I made it a point to attend several trade shows recently – Photokina in Cologne (September), PhotoPlus in NYC (October) and CES in Las Vegas (January). I spent a lot of time walking up and down the aisles at the shows and was able to get hands-on demos of many new pieces of photo equipment and accessories.

Several readers have asked about our plans for reviews of some of these items, so I thought I’d drop a few lines to let you know that we’ve already started reviewing the following items and are putting them through the paces. Additionally, we’ve added another tablet computer to our inventory and are just now logging a few dozen hours studying how it might come in handy for photographers.

	Color Nook – this is the new color version of Barnes & Noble’s earlier black and white e-book reader. The display makes it great for reading ebooks that include full-color illustrations and photographs.
	Eye-Fi – this innovative wireless SD card is not new, but the improved software has many new features for automatically sharing your photos with other sites.
	Samsung Galaxy Tab – this recently introduced tablet computer is aiming to grab some of the would-be iPad enthusiasts. It’s more compact than the iPad and sports a few nice features.
	Sony Alpha 55 – this new DSLR has a slew of innovative features. Demoing it at the PhotoPlus Show, I felt that is a groundbreaker. Others must have felt that way too; it was on backorder for six week.
	Sony SnapLab – not everyone needs the power or speed of this medium volume printer. But having a SnapLab gives you a very convenient way to get prints directly from your digital media or bluetooth mobile device.

Stay tuned. The reviews are in progress.

Written by Arnie Lee

Color Calibration with the Pantone Huey Pro

As photographers, we spend an extraordinary amount of time fretting over color. We carefully tweak the camera settings and adjust the white balance, ISO, raw quality, exposure, noise level and sharpness to produce magnificent color in the captured image. Afterwards, we transfer the digital film to our computerized darkroom for further processing with a goal of reproducing the colors as true to life as possible.

So why are we surprised (read: disappointed) when a prized photo looks so different from our mind’s eye view of the original scene? After all, haven’t we set the camera for the best color?

The reason may well be that the true color of the photo has been inexplicably changed by the computer monitor.
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For a couple of months, I’ve had a small box sitting on a shelf waiting for me to investigate its usefulness for mobile phones.

This morning, I heard the word bluetooth and it reminded me of this box which contains a small bluetooth device. So I pulled the box out and had it working within 10 minutes. For this week, I’ll consider it my favorite geek device.

It’s called the Polaroid Pogo. Those of us who remember the name Polaroid, know that this company is considered the inventors of instant photography that was so pervasive from the 1950 through the 1970s. While Polaroid no longer makes the film/paper packs, the Pogo instead uses a heat sensitive Zink (for zero ink) paper to produce near instant prints. From what I can tell, Polaroid licenses the Zink technology under its own name to take advantage of the historic instant connotation.
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