2010 SHOW DATA

	Period	: April 29-May 2, 2010
	Venue	: Hall A, Coex, Seoul, Korea
	Exhibitors	: 522 Booths, 186 brands from 22 countries
	Visitors	: 67.052

The Total Number of Participating Exhibitors: 522Booths, 186Brands from 22Countries

Official Attendance Figures

Covered by Reporter Ji-yeon Park

P&I 2010 was held in the greatest scale ever, and was just as substantial in contents.
Along with the glorious revival of Samsung and Panasonic, absent last year, around 20 new companies participated in the exhibition resulting in a 28% increase of booth size from last year.
During the four exhibition days, a total of 67,052 visitors including professional photographers, hobby photographers and students dropped by the exhibition with heated interest towards the photography sector.
The distinction of this exhibition was that the camera manias could vividly experience photos, where participating companies focused on active promotion by opening a shooting space through a unique camera experience hall. Canon created a ‘Lens Experience Zone’ differentiated from other exhibitions and provided its visitors with opportunities to directly use optimized lens on its representative DSLR cameras, to quench the thirst of the ever-diversifying and intensifying photo manias.
If cameras are the main event of the exhibition, the photo-related peripheral companies (e.g. printer, digital kiosk, photo book, related manufacturing equipment, album & frame, studio props, photo software, photo accessories), added to the spice for much information and things to see. Although the participation by output equipment companies (e.g. printers) was lower than that of input equipment companies, the participation by various domestic peripherals manufacturers was made prominent more than ever in this exhibition.
On the other hand, P&I 2010 was decorated by the participation of visitors in the diverse events of the exhibition, such as various topics of photo-related seminars and photo exhibitions. Yet, the vendor seminar led by the participating companies ended in disinterest from lack of publicizing.

Greatest Topic of This Year’s Exhibition: ‘Hybrid Digital Camera’

The camera booth was naturally the most popular booth of this year at P&I 2010, with the hybrid digital camera gathering the most number of eyes.
A hybrid digital camera is a camera capable of swapping the lens by eliminating the internal mirror box to reduce the body size and weight. Companies including Samsung, Olympus and Panasonic had fiercely endeavored to publicize their main hybrid digital camera lineups. Sony, which also had introduced its first hybrid digital camera through this exhibition, induced the interests of the visitors through its prototype exhibition. On the other hand, the traditional DSLR powerhouses Canon and Nikon increased the number of experience booths for the DSLR camera and lens and provided lectures by professional photographers to gather the interests of photo manias.
Providing the largest exhibition booth out of all participating companies, Samsung Electronics prepared a diversified event under the theme of “Why Capture? Create!”, and introduced its hybrid digital camera NX10 for active publicizing. NX10 is a hybrid digital camera mounting a large image sensor of the APS-C specification used in DSLR cameras, and gathered great interest upon its launching. Samsung Electronics additionally introduced compact digital cameras and camcorder products including EX1 and WB2000, and also provided events and NX galleries of professional photographers to receive favorable response from the visitors.
Olympus Korea also participated with 50 large-sized booths to introduce its hybrid digital camera PEN, along with the 2010 product lineup of compact cameras, DSLR lineup of lens history and camera-related accessories through a distinctively categorized theme zone. Among the zones, the outdoor-purpose ‘μ TOUGH’ camera experience zone exhibited entertaining performance and experience section for cameras to gather great popularity. In particular, Olympus created an independent gallery where the visitors could freely appreciate the works of famous photographers only available in National Geographic.
Establishing an exhibition booth side by side with Canon Korea Business Solution, Canon Korea Consumer Imaging introduced a total of 95 products from all product groups (8 types of DSLR cameras, 66 types of lenses, 11 types of compact digital cameras, 8 types of camcorders, 2 types of photo printers) to gather the eyes of the visitors. Putting up the slogan of “No.1 DSLR”, Canon operated a lens experience zone besides the DSLR camera zone to establish the awareness that it was the top DSLR manufacturer, providing a diversity of entertainment to photo manias.
Nikon Imaging Korea, too, exhibited its DSLR cameras, new 2010 compact camera lineup and swapping lenses, and operated an experience booth for these cameras and lenses to emphasize their excellence. In particular, Nikon provided beneficial information to its visitors by providing a high-level photo lecture at its exhibition booth, just as last year.
Panasonic Korea introduced its new hybrid digital camera, Lumix G2 and G10, which applied the micro four-third system, along with new compact digital cameras and lenses.
Introducing its DSLR Alpha series, compact cameras and lenses, Sony Korea received great attention for unveiling the prototype of its hybrid digital camera, NEX (Alpha NEX-3, NEX-5). Due to the image sensor of an identical size as Samsung NX10 while having a relatively larger dimension than the micro four-third sensor of Olympus or Panasonic, Sony’s NEX series received evaluation that it would be favored in the competition of depth expression and pixel, resulting in great interest from the visitors since before the launch.
As the official agency of Sigma, Saeki P&C exhibited the to-be-launched DSLR SD15 model and DP1x, the follow-up model of the high-end camera DP2S, which were the new camera models and Sigma lenses exhibited at 2010 PMA.

