It even has a large hall devoted to in-car entertainment and whole areas where all you'll see are home video players, the new 16:9 European widescreen TV, cable services and so on.
For us, it's the photographic and digital imaging zones which are of interest. The show lasts from September 18th to 23rd, with 'amateur' days from the weekend onwards following a 'professional' three day period at the beginning. It is held in the Rhineside Messe or exhibition hall complex in Cologne, on the Deutz bank of the river. You must cross the rail bridge or take a ferry to return to the city itself and its shopping streets.
Visiting Cologne for the fair is not a cheap venture, and by far the best bargains are the coach trips which include tickets and an overnight stay away from the city. Some cover a single day, some two days at the fair. It is a massive exhibition, far larger than any British show, and walking round it requires stamina and a clear sense of direction and purpose. Fortunately, the tourist buses drop you at the entrance which leads to the halls of most interest to the casual browser. Canon, Minolta, Pentax, Nikon, Olympus, Contax, Tamron, Tokina, Vivitar, Jobo, Leitz, Rollei, Samsung and all the big names are within a minute or two from the turnstiles.
It's the British contingent which you usually have to walk a mile to find, tucked away in a hall numbered in the teens, flying the flag with the support of the British Photographic Export Group. This is a safe haven for anyone looking for a familiar face as you'll find many staff from big dealers as well as importers, manufacturers and distributors.
Over 170,000 other visitors will be pouring through the halls during the week, and Cologne's hotels are packed to capacity. Now is the time to start planning for 1998, not 1996 - but if you are a solo traveller, there's a helpful accommodation office in Cologne which can nearly always locate a guest house within half an hour. The city tram system makes fairly remote suburbs acceptable for overnight stays, as travel is free for show visitors, and the rail links to Dusseldorf and other nearby major cities open up their hotels to photokina guests while limiting commuting to under an hour.
In the 1970s, when we first visited photokina, Cologne seemed far ahead of British cities for facilities, shopping, cleanliness, architecture and eating out. Today it remains unchanged while the average British small town can better it in many respects. The shops are locked in the 1970s - even some of the fashions - and the streets are no longer scrubbed clean. Eating and drinking remains a good experience, but I'll think twice before ordering another 'barnhof' platter and discovering a complete herd of farmyard animals served up on one plate. My normal meat ration for the week was comfortably exceeded in one sitting.
For the rest of the family, Cologne has a fine zoo and river cruises, a magnificent cathedral, the best Romano-Celtic museum in northern Germany, many art galleries and at least one toy and model shop in the best German tradition. While no longer putting British cities in the shade, I'd prefer a rainy day in Cologne to the same in Manchester any time.
You can reach Cologne in a short morning's drive from the Dutch ferry ports, by rail, by air from Birmingham and London area airports - and even by boat if you fancy navigating upstream from Rotterdam. This year's photokina is unusually early. I have been rained on, blown away and even snowed upon at later photokinas. Mid-September is, however, still generally warm and sunny and the Rhine countryside offers great photo opportunities as you travel south. I can therefore unhestitatingly recommend readers who make snap decisions to fire up the mobile home and head for Europe to do the Rhine wine country this month and make Cologne a well-timed stopover to see the show.
Scitex Europe - heavyweight repro giants, Scitex have a liquid crystal colour filter (changes from R to G to B...) and a new Leaf CatchLight digital camera. This is always accompanied by a superb demonstration you can watch at timed intervals. The CatchLight freezes action, so expect some classy models in the demo! Hall 13.2, stand H16.
Proxima (who?) reckon to be launching the world's brightest ever desktop projectors, which throw the image of a PC screen on to a big screen. Check out Stand E/F040 in Hall 14.2.
Nova - our own darkroom wizards - promise a stack of products simultaneously launched in Cologne. These include a 5 x 4 sheet film processor, new glow-in-the-dark print clips, automatic agitation and more. Check near-the-entrance, expensively sited Stand N46 in Hall 3.1.
Agfa have some new minilab stuff, and a cheap 'SnapScan' aimed at PC owners. They also have 'Inova Touch', a system which minilabs can install to make new or improved prints from existing ones, including captions, frames and 'art effects'. Just look for an entire hall devoted to Agfa.
Buick Photographic, a small British company which has always made some of the nicest large print machine printers, introduces some expensive electronic stuff to enhance them. They also have a neat little black and white variable contrast mini machine printer! See Stand H26, Hall 13.2.
Italian lab company Safai Universal will be in Hall 13.1, Stand U10, with their new SpaceLab SVS which makes machine enlargements up to 12 x 20" - good news for panorama enthusiasts?
Odyssey Sales - John and Lesley Boyce's specialist optical and lab equipment distributor - will also be in Hall 13, taking the British name of De Vere enlargers once again to the world market. They have far more than this, though, including retouching systems, 35mm and 70mm slide duping cameras, and a new vacuum hot press for mounting up to 20 x 24" for small labs and studios. Find them on Stand 29.
Leica M enthusiasts should seek out the (unknown location) stand of
Sunrise Promotion of Frankfurt, who have the Rapidwinder for M4-2, M4-P
and M6, or for M2 and modified M3. They claim 2-3 pictures per second from
these mechanical Leicavit substitutes. If you can't get to Germany, try
calling Williams of Hove instead, as they are to be stocking these.
Polaroid will have the usual stonking great stand - well, Hall 7 in fact - and have 'Live for the Moment' as their theme. My experience is that they always have stacks to see. We know that a new 'SX-70' version, the SLR690, will be introduced - alongside two APS cameras, APS film, 35mm compact camera, PDC 2000 digital camera, new scanners and... a TV or computer monitor with a built-in Polaroid printer for capturing broadcast or Internet colour frames!
Ilford launch a brand new Multigrade IV fibre-base paper which is supposed to combine the best qualities of their FB with the versatility of MG IV. Much of the rest of their stand is devoted to digital imaging, giant inkjet printing, and minilab equipment.
Fuji Hunt Photographic Chemicals - who supply the labs - have their stand next to the giant Fujifilm exhibit in Hall 5.1. They'll be helping make Europe ammonia-free in the light of new EC regulations. Have they ever tried cleaning out a seriously neglected hamster cage?
Colex will be at Stand 8, Hall 13.1, with lab equipment right up to mural processors of 80" width - and an E-6 processor with battery back-up, vital to protect your interests as a photographer!
Fotoba in the same hall, Stand 19, show rollpaper easels including a hovercraft.
Alpa - a name we hardly expected to see again - re-emerges with the launch of handmade cameras from Capaul & Weber of Zurich. The original company went bankrupt, and this husband and wife marketing and graphics team bought the rights to the name. Paul Seitz, the panoramic camera people, are manufacturing the new prototypes. They expect to limit production to 50 cameras a year at 10,000 Swiss francs.
Pro-Co - the Process Control Company - will be at stand R73 in Hall 13.1 with new variations on their anti-static negative cleaning systems for labs, water heater and filter systems, emulsions cleaner, red-eye pen, and gold and silver markers for signing prints.
ICI Imagedata debuts its 'Olmec' new identity with the launch of digital
image papers which are permanent, for passports and security applications.
They will be in Hall 13.2 at stand L15. Expect to see hot competition from
3M - whose similarly renamed 'Imation' division is also on the trail of
this massive forthcoming worldwide market.
Cologne Hotel reservations:
Tel (0) 221/221 3348
Fax (0) 221/221 3320
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