2012 Imaging USA Highlights
Last week Candid Color Systems hosted customers at the Imaging USA Show in New Orleans, Sunday through Tuesday. Over 11,000 attendees and vendors came to the show to view the latest in gear, software, and products. Many attendees also participated in the extensive offering of classes, which occurred before and after the trade show. Candid Color was represented by Brian Speers, Brian Allen, Kelli Carder, Tom Davis (a CCS customer from Massachusetts) and Dan Hays.
During the event, we observed that the show seemed to be more focused on photo products than on prints. We believe this is because labs are looking for products that consumers cannot produce for themselves. Acrylic products, metal products, canvas products, vinyl banners and textile products were featured in many booths. Candid Color has been printing on most of these materials for some time and is planning to print on metal in the future.
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These products will be shown live at the CCS Winter Seminar in Las Vegas starting this coming Sunday, January 29th.
A new product that attracted a lot of attention for sports was a picture grip that can be wrapped around various sporting equipment handles to personalize the grip. This product can be applied to items such as golf clubs, baseball and softball bats, tennis rackets, lacrosse and hockey sticks and pool cues, among others. Candid Color is planning on offering this product in the future. The photographer will submit a jpg image to our lab, place the order and then receive a kit- specific to that grip- with the athletes' picture on it.
Another trend was the expanding use of wireless for the transmission of images. A product called RadioPopper™, which is an RFID transmitter/receiver for off camera flash, was popular with photographers as an improvement over the PocketWizard®.
A mega trend that needs to be on every still photographer's radar is the growing availability of sufficiently high resolution video cameras to make acceptable still prints. This development could enable video photographers to begin encroaching on markets previously served exclusively by still photographers. The RED and Canon both offer models capable of high resolution images. They are pricey at this time but as everyone knows, that can change rapidly.
We will keep you posted on our adaptation to the trends observed at this show.
Thanks to all of our customers who attended the show and stopped by our booth to visit and share with us. We especially want to thank Tom Davis for working with us at the show and providing a customer perspective to our booth.