A great day at the show yesterday; I did three demo sessions (that’s me above during my gig at the Adobe booth—photo by Ted Waitt); met some great people, saw some old friends; made some new ones; had dinner with some good friends at my favorite restaurant: Carmine’s on West 44th in Manhattan, then watched the Rays win. I’m totally beat, but what a great way to spend the day! :)
I didn’t get much time to visit booths today, but here’s what I saw that was creating a buzz:
- The Epson booth was insane, and their new printers were getting a lot of attention. When I went by, I saw a long line, and followed it up to the front and found out why; Joe McNally was signing prints.
- Stopped by the Bogen Imaging Booth (or should I say, “booths” because they had like six), and they’ve got a new Elinchrom Ranger Kit (portable light and battery pack) coming out that looks cool, and they’ve got so many cool goodies I could almost empty my wallet right there.
- Adobe’s booth was a madhouse. Lots of buzz around Lightroom 2 and CS4, with back-to-back sessions going all day. The crowd was 10 deep.
- Not as many wedding album booths as I had seen at Imaging USA back in January, but all the camera makers were well represented. Nikon had presentations going and McNally did an amazing presentation there on speedlights (off camera flash); so did Canon, and Canon’s 5DMark II was getting lots of attention.
- Sony had a huge booth, but I didn’t get over there yet.
- Westcott had a cool booth, and live demos going all day (I did one on the Spiderlite TD-5’s this afternoon). Had a really great crowd, and answered a lot of questions. The new brighter bulbs were a big hit.
- Plug-ins are hot right now, and both Nik Software and OnOne Software had plenty of traffic and buzz.
- I showed Instant JPEG from Raw in one of my demo sessions and people were diggin’ it.
- Both NAPP and Kelby Training had booths at the show, and we were slammed all day.
- Saw Rob Sylvan, from NAPP’s Help Desk, at the show, and he had his Lightoom 2 For Dummies Book (hot off the press). I took a look at it tonight, and Rob did a real nice job with it!
- B&H Photo was jammin’ (as usual), and they were running free buses from the convention center to the store (and back) all day.
- There were a lot of live shoots, and live demo shoots, going on all over the floor. More than I remember seeing the past, and most were pretty cool.
That’s it for tonight (I’m falling asleep at the wheel). Hopefully, I’ll have more on the show on Monday, but I’ve got to hit the sack; I have to teach tomorrow. Have a great weekend everybody, and I’ll see some of you (around 500 of you) in Dallas, Texas on Monday. Can’t wait!
