CP+ Yokohama

We went to a digital imaging trade show, CP+, one Friday afternoon and then again the following day. Getting there was a bit of a hassle, and even though we took the train there on Friday, we got lost trying to take the same train on Saturday, which made a 30-minute trip take two hours. What a drag. Anyway, the Japanese take their cameras and camcorders very seriously, and CP+ was full of delights on the imaging front. There were lots of standard and DSLR cameras on display, along with all the lenses, tripods and other accessories one would need in order to do some serious photography (and damage to one's wallet).



A colleague posing with this monster Sigma telephoto lens:


Waterproof/shockprooof/freezeproof cameras are a growing segment of the point-and-shoot camera market. Olympus froze a few of their cameras to illustrate:


I'd be willing to bet that every single one of these lenses was pointed at a chick on the show floor (more on that in a minute):


Some observations from the show:

- I noticed that girls were used in the show much like they were by mobile phone companies on the streets of HK the last time I was there. What I mean by this is that decent to really hot chicks were dressed up in skimpy outfits to attract people to booths and products. I find this pretty entertaining because not only does it suggest to me that the products suck, but also because people in Asia are not shy about taking pictures of and "admiring" the girls. Here are some examples of what I mean:

A couple of colleagues with show girls:


This girl got more attention than any other that I saw in the show. I couldn't understand why:










She looks normal, but wait until you see the full display:




The girls are well aware that they're being oggled and they do everything they can to play up their image for passersby. They're happy to smile for you, pose, and so forth (notice that in some of the photos, they're looking right at me). In any case, even the most average of girls will get a lot of guys taking pictures of them, so I have to give companies here credit for doing what works, even if it seems a tad crass.

A fairly standard display of guys taking pictures of show girls:


The rest of the show was just OK, and I certainly wouldn't go back to it unless I was already in Japan for something else. I was expecting something on the scale of CES, but what I got was much, much smaller--only one hall in a convention center. Also, most of the people working in the booths didn't speak English, and all of the product sheets and documentation being handed out were in Japanese, not English. Still, it was interesting to go and look around.

Nikon had a darkroom with fish tanks set up to demonstrate the high ISO capabilities of their DSLRs. I decided to test out my own DSLR's high ISO capabilities. The first couple of shots use ISO 12,800, the last uses ISO 800:







There were displays of images by famous photographers (mostly Japanese) set up in various places around the show. These are my two favorite images: