There is nothing more telling than a trade exhibition to indicate the health and direction of an industry. As The EAGLE has been reporting for the last 7 years, or so, technology convergence has been making a number of formally different marketplaces begin to look similar. Every year during February, the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) holds its annual conference and trade show. Once populated by companies selling film cameras and film processing equipment, this marketplace has now become a bastion for digital imaging and printing. While there were still signs of film and film cameras being sold, the major emphasis, even by Agfa, Kodak, and Fuji was on digital photography, and the processing and print of images from digital media.

Wherever you looked, the message was digital and images were being printed by a wide array of digital narrow to wide format devices. Later in the year there will also be On-Demand for the print on demand market, SGIA for the Screen-printing market, ISA for the Sign Printing market and other venues all going significantly digital. While the range of devices you would see in all of these exhibitions is different than you might see at DRUPA or Graphexpo, these shows look very much the same from a technology standpoint, missing only Computer to Plate, but even including scanners and copier printers.

Of the companies that would also exhibit at a traditional graphic arts show, you might not be able to tell it is the same Agfa, Fuji or Kodak, but the wide format printer companies were all pretty much showing similar products with different output, such as portraits, rather than posters and Creo had a good sized booth focused upon their scanning capabilities.