Long Beach Show report for Wetpixel

Hi all,

If anyone is planning to attend the show this weekend, and wouldn't mind writing a report and sharing their experiences on Wetpixel, please drop me a PM!

Many thanks.

Adam

It was one of the busiest, if not the busiest Long Beach Show that I have seen, the week end buzzed by in a flash, Man I went shopping for some vocal cord after the show lots of activity around the various dedicated imaging manufacturer and distributor.

I was in the Backscatter booth, representing Aquatica, Chris Parsons was doing the same with Nauticam in the Reef photo booth, Paul from Light & Motion was there, Reefnet (wetpixel own's Keri's delightful mother band his brother were tending their booth), Equinox was there with there Video housing line, Local boy, Scott Siegler and his team from Blue Water were attending in their own booth. Ultralight famous couple were on staff, I am sure I am missing some. Oh, and you could tell Go Pro video camera are here to stay, they were all over the place, man, just like fly at a picnic fun concept with full off visual opportunities.

I was there for quite a few hours, Saturday mid day.

Yes, it was great fun to visit the reefnet booth, and see 'wilk' on a name tag, and know they must be related. Went up and introduced myself and had a nice visit.

Jean I wished I had known to look for you!

Stopped by backscatter, and had a nice long talk with Berkley White, about all the best high end p&s cams, as well as the micro 4/3rs and nex. He is about to go out and test the gf2 and the lx5 along with the others. So we should get some more reports in a couple of weeks. Berkley is of the opinion that the nex5 is much more useable, and better IQ, than the oly pen series. So that is the way to go, if you want compact today.

Of course then we were trying to see how easy it was to use the nex5 in manual mode, in a housing, and found it a real PIA!

Had a nice long visit with Ryan and Richard at Reef photo and video. Somehow I had missed the report on their web page, which includes the nauticam wet mate wide angle lens for the lx5, which restores the 24mm equiv fov, and seems to nicely eliminate the distortion and aberrations.

Also went by Ikelite, and met Ike's youngest son. They have been having the best 3 years ever in their history, even with the economy as it is. Good news! I was a bit disappointed to see they have officially, for now, put development on hold, for all mirrorless cameras, including NEX, and all the micro 4/3s:

http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/1press.html#060611

The new Los Angeles based shop bluewater photo was there, and had a bunch of nice people, and not so much stuff there yet.

And the olympus booth had 2 nice guys, who really knew underwater photo! The were showing all the stuff, and including a zen dome for the epl2 housings.

It was a fun and useful show for me, since I had not seen many of the new setups in person, and had not been to the scuba show in 3-4 years.

I was hoping to decide on a mirrorless camera and housing. But not yet. The gh2 is too expensive, and too big. Might as well get a t2i or a sony a580.

The hunt continues!

Aloha,

Don

It was indeed a busy time at Long Beach. We were at the LAUPS booth but did visit all the usual suspects. My take is that things have finally turned around in the travel business. Last year talking to resorts and live-aboards it seemed like things were in the doldrums. This year it seems bookings are up and the resort guys in particular think things have really improved.

Bill