I made the rounds at Photo Plus 2006. It was well traveled on Friday when I visited for a few meetings and on Saturday when I went to see what was new and happening. Photo Plus appeared buzz-less to me. At first I thought the lack of buzz was because most of the major product announcements were made at Photokina last month but then realized there wasn’t much to get really excited about – nothing innovative. But in all fairness I did not visit every booth.

There were a few things I wanted to see and investigate futher.

HP Z2100 & Z3100 printers
The new Z line comes with either 8 or 12 ink carriage (photo & matte black installed) and either 24 or 44 inch print size. Switching between photo and matte black is no longer required. This alone is a good reason to consider the printer but the real gem of a reason is that it comes with Gretag’s EyeOne technology built in. No way Epson saw this coming. The embedded Eye-One technology has major benefits. First off from a price comparison if you purchased an Epson printer and wanted to create your own profile you need an Eye-One colorimeter (or the like) costing anywhere from $ 1000 to $ 2000 depending on the package. This fact should be considered when comparing printers and pricing. Secondly, the embedded Eye-One technology scans the target swatches automatically. Anyone that has created many profiles will be laughing with joy at this news. Thirdly, it’s closed loop highly tuned system.

There are many, many more reasons to consider the new Z line. The prints I saw at the expo looked great. I don’t know the circumstances how the prints I saw were made but I liked what I saw very much. I want to get my hands on a printer and give it a full test run. As we all know, mileage does vary – so, I can’t wait to put one through its paces.

Phase One Plus Line
Phase One was demonstrating its new Live Preview and talking up is new P Series Plus backs. The live preview worked and worked well. I must say I had my doubts. It’s not an easy feat to accomplish. It was demonstrated on a 4×5 camera. As I understand, Live Preview is not currently working on medium format cameras but will be shortly. The feature will be released as a general feature in Capture One 4.0.

Other features of the Plus series are a brighter and higher resolution display, higher ISO – up to 1600 ISO, 1 hour exposure and less noise. All of which I did not get a chance to see or test but I hope to play with a Plus series when they ship early next year.