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Wow.

4 days of Focus on Imaging, and NOT as an exhibitor. I had to take a big chunk of Tuesday out because I was wiped out and broken, but Wednesday more than made up for it! The general feel of the show is more service-based now, with a lot of interesting new concepts/products but of a very consumer-biased nature - but from the perspective of "something to offer the customer" - woven images in blankets, framing, massive varieties of inkjet products. Camera technology is now so dominated by digital, and so mature, that the format wars appear to be purely brand-biased.

Massive interest in the new Sigma SD14 was good to see, and high-end digital is becoming more and more affordable - Phase One kits were sub £8,000, Hasselblad's new H3D 31mp is only £13,900 - and consumer/semi pro kit like the Fuji S5 Pro is sub-£1000.

jenova_red & I didn't really get much time to be sociable, but we did take a run down to Cheltenham and Bath to collect ninjagirl (from kissycat1000 etc., who were holding her hostage) and visit samoth - who handed me a box with oil for the car, a spare badge, and a 1989 Motorola Dynatac 8900X-2 which had a recent 3300 GSM high-capacity battery on it! This appears to be charging. During the course of the week, siani_hedgehog's 20GB iPod died (overcharged, or something - it shouldn't do that) and she'd been going nuts with trying to slim down 46GB of music, so I bought a new 5.5G 80GB iPod and gave her my 60GB one. The search function on the new one is rather good IMO :). The expense of replacing the iPod (covered in part by expenses for Focus) is slightly annoying because I just found out I need to get some clothes for one of the kid's holiday things, right after the other's Birthday :/

By Wednesday, I was considering IV feed Laphroaig - Focus has never been so busy IMO. I think this is a good thing.

Now I'm back, the phone hasn't stopped, and I'm planning on more photographic exploits having finally caught up on LJ.