Birmingham NEC

Well, the sun was up early in the morning and I think God was with us today. The weather was fine and off we went to Birmingham NEC for the Focus Imaging trade fair. I was really excited as I really want to see whether there would be an increase in numbers of participants of booths and also visitors to the trade fair.

Well, to my astonishment, I can see more photographers than visitors! I am not suprised. There are many so called 'professional photographers' but they could only produce average pictures. There are people who thinks that so long as they have a very good digital camera, they could be called professional photographers.

They are wrong. It takes a number of years to develope the skills to be able to take good pictures. No doubt that one could easily edit digital pictures on their laptops or pc using simple editing software like adobe photoshop, but that is not the point, right? Just think of it. If someone were to call themrselves professional photographers but they need photoshop to edit their pictures. Do you still call them professional photographers? Think about it.

The place was really crowded. I can see that this year attracted more people. There are so many people in the trade fair. Many people were looking at the latest technology in developing and printing 35mm pictures, others were more focused into printing digital pictures using memory cards.

There are several manufacturers who had set up new booths that will allow customers to print out all sorts of pictures by using their memory cards. They can print out calenders, wedding photos, good luck photos and also not mentioning custom build template and borders. We are talking about the digital age, my friend.

In there one would be able to see FujiFilm putting up one big booth stand; Nikon has one big stand too; Noritsu has one; Apple has two and Kenco has one big one.

There are innovations to produce better pictures by using the latest lenses or simply by using better softwares to correct the existing pictures. They are now crazy over binding all photos into a book shape like photo album. Gone are the days where by you would have to buy big photo albums as it is time consuming. Now, everything is so easy.

Although there are many new ideas around, the quality will not be as good as the good old analogue photos where you need to develope the negatives before printing it. I have spoken to many representatives of big companies like FujiFilm and Nikon and they have agreed that the quality of traditional photos are way ahead of modern digital photos.

At the end of the day, you can edit your digital photos but if you don't edit them, will it be better than traditional photos? You decide...