PMA 2006 Show Report (Final)

Welcome to the Digital Photography Review PMA 2006 show report. The Photo Marketing Association Annual Show will be held this year at the Orange County Convention Center, Orlando between February 26th and March 1st 2006. PMA is the photography industry's most important annual event, it's the place where the new year's hottest digital cameras and related products are announced.

Note: This is not designed to be comprehensive report of the entire show but rather a summary of the new digital photography related products announced around and shown at PMA.

PMA 2006 Summary

This PMA was busier and felt far more positive than last year, we saw a good 'rounding' of product ranges by most of the manufacturers as well as some interesting new developments. The Panasonic DMC-L1 stole the show and was certainly generating a lot of buzz. We look forward to Photokina where we believe you will begin to see digital photography entering a new phase. Here are a few statistics from the show (from our point of view):

• Show report: 19 stands, 234 images, 2,880 words posted live from the show floor
• News: 90 PMA product related news articles (includes a few CES announcements)
• Products announced: Over 100 new digital photography products (major manufacturers)
• Site stats (25/Feb - 1/Mar; 5 days): 3.8 million visitors, 14.6 million pages read
• Forums (25/Feb - 1/Feb; 5 days): 66,000 messages posted

PMA 2006, our Top 10 new products

1. Panasonic Lumix DMC-L1 (Digital SLR) [hands-on]
2. Panasonic / Leica D 14-50 mm F2.8-F3.5 OIS 4/3 Lens
3. Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1
4. HP Photosmart R727
5. Canon PowerShot SD700 IS
6. Fujifilm FinePix F30
7. Olympus Stylus 720SW
8. Pentax Optio A10
9. Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H5
10. Sony HDPS-L1 Digital Photo Album

This years trends (written before the show)

This year will see the end of the megapixel race for compact cameras, while we will still see some manufacturers releasing cameras with higher pixel counts the majority of sensible manufacturers will realize that most buyers know that they have a large enough image and that there are other more important things for the R&D guys to be working on.

We also need to be aware of the increasing use of marketing speak, image stabilization that isn't (it just increases sensitivity) and high ISO on compacts which is unusable, use of the word RAW where there isn't any. Other things to expect are larger and larger LCD's (3.0" won't be unusual) and some with touch-screen. It's a year when all the manufacturers will have to start thinking again, the last three or so years have been a megapixel staircase (without necessarily the step up in image quality), this year cameras are going to need be better, faster and more featured.

Lastly there seems to be a fair amount of 'shelf stuffing', delivering lots of products at slightly different price points to (a) fill the shelves with their product and (b) give everyone with every budget an option.

New Product Index (102 total)

Please note that all of the above products are brand new and just announced, our 'NEW' indicator simply marks those products which have been added to this list within the last three days. As usual we have also included several products announced at CES 2005 (suffixed [CES]), the main reasoning behind this is that these products join those announced at PMA to make up a manufacturer's new line-up.

Other show reports

Other sites show reports

• Imaging-Resource
• DCResource

Our previous PMA show reports

• PMA 2005 report
• PMA 2004 report
• PMA 2003 report
• PMA 2002 report
• PMA 2001 report

Our Photokina show reports

• Photokina 2004 report
• Photokina 2002 report
• Photokina 2000 report