Digital Photography: Gecko and Bobbleheads Steal PMA Show

Normally at this time of the year I am writing about significant new cameras that have been unveiled at the annual PMA trade show in Las Vegas. But, after a flurry of new cameras announced in the latter half of last year, it was perhaps too much to expect many important announcements this early in the new year.

Whether there might have been more unveilings if the economy was in better shape is a valid question. With camera sales tracking downward compared to last year, it would seem natural for manufacturers to postpone new camera introductions while they clear backlogs of older models and also cut back on expenses.

Nevertheless, despite a somewhat less exciting PMA show, it was still fun to walk around the show floor and try to discover any buzz being created by new products. Most agreed that two products stood out this year—a camera mount called Fat Gecko and realistic photo bobbleheads.

Delkin Devices won a DIMA Innovative Product award for Fat Gecko. The movie industry and high-end commercial photographers doing car-to-car photography have long used suction mounts like this. The mounts have always been expensive as they are built for holding large and heavy (and expensive) equipment firmly in place even during wild chase scenes.

Now here comes the Fat Gecko with a retail price of just $89.95. Naturally it’s not built for heavy equipment, its weight limit at only 3 pounds. However, it seems pretty sturdy and is big enough for smaller cameras with smaller lenses. With such a low cost it should also be possible to rig up a mount using three Fat Geckos to hold a larger weight or position a camera further away for a car body. It was also immediately apparent to visitors to the company’s booth that a Fat Gecko could be used to hold small lights in confined places such as a window or a door. Judging by the reaction at PMA, it looks like Delkin Devices (www.delkin.com) has a hit on its hands.

Tucked away in a far corner of the 300-exhibit PMA show I found a guy displaying small bobblehead dolls, each one about four inches tall. On closer examination it was apparent that the heads were realistic, colored renditions of real humans. He had some famous people on display as well as ordinary subjects. The process is simple—the company (www.images-3d.com) takes a regular photo print and scans it on to a computer, which creates a 3D rendering and then produces a colored resin head. No hand painting or sculpturing is required. Each model costs about $90 and is the kind of product that should be a welcome addition to studio offerings.

On the camera front there were plenty of new point-and-shoot cameras on display. On the whole there was nothing exceptional to report other than to say my last column has already been proven wrong as several more companies, including Canon, have now followed Olypmus’ lead by introducing waterproof cameras. In fact, Nikon is the only major manufacturer now without a waterproof camera in its consumer lineup. I’m sure it is a feature that will become increasingly common as buyers look for cameras that are tougher and will last longer. With the megapixel race all but over, special features will become differentiators, which is not a bad thing.

Panasonic announced the Lumix GH1, which is the next version of the micro four-thirds camera that was a hit at Photokina last year. At the time, Panasonic said the advantage of removing the mirror mechanism from a DSLR was that it would make an ideal camcorder. Yet only now is HD video capture included in the GH1, which is otherwise identical to the G1. I look forward to trying the camera and seeing if it is truly an indictor of future pro cameras, which I believe it may well prove to be.

Sony had a couple of impressive-looking prototypes of future lenses for its Alpha line of DSLR cameras, reinforcing the notion that it intends to become an even more formidable player in the pro market. Sony did not indicate when these lenses will go on sale or how much they will cost.
Sony also introduced the 9.1-megapixel DSC-HX1 Cyber-shot, which is a so-called ZLR with a 20X (28–560 mm, 35mm equivalent) zoom and a couple of interesting features, including a burst rate of 10 fps. The most impressive feature, however, is the Sweep Panorama mode. To shoot a panorama, just hold the shutter button down while panning smoothly. It takes up to 100 images and then stitches them together within one second and displays a panorama image up to 224 degrees. The resultant 7152 x 1080 image looked good on the rear LCD and demo prints also looked impressive. It is amazing that the engineers have managed to write software that can do this good a job at such a fast speed without the user needing to align the separate images. Presumably, it would scale up for use in high-end pro cameras as well.

