BearSummer
28th of February 2005 (Mon), 03:05
Well the wife and I went to FOI2005 yesterday and had a fun, if somewhat expensive, time. By the end of the day the cry of "oh my feet" was to be heard lots. FOI2005 was/is held in halls 9/10 at the NEC in Birmingham, as we attended last year we decided to go early to make sure that we weren't parked miles away which meant dragging ourselves out of bed at 5am, on the road at 6 and arriving at the NEC around 9am. If you are going to do this, take breakfast, nothing at the NEC is open at that time of the morning.
FOI runs from 10am to 6pm, so we had the place mostly to ourselves, by 9:30 the place was crowded and by 10am it was heaving with photogs. I would suggest that when attending a show like this, don't take your camera gear, its just something else to carry and you are going to be exhausted by the end of the day anyway. The only reason to take it is to photograph the show (they have photogs onsite to do this so you aren’t going to be selling them to the NEC or FOI), photograph the models on some of the stands, check new lenses/toys against your current gear or see if you can partX it against something else. If it isn't for one of the above reasons, don’t bother, you will be carrying enough by the end of the show. So this year I left my cameras behind, laid in provisions (bottled water and chocolate, the cafe/restaurant are always busy) and was wearing my hiking boots (nice and comfy, good ankle support, when people step on your foot its not going to be to painful (well for you anyway)), you also need to be careful as some stands are on raised platforms which are easy to trip or stub a toe on.
So 10am rolls around and they slowly start to let the crowd in. There were about 200 exhibitors ranging from very small booths to the big boys who take up entire blocks, the biggest use of floor space seems to have been Konica Minolta (which surprised me) followed by Canon, Noritsu, Nikon (with their dual level stand) and manfroto.
The nicest looking stand was probably Lee filters, but for what they charge for filters they can afford it (ps prices are going up next month apparently). Epson had a very nice stand with most of their printers on display, in fact the Epson 4000 seems to have been bought by lots of the exhibitors and appeared as the printing solution that many of them were using.
The most creative stand was probably made by Climpex who manufacture brackets and stands for the chemical industry and have expanded into the photography market with their clamps and stuff for macro stages etc, their entire display was made up of their climpex scaffolding.
The thing to remember with FOI2005 is that people don’t change their eating habits that much, so the food providers are going to be crazy busy around lunch time and late afternoon, so try and have lunch between 10-11 and then a snack in the afternoon around 3-4, if you try and eat between 12-2 you better have brought your own sandwiches. Try and take extra fluids with you as it’s always a queue for drinks.
The camera shop stalls seemed to be doing very well and were always 2 ro 3 people deep with photogs desperate to thrust money at them. Canons stand as always was very busy as was Nikons, Minolta seemed to be very quiet by comparison. The fun part of the day was listening to the announcements which were given by someone who had had their sense of humour surgically removed and was so bored that she was ready to cut her throat at any moment, and boy did it show. Imagine someone on valium reading "and here is Andy Rouse the wild man of wild photography" if you need a job the NEC needs a new announcer.
The expensive part was finding a good deal on an Epson 4000 (it arrives next Friday), seeing Climpex again (they were there last year and I should have bought it then) and the Manfroto stand, just don’t ask...
The big disappointment was Billingham, they had a tiny stall, no more than 120 sq foot, seemed to have most of the range on display but were not selling from the stall. Which is ok if one of your distributors is, its what Lee, Manfroto and Epson do. Unfortunately none of the Billingham distributors had brought any of the bags, so if you decide to buy one, and they aren’t cheap, then you find out you cant after running all over the halls asking their distributors, very disappointing.
Queensbury were there again, all the way from New Zealand, wonderful stand, amazing albums and very cheerful staff. No sign of Pentax who I expected to be there.
The naughtiest stand was for "photographer on the net" which had a logo something along the lines of "why use someone elses name when you can use your own.
We left when the show finished and finally got home around 9pm ready to fall into bed. A long, tiring and expensive day, but lots of fun.
All the best
BearSummer
FOI runs from 10am to 6pm, so we had the place mostly to ourselves, by 9:30 the place was crowded and by 10am it was heaving with photogs. I would suggest that when attending a show like this, don't take your camera gear, its just something else to carry and you are going to be exhausted by the end of the day anyway. The only reason to take it is to photograph the show (they have photogs onsite to do this so you aren’t going to be selling them to the NEC or FOI), photograph the models on some of the stands, check new lenses/toys against your current gear or see if you can partX it against something else. If it isn't for one of the above reasons, don’t bother, you will be carrying enough by the end of the show. So this year I left my cameras behind, laid in provisions (bottled water and chocolate, the cafe/restaurant are always busy) and was wearing my hiking boots (nice and comfy, good ankle support, when people step on your foot its not going to be to painful (well for you anyway)), you also need to be careful as some stands are on raised platforms which are easy to trip or stub a toe on.
So 10am rolls around and they slowly start to let the crowd in. There were about 200 exhibitors ranging from very small booths to the big boys who take up entire blocks, the biggest use of floor space seems to have been Konica Minolta (which surprised me) followed by Canon, Noritsu, Nikon (with their dual level stand) and manfroto.
The nicest looking stand was probably Lee filters, but for what they charge for filters they can afford it (ps prices are going up next month apparently). Epson had a very nice stand with most of their printers on display, in fact the Epson 4000 seems to have been bought by lots of the exhibitors and appeared as the printing solution that many of them were using.
The most creative stand was probably made by Climpex who manufacture brackets and stands for the chemical industry and have expanded into the photography market with their clamps and stuff for macro stages etc, their entire display was made up of their climpex scaffolding.
The thing to remember with FOI2005 is that people don’t change their eating habits that much, so the food providers are going to be crazy busy around lunch time and late afternoon, so try and have lunch between 10-11 and then a snack in the afternoon around 3-4, if you try and eat between 12-2 you better have brought your own sandwiches. Try and take extra fluids with you as it’s always a queue for drinks.
The camera shop stalls seemed to be doing very well and were always 2 ro 3 people deep with photogs desperate to thrust money at them. Canons stand as always was very busy as was Nikons, Minolta seemed to be very quiet by comparison. The fun part of the day was listening to the announcements which were given by someone who had had their sense of humour surgically removed and was so bored that she was ready to cut her throat at any moment, and boy did it show. Imagine someone on valium reading "and here is Andy Rouse the wild man of wild photography" if you need a job the NEC needs a new announcer.
The expensive part was finding a good deal on an Epson 4000 (it arrives next Friday), seeing Climpex again (they were there last year and I should have bought it then) and the Manfroto stand, just don’t ask...
The big disappointment was Billingham, they had a tiny stall, no more than 120 sq foot, seemed to have most of the range on display but were not selling from the stall. Which is ok if one of your distributors is, its what Lee, Manfroto and Epson do. Unfortunately none of the Billingham distributors had brought any of the bags, so if you decide to buy one, and they aren’t cheap, then you find out you cant after running all over the halls asking their distributors, very disappointing.
Queensbury were there again, all the way from New Zealand, wonderful stand, amazing albums and very cheerful staff. No sign of Pentax who I expected to be there.
The naughtiest stand was for "photographer on the net" which had a logo something along the lines of "why use someone elses name when you can use your own.
We left when the show finished and finally got home around 9pm ready to fall into bed. A long, tiring and expensive day, but lots of fun.
All the best
BearSummer