Evolving Photo Printers & Photo Book Equipment

The desire to take photos and to leave memories as photos led to photo printing, which recently activated the photo book and photo book creating equipment, along with the launching of various photo printer products. This exhibition was also decorated by various photo book models, photo printers and derivative products.
First, the photo book is represented by the auto UV coater (Digi Binder). This model gained popularity as a compression album and auto-creator of photo books.
The binding machine of Plus Jet is a no-vibration equipment requiring no power that can easily and quickly create photo books and compression albums. It has already gained great popularity in overseas markets including Canada and New Zealand.
Hope Development Co.’s mini album machine system is a mid/small-sized photo book creator with easy instructions and low equipment costs.
Photo printers are convenient in that they can be used to obtain high quality photos within a short period of time, they can be connected to PC, and they can print photos from both digital cameras and cellular phones. Also, the printers are highly useful for events, street kiosk printing and photo printer shops.
According to a personnel of the industry, the overseas market already makes a great use of the dye-sublimation photo printers, whereas only 30% are distributed in the domestic market, leading to forecast for additional sales in the future.
The most prominent printer out of the photo printers was the dye-sublimation printer. This small printer could print photos within a short period of 10 seconds. The dye-sublimation method is of heating the ribbon roll cartridge coated with sublimation dye and coating the dye onto the printing paper to print the photos. The color and gloss is excellent with no ink spreads for a clear result. Another distinction of the dye-sublimation photo printer is that it can quickly print clear high-quality photos. Although differing by product, most printers can print a photo within the short time limit of 10 seconds based on a 10x15cm paper. Also, the printer is widely used in the market due to its convenient features when used through an exclusive program via PC.
Korea EPSON has launched three new models (EPSON Stylus Pro 7700, 9700, WT7900), which are large-sized equipments.
Carima has introduced dye-sublimation printers for Sony and Kodak, while June Systems has launched the mini album kiosk. Besides the above, Digi Cube and Boowon Digital have also launched photo printers and mini album kiosks capable of creating mid/small-sized photo books.