Speaking of panoramas, the organizers displayed an enormous print near the main entrance that was 5 x 40 feet in size. It was made up from almost 10,000 images taken by 20 photographers in Yosemite Valley and produced by xRez Studios. The detail was so good that you had to walk up to within a few inches in order to make out people walking in a field near Half Dome. Don’t worry if you did not see this print in person. You can go to www.xrez.com/yose_proj/Yose_index.html and see the photograph yourself in all its splendid detail.

Another ongoing trend that caught my eye was how more and more photographers are relying on small camera-mounted flashguns for lighting instead of large studio flash outfits. It struck me that there were fewer traditional flash companies displaying. Interfit, an English company that does produce studio flash systems, displayed a prototype Strobies kit that includes a variety of light modifiers (for camera mounted flashguns) as well as barn doors and a lightbox. Incidentally, Interfit is also one of a growing number of companies producing continuous lighting systems using fluorescent bulbs. I plan to experiment with some of these units in the near future.

Quick Review—Lenovo W700 laptop
Nine years ago I was using an IBM ThinkPad as my laptop while my desktop computer was a Mac. The laptop was supplied by my then employer for my use both as a desktop computer and a portable. The ThinkPad lasted me for four years before I graduated to a PowerBook G4, which, coincidently, is now coming up on its fifth birthday.

During the past couple of months I have been using one of the newest ThinkPad laptops. No longer made by IBM, ThinkPads are now made and marketed by Lenovo, a Chinese company. The W700 is aimed squarely at photographers, which makes it unique. It’s a 17-inch laptop with a long list of options that enable a buyer to tailor it to their own needs. It’s even possible to buy it with a second screen that slides out from behind the main screen!

Among the unique features it includes are a built-in automated Huey color management system and a Wacom tablet with stylus. Of course, it has the option of one or two hard drives and DVD writer as well as a built-in card reader. It comes with a touch pad as well as a thumb-size joystick for moving the mouse, providing three ways of negotiating movement.
Naturally, none of this comes cheap—the basic W700 starts at around $2500 and quickly goes up to nearly $5000 for the W700ds with the second screen, 4GB of RAM and two 320GB hard drives.

Compared to the nice stylish, lightweight feel of a MacBook Pro, the W700 is an industrial workhorse. The basic W700 tips the scales at over 8 pounds compared to less than 7 pounds for the MacBook Pro and it is nearly two inches thick compared to one inch for the MacBook Pro.

In use, the W700 immediately reminded me of my old ThinkPad, which was not a bad thing as it was acceptable. It gave me the first chance to experience Windows Vista and frankly this was the least appealing aspect of the computer. Compared to the Mac OS X, Vista felt clumsy and awkward.
Once out of the operating system and into Adobe Lightroom I felt more at home. With 4GB of RAM and the 3.0GHz processor, Lightroom ran much faster than on my Mac, which only has a 1.6GHz processor and 2GB of RAM. In operation, Lightroom on the W700 was no different than on the Mac. I found that I was able to do all my photographic work within Lightroom and only twice ventured into Photoshop Elements. Incidentally I reckon the majority of photographers could do their work with these two programs and would not really need Photoshop.

I also used Microsoft Word and Excel a few times and again found them to be virtually identical in operation and feel to the same programs on my Macs. Likewise, a browser such as Firefox or Safari looks and feels the same.
What did I learn from my experience? First, how stylish and refined a Mac laptop is compared to a ThinkPad. Second, how much more pleasant the Mac OS X operating system is than Windows! Third, once you load a program such as Lightroom, there is really not much difference between how it operates on a Mac or a Windows machine.

Would I buy a Lenovo W700? If I worked in a non-Mac shop, the W700 would be the ideal computer for use in more than one location. However, I found it was too big and heavy to be convenient for use on airplanes or for travel. It’s really more of a portable high-end “desktop.”

John Rettie is a photojournalist who resides in Santa Barbara, CA. He has been using a camera as a professional for 39 years, a computer for 29 years and has combined his knowledge of both for the past 16 years. Readers can contact him directly by email at [email protected].