DEMA Tradeshow Report 2006 live from Orlando

When entering the hall it is very hard to miss the booth of a very well known company among divers. It’s even harder if you have co-developed the digital underwater photography specialty for this dive training agency. So it was somehow obvious that I would get stuck chatting with friends and team members on the PADI booth. Among them was my underwater photo model Karl Shreeves (actually his main job is designing and authoring course materials). Karl is a very knowledgeable person when it comes to diving. So I was very pleased to here from him, that I had given him some new perspectives on digital underwater photography. After seeing his top-nodge photos that he recently took in a cave I felt even more pleased about this. While we were browsing the photos on his handheld I began to express my increasing interest in case diving and how the movie THE CAVE had continued to spawn that. Guess who came to say hello exactly in that minute: Jill Heinerth (more about her here..). The world is sometimes very small, especially among cave divers it seems.

As I had found a release in the press centre about the new Nikon D200 housing from Light & Motion, I decided to make their booth my next target. Dan Baldochi proudly presented the prototype. The final product will be released no earlier than February 2007. It surely is a real innovation that was worth waiting for. Light & Motion offers an underwater housing with an enormous-sized viewfinder and a mix of mechanical and electronic USB-triggered controls to re-position every button to an ergonomically optimal location (if necessary). Even the green LCD on top of the camera is forwarded to a separate huge screen on the backside of the housing to improve the reading underwater. With a price of more than 4400 US Dollars, plus 999 US Dollars for the viewfinder this product seems to aim at the truly no-compromise, want-it-all underwater photographer. Anyway, our editorial staff is overwhelmed my so much effort put in this product. We think this opened the gate for a new generation of digital SLR underwater housings.

A little later I visited the Seacam booth, where ran into Phil Simha who recently was kind enough to provide us with a review of his Canon EOS 5D housing. Stephen Frink was there to reveal some solutions to the Reflexion problem with a certain lens that Phil had pointed out in his review. Next to outstanding customer service Stephen Frink demonstrated the remote-controlled shutter release and the new real Seacam TTL-Strobes, which can be optimized for macro or wide angle applications using various front caps. Two booth's later I met Berkley White, who gave me a short presentation of the Top Dawg video housing, the macromate closeup lense and the light surf housing from Aquatech. Just around the corner I ran into Tom Leys at the Green Force booth and - what a surprise - suddenly a Hugyfot 400D appeared on the booth desk. Kudos for such a fast production cycle to provide the market with the first really available 400D underwater housing. So welcome to the playground! That's exactly what I was thinking too as suddenly Mr. Cardoo was dancing in front of my camera. Unfortunately I cannot remember from which island that marketing gag came from. Maybe I meet him tomorrow again to find it out. So I went to the online marketing presentation from Jason Heller (divephotoguide.com) and afterwards dipped into the PADI seminar from Bob Wohlers. Again I would like to thank all the attendees of that seminar for their applause on my introduction. So much positive feedback is really encouraging to create a digital underwater photographer dvd when the time is ready for it.

So have a good rest from the expo and see you tomorrow!

Andi

• SEA&SEA announces new strobe
• Light & Motion releases SR12 Housing
• Hugyfot HFC-40D Housing Review
• Hugyfot HFC-40D & Canon 40D: First impressions
• Seatool: One-Touch Close-up Lenses for DX-1G