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Photo-Gear Nuts, Start Your Drooling: Germany's Photokina Revs Up
Posted: September 23rd, 2008, 6:00pm EDT by Jock Fistick
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: Photo: Jock Fistick/Wired.com COLOGNE, Germany -- Just 18 hours before this year's Photokina opens its doors, the biannual camera extravaganza was looking like a bit of a wreck. But just like photography, behind the scenes at giant expos is rarely pretty. To keep spirits high, new gear announcements and demos are already coming through, including a hands-on with what might be the most revolutionary camera to date, the Canon 5D Mark II. Click through the gallery to see the most promising products as a few brave reps shout over banging hammers and clanging ladders, kicking off the five-day photo geekfest. Left: A carpenter works in the Samsung display area hours before the opening of the Photokina exhibition. : Photo: Jock Fistick/Wired.com Richard Shepherd, of Canon Europe, presents the Canon EOS 5D Mark II to foreign journalists. Its announcement last week set the photo world abuzz due to its extreme low-light sensitivity and ability to output full-HD video at 30 fps. Many photographers are itching to get their hands on it. It will sell for $2,700. : Photo: Jock Fistick/Wired.com The full-frame, 21.1-megapixel EOS 5D Mark II is the first EOS with full high-def video capability. The camera can snap 3.9 frames per second and can capture still images while video is being recorded -- the video recording will be paused when a still image capture is activated and will resume. : Photo: Jock Fistick/Wired.com Panasonic has their new Lumix G1 on hand -- the first implementation of the Micro Four-Thirds system which does away with the mirror and prism of DSLRs in order to achieve a smaller body. This means you can't see directly through the lens and have to depend on the live view on the LCD screen. On the plus side, you get a far more portable body with interchangeable lenses. The Lumix G1 sports a 12-megapixel MOS sensor and is available in blue and red as well as the standard black, and is priced around 900 euro.: Tamron announced a tiny 18mm to 270mm F 3.5 - 6.3 variable aperture zoom lens aimed at the amateur travel photographer who likes to pack light. Tamron claims this lens has the largest focal-length range of any zoom currently in production and that their "Vibration Compensation" technology (aka image stabilization) adds four stops of hand hold-able usability. 18mm to 270mm is certainly an impressive range for a single lens of this size, but we're wary of the sharpness of images one can expect. This could certainly be a boon for...
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