Photofair 2011: Heralding the Photography Era in India!

The four-day Photofair was successfully conducted in the Capital. Photofair 2011 was the sixteenth edition and held from 6th-9th January, 2011. Organized by the All India Photographic Trade & Industry Association (AIPTIA) in association with the photographic media partners, namely Asian Photography, Better Photography and Smart Photography, the event is the world's third-largest and Asia's biggest photography exhibition. The Association has so far organized 15 Photofairs, which is held every alternate year in Delhi and Mumbai. It is aimed at bringing together the entire photographic and digital imaging community at a single platform and spreading awareness about the Digital Revolution in photographic products. 

The exhibition was officially inaugurated by Shri Virbhadra Singh, Union Minister for Steel, Government of India. The exhibition attracted some of the biggest names in photography, and millions of visitors visited it during the four-day period. Leading brands from the imaging world participated in the Photofair, showcasing their latest innovations in digital imaging products and also unveiling their roadmap for the coming financial year. 

Based on the theme “Color Palettes of Life", Canon India exhibited its entire range of consumer products ranging from digital cameras, camcorders, DSLRs to printers for which it divided its booth into eight different zones. Canon also took this opportunity to showcase its latest path- breaking technology, the “HS” system, designed specifically to capture clear, vivid photographs in any situation, especially low-light, when those moments happen. In an effort to encourage photography as an art form and also reflecting Canon's commitment to photography, the imaging brand conducted specialized workshops under the aegis of renowned photographers like Dinesh Khanna, Mike Pandey, Ashok Kochhar and Dhananjay Moray who received wide acclaim. These workshops not just dealt with the theory of the specified genre but also concentrated on the practical aspects such as set-up, selecting the final image and presentation.

FUJIFILM India couldn't have found any better platform to introduce its 3D products - the new FinePix REAL 3D W3 camera and 3D printer - that remained its major highlight till the end of the show. The company also presented its PRINT SYSTEM, a printer that enables direct printing of high-quality 3D images on lenticular sheets. Besides debuting these new products, Fujifilm also showcased its other range of printers which included the Fine Pix Printer IP-10, ASK range of printers, Digital Printer Processors and DRY MINILAB Frontier DL600 Digital Printer Processor. 

At this year's Photofair, Kingston Digital showcased its latest range of flash memory solutions for the growing digital photography market. The products were displayed in the most simplistic and comfortable manner to help visitors have a better picture of Kingston's latest collection of pen drives and memory cards. Keeping the theme as “Art of Photography”, Kingston showed how photography is not a profession alone but is an art and to lend credence to this, it hosted various exciting programmes for its visitors. Visitors were asked to write captions about the images in the collage installed in the booth and also create interesting stories out of the images running on the plasma. Visitors who captured the images in their stories in an interesting way took home a number of goodies from Kingston. 

In addition to these names, some of the other imaging majors exhibiting their wares at this year's Photofair were Nikon, Olympus, Kodak, Panasonic, Hewlett-Packard and Indian counterparts like Photoquip and IMS Mercantiles, to name a few. Also for the first time, the exhibition saw the unveiling of a calendar, “Beauties, Beach & More...” by an ace photographer Chandrakant Shah, which was yet another captivating part of the show. 

The next Photofair is scheduled to take place in Mumbai next year.

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