The Photography Show N.E.C.

Today me and a small group of friends went to the photography show at N.E.C in Birmingham. When we walked in we immediately played with the large Canon telephoto lenses, they auto focused very fast. The stand was higher than the rest of the show so we were able to look around the show and use the lenses to focus on things in the distance.
We looked around the Fujifilm area, where we quickly noticed that the prints there had been done by Genesis Printing. We walked around to the Hasselblad stand to ogle at the expensive equipment. I was excited to see the Arca Swiss, Linhof Studios stand where I spoke to the representative about the technical cameras they had there. Being primarily a landscape photographer, I have seen technical cameras online, but I didn't understand much about them, so it was really nice to have a wee play with one to understand it's workings.
There was a DXO Mark booth, the guy there was doing a quick retouching presentation on their software. He was quite cocky and the software didn't blow me away completely, but there were some really cool aspects to the software. He brought a ton of clarity and detail out of a misty photograph. He also sharpened a really grainy and under exposed photograph, it was sharp but I also felt it lacked some detail. One of the photos he retouched looked unreal, which didn't work with its landscape setting, also one where he quickly clicked away distortion from a photo taken with a fish eye lens. There was one really nice photo he did where he fixed highlights and shadows, but it could have been done in lightroom. Overall there were some good points to it, but I think it was mostly designed to blow away people with not much experience with retouching.

I was most excited by the Lee Filters stand. I own some graduated density filters myself, but I haven't afforded Lee Filters, They look so much more precise and clear than filters I own. They had some work be Joe Cornish, a well known and respected landscape photographer there. I have seen videos of him talking about his workflow, and I was interested to learn from the text that he often shoots with a Nikon d700. It was nice to see the "Big Stopper" filter that cuts out 10 stops of light.

I was impressed by the Induro and Benro Tripods. I do have a decent carbon fibre tripod, but i do often find it a bit limiting, as it doesn't extend very high and isn't so adaptable. I have a Manfrotto tripod that is great but weighs several kilos, so it is great for shoots where I don't have to travel with it, but I usually leave it at home, especially considering not all the aluminium legs have foam on to protect our hands in the cold. These Benro and Induro tripods felt really nice, were very adaptable and were lovely and light too. Of course they also felt very sturdy, the main thing one looks for in a tripod! I visited the Manfrotto stand too, I liked the variety of colours for some of their tripods, but I wasn't as amazed as I was when I went to see the others.
3LeggedThings were also nice but I was most impressed by Benro and Induro, I liked Benro a little more as there was some blue colour in the fittings, though they seemed like the same tripods really, its the little touches that impressed me.