Pro Photo Solutions event proves popular
The inaugural Canon Pro Photo Solutions event on 27 and 28 October 2009 at the Business Design Centre in London proved to be a success with hundreds of photographers attending on both days to see a mixture of seminars, practical demonstrations, portfolio reviews and to view and try the full range of Canon professional photographic and video products.
The show was aimed at professional photographers and filmmakers to demonstrate Canon’s complete “workflow solution” from image capture to output. Over the two days the show featured a total of 39 seminars with various themes including Canon Ambassadors Jonathan and Angela Scott, Jeff Ascough and Lorenzo Agius talking about the challenges of filming and photographing wildlife, shooting weddings with available light, and the art of fashion and portrait photography respectively.
Canon Ambassador Jeff Ascough, centre, presenting at the Pro Photo Solutions studio area on shooting with available light.
Filmmaker Richard Jobson discussed how he combines stills and DSLR movie footage for maximum cinematic impact and told CPN: “I am enthused about this wonderful world of convergence that’s happening between SLRs and cinema. In my Christmas ‘wish list’ I was hoping that someone would come up with an SLR camera that shoots HD, so I was delighted when the 5D Mark II landed in my lap.”
The practical seminars at the event included EOS software and workflow demonstrations of how to get the most from the EOS Utility and Digital Photo Professional software packages that come bundled free with EOS DSLRs, plus demonstrations by photographer Dan Chung on how to adapt from being a stills photographer to becoming a proficient filmmaker using the Full HD Movie capabilities of Canon DSLR cameras such as the EOS 5D Mark II, EOS 7D and EOS-1D Mark IV.
The show also provided the first major public UK appearance of the EOS-1D Mark IV DSLR with a special introductory talk delivered by Canon Europe’s Mike Owen and ‘touch and try’ of the new 16.1 Megapixel camera available on the EOS stand.
On the main show concourse there was a studio area with 16 presentations made during the show. They included Nick Wilcox-Brown explaining wireless shooting directly through to large format Canon printers, Mark Cleghorn demonstrating on and off-camera flash possibilities with the Canon Speedlite system, Gary Fong talking about on-camera flash and its accompanying accessories, plus Jeremy Nako on event photography and WiFi shooting.
The Pro Photo Solutions show had four different ‘zones’ covering Input (cameras and lenses), Software, Output (professional print products and solutions), and Business support solutions. There was also a dedicated Canon Professional Services (CPS) stand to provide support and information to Canon photographers and video makers about the benefits of CPS.
Photographers enquire about the benefits of the Canon Professional Services programme at the CPS stand.
Visitors also had the opportunity to have their portfolios of reviewed by experts including Lorenzo Agius, Jonathan Scott, Getty Images and more. Jonathan Scott told CPN Magazine: “We had a full house at the seminars and people were very keen to show us all of their portfolio work.”
At the Pro Photo Solutions event many other exhibitors including photographic retailers, imaging software companies, memory card manufacturers, accessory companies, photographic associations and societies, and publishers were showing their wares.
One of the third party exhibitors was Timeslice Films who showcased a working model of 55 EOS 450D cameras on a 120-degree rig taking stills within two seconds to achieve eyecatching frozen time effects and images. Matt Fitzwalter from Timeslice told CPN: “It’s the first time we’ve done something like this and, for us, it’s a good way for new clients to come down and see it working.”
Depending on the feedback from the event in London the Canon Pro Photo Solutions event concept may be rolled out by Canon to run in different countries across Europe in the future.
