A Day at Consumer Electronic Imaging Fair 2014

The Consumer Electronic Imaging Fair 2014(formerly known as PhotoFair) is back in Mumbai starting 9th January till 12th January 2014. I attended the photo fair today & had a really good time.

I entered the Photo Fair as an AIPTIA member & that meant I got into the thick of the action very quickly. Outside the exhibition hall, scores of people queued up for registrations. Being an AIPTA member allows you special privileges & one of it being a special entry point to the Photo Fair exhibition hall.

Me trying the Tamron 150-600mm

Once inside through the special entry point, I set my sights over the huge Tamron booth. More so over the super-telephoto section where there was the new Tamron 150-600mm f/5-6.3 SP Di VC USD. Already a few photographers were present testing this bazooka of a lens & soon I got my chance. The lens was mounted on a Canon 5D Mark III & it was setup over a heightened vantage pointed. This meant, one was able to zoom into the targets with sufficient ease. The lens zoom ring is typical Tamron with an extra dampened feel which would last long. The lens feels quite good but not very premium. However this is perfectly fine since this is not a top of the line lens. The aperture of f/5-6.3 meant the ISO should be kept sufficiently high to get decent light on the sensor & I was using ISO of 1600(& upward) on the Canon 5D Mark III. The lens produced decent photographs & the reach was wonderful. I was able to go as close as to a person’s face from the one level up platform. I wish this lens would have been compatible with crop sensor camera as the photographers(using crop sensor cameras) are more likely to purchase a super-telephoto lens for convenience. Given the slow aperture & average build, I doubt how many professionals would like to get this. But that aside, this is not at all a bad lens. The Tamron booth even provides free basic cleaning for Tamron lenses & I availed this facility. I’ll blog about this experience in an upcoming post.

The Zeiss Magic!

Moving ahead, I walked into the Carl Zeiss booth. With not much crowd there, I was able to shoot with the Carl Zeiss Distagon T*2,8/15. This was the first time I used a Carl Zeiss glass & I was totally sold off at the handling & precise focussing(manually with the long throw focus ring) of the lens. Since I had a crop sensor Canon 600D, it didn’t afforded me the 110 degrees field of view of this lens. However, I enjoyed this lens. Its solid metal construction really was top notch. I’ll let the picture do the talking, however do note the light was really flat there & I’ve enhanced the picture in post.

Nice to see, Kodak!

Photo printing was everywhere. The large format printers by Sapphire & HP produced some exceptional prints. My photo colleague tested some real world photographs(than the optimized test photographs) & I was really pleased with the results. The photographs on display were all good but I found shortage of black & white prints. Here again most of the prints were from wedding genre. Further, there was a splendid photo exhibition by Shari Academy alumni & I was even privileged to see Girish Mistry(Dean of Shari Academy) at the Photo Fair. A few other exhibitions were also note-worthy & deserve to be attended. The babe factor was high at the Panasonic Lumix booth, with girls doing some belly dancing and enthralling the audience.

Boom, Boom & the Strobes were going off here!

Moving on, the Photo Fair was filled with tons of printing products this time. Photo books, large format printers, karizma album photoshop PSD files & much more. Many of the booths offered a bride & groom as model for shooting & testing the equipment. For a wedding photographer, there were so many options, from cheap entry level all the way to photo-books “Made in Italy”. The rest of the stalls dealt with miscellaneous photo equipment’s like photo bags, lighting accessories, photo backgrounds, sublimation machines, photo frames etc. Overall, it was a paradise for a wedding photographer not much for photographers from other genres. There were also video camera rigs, cranes, sliders professional camcorders & action camera’s on offer. Nothing new if you’re already aware of them.

AIPTIA members also had a lounge & free refreshments inside which was a nice addition. Even the Fashion Show was free for AIPTIA members but due to shortage of time, I did not attend it. To wrap it up, you must visit the Photo Fair 2014 primarily if you’re into wedding photography. There aren’t many other attractions. However, I did had a gala time.