The Focus on Imaging show, at the Birmingham NEC, is a big annual event where anyone can visit to see what the main manufacturers in digital photography and imaging are announcing. At the show there was Pentax, Canon, Fujifilm, Sony and someone called Nikon (or was that Nikoff).
Studio lighting from the Flash Centre, amongst others, was demonstrated, together with photo framing.
Also smaller manufacturers and a host of retailers, and magazines, are always ready to show what they have to offer with all kinds of offers and discounts available. For example, Advanced Photographer magazine were offering a Gorilla pod (a very flexible and handy camera tripod / support) to anyone taking out a twelve month subscription to their magazine.
With the retailers who are at the show it's the perfect opportunity to see some of their products and talk to their sales team about anything they sell that interests you. Whilst at the show I asked about a softbox for my portable, hotshoe, flash. After a discussion, and a demo, I came away with one !
A number of companies were offering tutorials and demonstrations using their software, including Corel for their PaintShop Pro X3 software, Adobe and Portrait Professional.
There were also a series of lectures on running a photographic business, wedding photography, etc.
All in all a good day out, at £10 to get in, which you could easily recoup in savings. One tip though, bring your own drinks ! At £1.90 for a small bottle of water, which you could easily buy similar for about 39p in a supermarket, it can become very expensive.
For more details look at http://www.focus-on-imaging.co.uk.
