Focus on Imaging, what a place. Everything for the discerning photographer & I do mean everything, all under one roof at the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre.

I went on the Tuesday, 3 days into the event, which apparently left it long enough not to be too crowded. I managed to arrive around 9.10am after a 90 minute drive & found myself first in the queue.

Doors opened at 10.00 & I headed straight to the Canon stand. They had just about the whole range on display, cameras & lenses, at least I think they did, I only actually looked at the 1D Mk IIIs, a whole battery of them each one with a different lens attached to play with. After getting a feel of my future camera I went up some steps to the ‘shooting gallery’ full of top of the range prime telephotos. I had a play with the 400mm, 500mm & 600mm (all fixed to 1DS Mk IIIs!). Wow, are those lenses fast! As they were attached to the stand I couldn’t get a feel for their weight, but the 500m & 600mm look very enticing.

I then caught one of the many seminars throughout the day on OnOne’s Photoshop plugins. I already have a couple of them & having seen how to use them I’ll make more use of them from now on.

I hadn’t intended to spend any money at the show so wasn’t really there for anything specific. I perused a few stands until being grabbed by a lady on the SWPP who thrust a magazine into my hand & pointed me in the direction of their list of seminars. I noted one in particular on ‘Event Photography’ which gave me about 1/2 an hour to wander further. As I did I bumped into an old colleague from work who retired a couple of years ago & moved up to Cleethorpes. He’s now making a living out of photography & thoroughyl recommended retirement. We exchanged business cards & I had to leave to go back to the seminar.

Entitled "How to print £10 notes" I listened for 45 minutes to a talk on how one photographer makes hard cash from attending functions with a camera & a dye-sub printer. It was extremely interesting & worthy of some further investigation.

At 12.30 I made my way to the DSLR User stand where I met Charlie, one of the editorial team who signed me up for a magazine subscription. This is the mag whose forums I’ve been using since Autumn 2007. I arranged to return at 2pm to see if any other members were about knowing that quite a few had met at the same time the day before. As it turned out I met only one other member, an Irish fellar called Martin who could talk to Olympic standards! He had a funny story for every situation. We wandered off for a drink before I left him to go & watch a studio flash demonstration with a particularly gorgeous blond model.

I checked out a talk on the Pocket Wizard remote flash triggers & almost bought one but in the end settled for a mount board cutter. They’d run out of stock but agreed to put one in the post to me at no charge.

I must have walked a few miles & still didn’t see most of the stands there. The show simply made me realise how much money I don’t have.

Roll on next year!