Photo expo focuses on digital

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Dec 5, 2003 by Rick Sammon AP Weekly Features

Each October, leading manufacturers in the world of photography exhibit their newest products at an event in New York City -- Photo Plus Expo. The expo, held at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, is designed for both amateur and professional photographers, as well as creative directors, art buyers and stock photography agents.

This year, the buzz was all about digital. Here's a quick look at a few of the products and programs that were introduced:

Adobe Systems www.adobe.com introduced Photoshop CS (creative suite). The latest upgrade in the evolution of the full-featured Photoshop image-editing programs offers new photography filters and an easy way to correct and adjust shadows and highlights.

Manfrotto www.bogenphoto.com exhibited its new 322RC2 Grip Action Hand Grip Ball Head from Bogen Photo. The handgrip allows photographers with pro digital cameras to simultaneously unlock the head and rapidly readjust the camera's position. Once the grip is released, the camera stays locked in position. There's no hassle of tightening knobs or locking levers.

Epson www.epson.com unveiled the Epson Stylus Pro, a desktop (if you have a very big desk) inkjet printer that can produce 17-inch- wide prints. The printer features a new eight-channel print head and a seven-color Epson UltraChrome pigmented ink system.

Jasc Software www.jasc.com showed Jasc Paint Shop Power Suite Photo Edition, a software collection that's designed for digital photographers who want to create professional results with power and ease. Jasc also announced its participation in Popular Photography & Imaging's Digital Days, one-day seminars that will take place around the country. For information on Digital Days, see www.popphoto.com/ digitaldays.

Kodak www.kodak.com announced DIGITAL SHO Professional. The Adobe Photoshop Plug-In optimizes contrast and exposure to reveal hidden details in highlight and shadow areas of digital images from sources including digital cameras, flatbed-film scanners, Picture CDs and the Internet.

Lexar Media www.lexarmedia.com introduced Image Rescue 2.0, a program designed deigned to recover seeming lost or deleted digital files from a memory card.

SanDisk www.sandisk.com had the company's new Extreme SD Cards Compact Flash memory cards on hand. The new cards offer a minimum write speed of 9MB per second and a minimum read speed of 10MB per second, which are desirable features for photographers using high- end megapixel cameras.

Looking for a way to share your digital pictures? Check out Webshots 2.0 www.webshots.com. The program offers quick photo uploads directly from digital cameras to Webshots' photo albums, as well as a desktop pop-up that notifies users when select members have uploaded new photos.

For information on the 2004 Photo Plus Expo, see www.photoplusexpo.com.

Rick Sammon is author of "The Complete Guide to Digital Photography," published by W.W. Norton.