Our chief analog enthusiast, Dima But, attended the main event in the world of photography last week—the Photokina 2016 exhibition, held in Cologne, Germany. Here, major players in the photography market, as well as small but interesting startups, present their developments, new cameras, improved camera models, and much more to the world. Visiting the exhibition gives you an idea of what amateur photographers will be holding in their hands next year.
Dima’s impressions of what he saw, heard, and touched.
The first booth I headed to was Lomography. A beautiful booth, I have to say, and packed with visitors. Photographers with professional cameras were very interested in the lenses. Lomography already makes five different ones. Called “art lenses,” they really do produce very interesting and distinctive artistic shots.
The rest of Lomography’s products are well known to us: they are what we sell in our store. The exhibition also presented a new product that had raised the amount needed for production ($100,000) on Kickstarter in just one day—Lomo Instant Automatic. It is an instant camera that is very simple and lightweight. As the name suggests, it has automatic exposure. Sales will begin at the end of this year, before the holidays. Another thing that made the Lomo Instant Automatic memorable was its size: it is only as large as the cartridges for instant photos.
Fujifilm impressed us with an enormous booth—simply unbelievably huge. Each Fujifilm product had its own “room,” where you could spend an entire day. The black-and-white Instax Mini cartridges generated a great deal of excitement. I tried shooting with them—they are stunning! They produce very deep tones with a barely noticeable bluish cast, and they are absolutely beautiful.
Of course, many people were interested in the square cameras. Fujifilm promised to release them, along with cartridges for them, in April or May 2017. We’ll wait and see. By the way, something interesting was that Fujifilm held a vote at the exhibition on new colors for Fujifilm Instax 7 cameras, and mint was winning. Perhaps a mint instant camera will be available soon :) Another interesting detail is that Fujifilm Instax cameras can be customized: the body can be “painted” any color, logos can be added, and so on, but the minimum order is 5,000 units.
Unfortunately, the Polaroid booth showed nothing interesting. Not many products were presented, so there is hardly anything to tell. The company is currently producing digital cameras with thermal dye-sublimation printing.
One interesting thing I managed to learn was who is making the first instant Leica—guess who? Fujifilm! It is an exact copy of the Fujifilm Instax 90, only 2.5 times more expensive and featuring the famous red dot.
We were left with only positive impressions of the exhibition. Most importantly, it was wonderful to see the audience’s interest in authentic analog photography, as well as companies’ desire to develop in this direction. Long live analog photography!
