PMAi stands for Photo Marketing Association International. PMA is often used for their htade show of photo equipment. Manufacturers on photography related products often wait for this event to announce their latest products.
This year is not exception. PMA 2006 will be held February 26 – March 1, in Orlando, Florida. Even if the PMA has not started yet, biggest manufacturers have already made some announcements, Nikon, Canon, Panasonic and oters have already showed some of their new models of compact digital photo cameras.
I don't follow this market much, but I have posted opinion about few panasonic models. Like always we have smaller, lighter cameras with more zoom and MP.
What is more interesting are lenses and dSLR announced.
Nikon has announced new lens: AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm F2.8 G IF-ED. Yes, it has a lot of abbreviations (in order to see what they mean, move your mouse over them). The interesting thing is that this is the first macro lens with VR (image stabilization). Some say that it is unnecessary thing on an macro lens - you usually want big DOF (small aperture), and you usually do it in controlled environment. Other say that it could do no harm (except on the price) and it is welcomed. Time will tell who is right.
There are more news from Canon.
First, the successor of successfull S1 IS and S2 IS - the S3 IS. With 6 MP, ISO up to 800, bigger vari-angle screen... it will definitelly be a good thing to have. I have to mention its VGA 30 fps with stereo sound. It is one of little photo cameras that can prodice such good video quality. I am one of those who think that if you want to record video, you should buy video camera, but since this option is here - you might find it usefull.
Second, new lens from canon: Canon EF 85 mm F1.2 L II lens (Mark II). Actually this is only renewed version. The old lens was optically very good, but it had slow focus (it was not so slow, but it was slower than 85mm f/1.8 for example). It is now fully E-TTL II compatible. This is fastest lens of all EF lenses today - it has apperture of 1/1.2 which is excellent thing when shooting portraits or in a low light environments.
Another new lens from Canon is EF-S 17 - 55 mm F2.8 IS. This can be understood as a hint from Canon that it will continue to develop and work on EF-S lenses and that APS-C sensors are not going to be left in the past. It has constant apperture through whole zoom range and it will be a good "kit lens" for sure.
The biggest news (for now) is new model of canon EOS series - Canon EOS 30D. Differences from 20D are: bigger screen, Soft-touch shutter button, spot metering, direct print button on back, 100,000 shot shutter cycle, different design (more 5D alike), ISO selectable in 1/3 steps, ISo value is shown in viewfinder when changing, selectable fps in continuous mode (3 or 5fps), 9,999 images per folder, bigger buffer and some others. As you see there are some things that photographers have wanted for a looong time (spot metering, ISo view...). On the other hand, the sensor is the same as in 20D, which means that 30D has 8.2 MP. I am very glad to hear that. I hope that we enter period when manufacturers will work more on other things than just pumping more and more megapixels into sensors.
Lets wait and see what else new will come in pre-PMA and PMA.
