I visited the Professional Imaging tradeshow that took place in Nieuwegein from 13-15 March. A well attended event aimed at the professional photographer, as the name already suggests. All major vendors were represented, so a good opportunity to see what’s going on. And also a good opportunity to attend a number of workshops. The best news of all: it’s all for free! So, here goes:
Nikon
As a longtime Nikon user, it probably comes as no surprise that I’ve spent most of my time here. It may also come expected that the first workshop I attended was about Capture NX2. The presenter, Dutch photographer Johan Kerver, was hired by Nikon for the occassion. He did a good job at “selling” the product by demonstrating all the highlights. But hardly anything new to me. On the sharpening of images, though, he recommended using the “high pass” filter instead of the commonly used “unsharp mask”. I must say, the examples he showed were very convincing. Will certainly give this a try, so expect a blog post on this one day. Discussed the future of CNX2 with him afterwards. As far as he could see there’s no reason to doubt a next release. But he couldn’t/wouldn’t say anything more on the subject. Also discussed the same subject with another Nikon crew member. He was completely unaware of the ongoing discussion about CNX2’s future. As far as he was concerned it was a state-of-the-art product. I briefly explained to him what the competition has been doing the last two years or so, but decided not to waste too much time on him. I couldn’t help myself and simply had to pose the same question tp the people at the Nik Software booth. Of course, they gave me the story that they don’t develop CNX2. The were once asked by Nikon to help build it, but it’s being maintained by Nikon. I knew that. So I asked why all their wonderful plugins (Color Efex, Silver Efex, etc.) are not developed for CNX2 (except for Color Efex as the only exception to the rule). Does Nik Software have plans to release a Silver Efex version for CNX2? The answer: they would like to, but not allowed by Nikon! Can you believe this??? CNX2 is minimally maintained by Nikon and is getting further behind the competition. In my simple mind it would only make very good business sense to make use of broadly accepted plugins like the ones from Nik Software, to give CNX2 a reason to exist. But unfortunately, no. No information on new releases and no integration with other tools. Nikon’s strategy is completely beyond me here. Why the mystery and secrecy? It only leads to speculation and more people moving away from CNX2 (see also Thom Hogan’s website (www.bythom.com) who publicly no longer recommends the use of CNX2).
On a more positive note: I also attended a Nikon workshop presented by Rahi Rezvani. The most interesting one I attended of the entire show. He invited someone from the audience to act as an ad-hoc model. Took several pictures in a very simple studio setup with just one softbox and then started to do his magic on the computer. A real artist. It was amazing to see what this guy can do with Photoshop (using masked layers) and Silver Efex (!). I certainly recommend all of you to have a look at his work here. His communication skills can be improved, though. While he was doing his magic on the computer he hardly said a thing (even put his microphone off). So it was a bit difficult to understand what exactly he was doing, especially for an inexperienced Photoshop user like me.
Adobe
Attended a number of sessions in the Adobe theatre by Matt Kloskowski and Julieanne Kost. As to be expected, these sessions were very much focused in Photoshop, but nevertheless very good for me to see what can be done with it. Comparing Photoshop with Capture NX2 is comparing apples with oranges. For the kind of post-processing I do, Capture NX2 is more than adequate and absolutely the right tool. Especially in combination with Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro 3. I only wish Nikon was more transparent on the direction of the product. On very rare occasions I might need Photoshop. I will use the open source product Gimp if I run into such a situation.
Eizo/LaCie
In my quest of finding a good LCD replacement for my 10+-year old CRT monitor I also talked with the people at the Eizo and LaCie booths. To help me understand the technology and why I should pay an awful lot of money for their devices. I will publish a new post on this topic shortly.
All in all, it was a very interesting event and certainly worth visiting. Visited the Fotoflits booth, but all the people I know over there were engaged. Watched Frank Doorhof doing his workshops briefly. So crowded over there! Also watched Vincent Boon (www.vincentboon.nl) taking studio portraits at the Epson booth and got some inspiration out of it. If you’re interested in serious photography, make sure you register for next year’s event.