The recently concluded Photokina had photographers from across the world hooked and hopeful. The event was a success in terms of visitors and about 0.2 million visitors turned up for the fair. A lot was promised and talked about during the fair, not to mention things that transpired before and after it. But not all promises were met and for a few industry experts, parts of the event turned out a little dismal with some participants reiterating and going back to modest strategies and claims.

Leica it seems came out pretty clean. Leica fans were quite happy with what Leica had to offer, a set of nine lenses for M, S and T systems and a few updates in M cameras. Overall, Leica was one of the brighter participants of the event. Others looked quite pale in comparison.

Canon, Fujifilm and Nikon also put up a good show. Canon displayed a 38mm equivalent crop sensor and a mid-range consumer zoom. Also shown was a G7 X compact camera with a new sensor. Fujifilm had some new additions in lenses but still it still needs to figure out a better viewfinder.

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Nikon’s show was a little dated but overall, not bad. Aside from a few surprises like 20 mm f/1.8, the show left Nikon fans wondering about when Nikon will be getting into 4k video. Nikon had nothing to announce on that front.

Topping the disappointments’ list, Pentax had nothing new to say. There were only announcements to make on their part and future that is going to take some time. Someone must tell Pentax the future is here.

Overall, Photokina was a mix of hits and misses. Some got it right, some didn’t. According to a lot of experts, the companies got in wrong in terms of technology: we have enough technology to work with; the quality of photographs is just fine. What we need now is better UI to go close to the consumers, to propel the existing products to the users. Solving a user problem seems to be the need of the hour and most, except perhaps Apple, do not understand it.

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