Live from the show floor (posting history)

As we did at PMA and Photokina 2004 we posted live stand reports and photos direct from the show floor. At PMA 2005 we used a pre-production (Beta) Canon EOS 350D (Digital Rebel XT) with the EF-S 17-85 mm IS lens, all images shot at ISO 1600.The table below shows a list of pages uploaded / modified in reverse date order. Text and analysis by Simon Joinson, Images by Phil Askey.

PMA 2005 trend 'predictions' (posted before the show)

• New differentiation points - Large LCD's, Image Stabilization
• The beginnings of a move away from increasing megapixels (although still more to come)
• Widening of product offerings, more cameras with medium to large zoom (6x - 12x)
• Mostly five and seven megapixel CCD's
• MPEG-4 video still won't arrive fully, we'll see it in some models but not enough
• More cameras with built-in flash storage (and no supplied storage card)
• Beginnings of wireless connectivity provision but still limited
• Lots of digital SLR's this year, although perhaps not all announced at PMA

Other show reports

Other sites show reports

• Imaging Resource PMA 2005 Show Report
• Steves-Digicams PMA 2005 Show Report
• A-Digital-Eye PMA 2005 Show Report
• DPNow PMA 2005 Show Report

Our PMA final show reports

• PMA 2004 report
• PMA 2003 report
• PMA 2002 report
• PMA 2001 report

Our Photokina final show reports

• Photokina 2004 report
• Photokina 2002 report
• Photokina 2000 report