Digital Photography: Report from PMA,The PhotoMarketers Association

A Mature Digital Photography Audience Looks to for Better Fruits from their Labors

Published: February, 2006

This year the operative word from PMA is MATURE. The tradeshow floor caters to better educated consumers often buying their second or third digital cameras.

What does that mean? You’ll hear less about pixels–how many dots of resolution a camera has– and more about the quality craftsmanship in the camera. You’re going to hear more about video, especially digital video - the next big thing, and plenty about how to safeguard your precious images.

Digital video is the next great frontier. SONY’s DVD505 is pretty typical of the genre. It records directly to a small DVD

The same image taken with the Panasonic TZ1 at 1x and 10x resolution.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Have you ever loved your video but thought the audio quality was pathetic? Well, look for accessories to make home videos better.

Not only does the SONY camera record in 5.1 DOLBY Digital Surround sound, but there’s now a Bluetooth wireless microphone accessory. Clip the microphone on your subject and it’ll sound as if they’re mic’ed like a TV anchor, even if they’re across the lake, taking their wedding vows or singing in a group concert.

For digital cameras it’s all about quality optics and not making tradeoffs between compactness, style and features. For example, a new camera from Panasonic, the TZ1, is the smallest camera on the market to feature an 10X optical zoom. This lets you really get amazingly close to your subject. Compact cameras are harder to hold steady on a subject, and long zoom lenses exaggerate any movements from shaky hands. Panasonic, offers something they call MEGA Optical Image Stabilization which corrects for hand movement by shifting the lens in response. Other cameras have other names for their image stabilization but as cameras get small and zooms get long it’s necessary.

Another trait of the newer digital cameras? Large LCD preview screens. Most of them have screens that are at least 2/5 inches and some are larger still.

Another big issue at PMA is how to back up images now that we’re all taking our precious photos and storing them on our less than perfect computers. Sort of like flossing your teeth, backup is something everyone talks about but no one does. As a matter of fact, IDC found that even though digital photographers all worry about their photos being lost, less than half of them do anything about it. Maybe because backup software has been less than user friendly

The folks at Symantec have a new product called Norton Save and Restore. It makes backup easy, but more important, it makes restoring from your backup–which has been notoriously hard— easy too. And it works with all of the traditional backup media — hard drives, writable DVDs and CDs, external drives. And here’s a plus. If you use it with Norton Internet Security your computer will get a message to backup your files whenever it’s notified of a virus outbreak.

Lots more at the show — an entire wing of the show devoted to scrapbooking, cell phone cameras photos and how to make the best of them, in store kiosks for printing and lots of new ways to share images electronically. When I first started attending PMA, the digital cameras took up a small corner of the showfloor. Clearly, they are “it” today and the new products are all about getting folks to use them with better results.