We had a great few days at the National Exhibition Centre, introducing new readers to f2 and meeting old friends. Cameracraft also went down very well as it was the first time many UK photographers had actually seen a copy, we don’t give out samples by post but had a stack of back issues to hand out at The Photography Show.
It’s just an empty stand… we were there, honestly! Richard Kilpatrick made the large exhibition prints using his HP Z3200 24 inch printer and the quality was amazing considering we just created 600dpi PDF files from three covers, and took them up to that size. The furniture was IKEA and buying this assembly cost us less than hiring a desk and cupboard from the NEC, while providing really good storage for everything we needed.
It was a great show – probably better than any recent Focus on Imaging – and the only regret was that being on the stand made it impossible to take in the many talks and star photographer appearances.
You could get involved in anything from a crowds of hundreds to a group of a just a few.
Martin Grahame-Dunn, whose article introducing the iLux Summit 600C mains-free flash head appears in the April edition of ƒ2, was demonstrating the kit and helping photographers with technique on the Photomart stand.
Frank Doorhof, larger than life as ever, was demonsrtrating the new Elinchrom ELC Pro-HD flash heads on the Flash Centre stand with the help of his model Nadine (who also designs and creates her own costumes).
The whole flash/studio/strobe/speedlight market is changing rapidly and we can see a time coming soon when only amateurs still use battery camera-top flashguns – even though every pro will still own one or two, the introduction of wireless TTL (18 years after Quantum first offered it!) and Lith-ion onboard power to studio type heads by Profoto in the B1 is the beginning of a trend and not the culmination of development. ƒ2 will be following it – watch out for our flash system reviews in coming issues.
