PMA 2008 Show Report (live)

Welcome to the Digital Photography Review PMA 2008 show report. The Photo Marketing Association Annual Show will be held this year at the Las Vegas Convention Center between January 31st and February 2nd 2008. Each industry has its benchmark trade shows, for the photography industry PMA is it. You can rely on every manufacturer announcing new camera models and it's not unusual to see complete refreshes of certain lines. If you're considering a digital camera around this time of year it's often worth waiting to see what PMA brings. We should also make mention of the biennial Photokina show which will occur in September and will no doubt bring its own bag of surprises to the table.

As usual (this will be our eighth year at PMA) we will be providing frequent and detailed coverage of product announcements at PMA as well as a live 'from the show floor' report which will appear here and subsequent pages during the show. (We were the first to report live way back at PMA 2004).

Before during and after the show

This page serves as the index for our final show report and will be the page for you to bookmark for regular updates from now until after the show has finished. This page will be updated live from the show floor during show hours. The 'New Product Index' table below provides a summary of what has been announced including some CES products. Bookmark this page (CTRL+D / CMD+D).

Jump to:

• Live Show Report
• New Product Index
• PMA 2008 preview / predictions / hopes

Live Show Report

You can also choose from two RSS feeds related to this show report, firstly the main live show report feed which will be updated live during show hours and the new product index feed which is updated whenever new products are announced.

New Product Index (128 total)

Please note that all of the above products are brand new and just announced, our 'NEW' indicator simply marks those products which have been added to this list within the last three days. As usual we have also included several products announced at CES 2008 (suffixed [CES]), the main reasoning behind this is that these products join those announced at PMA to make up a manufacturer's new line-up.

PMA 2008 preview / predictions / hopes (posted before the show)

• New digital SLRs - We're likely to see several new DSLR announcements at this PMA, last PMA saw four new DSLRs, I'd expect to see at least this many and probably a couple more. I'm pretty confident that 2008 will go down as the year of the digital SLR with perhaps up to 25 new DSLRs over the course of the year.
   
• HD video - One of the 'buzz words' at this years PMA will likely be improved video capture capability in digital cameras, with many models achieving 720p and some 1080i/p. I'm also hopeful that some manufacturers will embrace a better video compression codec such as AVCHD which will mean more than a few seconds on a 1 GB card. We'd also like to see more adoption of digital (HDMI) output to avoid the cost (and fuss) of component video cables.
   
• Bigger zoom - "Bigger, better, more" will be the mantra when it comes to zoom on compact 'bridge cameras' this year, expect to see zoom ranges beyond 500 mm equiv. and starting at a wide 28 mm equiv. Again, another attempt to attach a 'big number' to sell something, we can't help wondering what optical compromises have to be made to build such lenses.
   
• Frames per second - Casio's EX-F1 may well be a glimpse into the next 'unique selling point', the ability to shoot continuously at very high frame rates (the F1 can do 60 fps at six megapixels; full resolution). In this model at least this tech is enabled by the Sony IMX017CQE CMOS sensor.
   
• CMOS in compacts - This prediction is a bit more left-field, I won't be putting any money on it in the Vegas Casino's, however it won't be "before time" if we see more compact cameras featuring CMOS sensors with some of the advantages they bring (one of the biggest issues for CMOS at small sensor sizes is fill factor, which could mean lower pixel counts on such models).
   
• Even bigger storage cards - In response to the increased numbers of 'solid state' camcorders which record directly to flash media such as SD cards plus the new digital cameras with HD video support it's likely that the memory companies will announce larger cards (some of which have been announced at CES).
   
• Fewer pixels please (we care about image quality) - It's a straightforward prediction that we'll see fourteen megapixel compacts at PMA, which in our opinion will be yet another step back for image quality. Other than subtle improvements in image processing overall image quality in compact digital cameras hasn't improved since the six megapixel era, to make things worse the marketeers have decided that high sensitivity will sell compact cameras. There's simply no worse combination than tiny photosites and high gain. So we'd be happy to pat any manufacturer on the back who delivers improvements in overall image quality without the obvious step in megapixel count (great high ISO performance will be a natural consequence of larger photosites and/or larger sensors).
   
• Shelf stuffing - Lastly, please, lets move away from the practice of 'shelf stuffing'. That is producing four or five product variations on the exact same model with very subtle differences (such as LCD screen size) with the intention of getting more shelf space for the brand. It's counter productive as it only leads to confuse the consumer and in these days of online purchasing the gains of such practices must surely be questionable.

Previous / Other reports

Our previous PMA show reports

• PMA 2007 report
• PMA 2006 report
• PMA 2005 report
• PMA 2004 report
• PMA 2003 report
• PMA 2002 report
• PMA 2001 report

Our Photokina show reports

• Photokina 2006 report
• Photokina 2004 report
• Photokina 2002 report
• Photokina 2000 report