What's Hot at Photokina 2010!

Photokina, in case you're new to the world of photo trade shows, is the granddaddy of all photo trade shows and is held every other year in the lovely city of Cologne, Germany. It's a massive show that goes on for a week and even at the end of the week, after walking for (no joke) miles of aisles, you feel like you've only scratched the surface of the show. I didn't go to this year's show, but there's a lot of product news starting to come out and so I'll post some of the highlights here and add more in the days to come. By the way, I've been to the show in the past and have to say I had a blast.

One of Nikon's big announcements is the new Nikon D7000 DSLR. The camera represents a brand new DSLR camera generation and falls between the Nikon D5000 and the D90.  It is aimed at the serious amateur photographer and offers a full package of camera-settings for creative photography as well as videography.

The Olympus E5 is a 12.3 megapixel camera and the newest Olympus Four Thirds DSLR camera and is the successor to their very popular E3 camera and is designed for semi-pro and professional photographers (or, obviously, anyone else that can afford it). I have always loved Olympus cameras and I think that their grace and beauty gets lost sometimes in the Nikon/Canon wars. One of the coolest features of this camera is a 3" rotating LCD--and until you've used an articulated LCD, you can't imagine how useful they really become (allowing you to hold the camera over your head in a crowd, for example, and still see the LCD clearly).

And lest you should think that there has been any abatement in the ever-blossoming megapixel ascent, there hasn't. Sony has introduced the 16.2 megapixel Sony a580. One of the really interesting features here is Auto HDR! HDR (high-dynamic-range imaging) is the process of recording multiple exposures of a single subject in order to capture an image that handles the full dynamic range of the subject (in other words, a very contrasty subject) without losing either highlights or shadow detail. Normally this is a slow procedure where you set each exposure manually--but Sony has now automated it. Neat! The camera can also fire at a very speedy 7 frames-per-second. The Sony A580 is also able to record Full HD video in 1920x1080i resolution and AVCHD format.

OK, enough equipment talk for now.

Oh, by the way, when you're at the newsstand, pick up a copy of the October issue of Popular Photography, my "Traveling Photographer" column this month is about the monarch butterfly migration. Wow, did I even tell you I'm now writing a monthly column for Pop? I better blog that!