Just as Popular: Lighting, Accessories and Software Equipment

Related accessories are just as popular as the digital camera market. Starting from lens up to flash memories, batteries, rechargers, printers and various filters, the number of accessories is simply great. In such aspect, ‘P&I 2010′ was a good opportunity to look into the diverse and unique peripherals of digital cameras.
As for the photo lighting sector, domestic brands with increasing popularity in the export market were prominent. Aurora Lite Bank, Hyundai Photonix, Hyundai Fomex, Photo Light Think and many other companies introduced various new models aiming for the professional and amateur market. Among the companies, Hyundai Photonix captured the eyes of visitors by introducing for the first time in the world a new strobo model capable of remote settings by using a computer.
As for other unique brands, Dicapac introduced multi-purpose waterproof cases for cell phones, wallets and MP3 players, along with WP-570 equipped with complete waterproof features up to 10m for high-end cameras. This model adopted the polycarbonate optical lens for clear shooting.
Samyang Tech launched a new camera lens model designed exclusively for cameras by manufacturers including Nikon, Pentax and Sony. The new models mixed the use of compound aspheric lens to compensate for chromatic aberration and emphasize the outstanding definition and contrast of the center and peripherals even at maximum exposure.
Carima launched a photo fabrication equipment that fabricates desired 3D data in real life. The equipment uses a high-resolution DLP engine to express soft curves and details, and can be used diversely in prototype manufacturing businesses, such as machinery, components, architecture, medicine and jewelry.
Kkamnyang introduced a digital battery recharger (LCD-807/507), which conveniently indicates the actual capacity and recharged capacity of the battery. It can recharge from AA to AAA batteries, with each of the four recharged batteries being classified into different channels for indication of voltage and recharged current capacity.
Grizim Multi Tech exhibited a 3D album, a comprehensive program for professional photographers with convenient photo management and search features and various Photoshop functions. This model is classified into the commercial model that can be used professionally in photo studios or video production companies, and for general model providing free background designs for non-commercial purposes (e.g. schools, kindergartens, individual).
Paransoft introduced the customer editing program ‘Custom-Book V3.0′, which adopts the ActiveX method optimized for companies handling POD custom albums and output goods. The Custom-Book can edit various photo goods including photo books, photo albums, photo calendars, photo cards and actual outputs, and was strengthened in the custom convenience aspect, such as auto editing feature, photo adding feature, effect & correction feature, and font & speech bubble adding feature.

Diverse & Substantial Events: Photo-only Fair

This year’s P&I 2010 was more mature than its preceding ones. Besides the photo equipment exhibition, photo-related seminars of various topics and vendor seminars were held at each booth to provide much information and entertainment to the visitors, along with much attraction through the various photo exhibitions.
The most prominent part was that the entire Pacific Hall was decorated into a diverse photo exhibition area to provide a differentiated entertainment factor to its visitors. In particular, P&I 2010, the third and Asia’s first professional photo fair, was acclaimed to have been a good opportunity to broaden the experience of domestic photographers. In this event, Sweden was invited as the guest country of honor to introduce the photo culture of North Europe, which was hard to come by in the Asian region, with around 10 Spanish photographers and their 100 pieces displayed in the event. Also, the participation by American, French and Japanese photographers was prominent.
Another event was the Asian-Pacific Print Competition where judges from the Professional Photographers of America (PPA) would make open evaluations based on PPA regulations, in addition to the exhibition of 700 pieces from the PPA&ASP Loan Collection that exhibited the latest photo trend in the United States. Moreover, SLRCLUB, a professional photo club participated by 1 million photo manias, provided the entertainment of the special photo exhibition, photo exhibition on the troop dispatch of the Republic of Korea Army, and photo exhibition of the winning pieces for the 2010 spring shoot competition.

Diverse & Substantial Events: Photo-only Fair

This year’s P&I 2010 was more mature than its preceding ones. Besides the photo equipment exhibition, photo-related seminars of various topics and vendor seminars were held at each booth to provide much information and entertainment to the visitors, along with much attraction through the various photo exhibitions.
The most prominent part was that the entire Pacific Hall was decorated into a diverse photo exhibition area to provide a differentiated entertainment factor to its visitors. In particular, P&I 2010, the third and Asia’s first professional photo fair, was acclaimed to have been a good opportunity to broaden the experience of domestic photographers. In this event, Sweden was invited as the guest country of honor to introduce the photo culture of North Europe, which was hard to come by in the Asian region, with around 10 Spanish photographers and their 100 pieces displayed in the event. Also, the participation by American, French and Japanese photographers was prominent.
Another event was the Asian-Pacific Print Competition where judges from the Professional Photographers of America (PPA) would make open evaluations based on PPA regulations, in addition to the exhibition of 700 pieces from the PPA&ASP Loan Collection that exhibited the latest photo trend in the United States. Moreover, SLRCLUB, a professional photo club participated by 1 million photo manias, provided the entertainment of the special photo exhibition, photo exhibition on the troop dispatch of the Republic of Korea Army, and photo exhibition of the winning pieces for the 2010 spring shoot competition.