Of camera gear and dreams

The Photo Marketing Association (PMA) is conducting its convention and trade show in Orlando, Florida, this week. Enthusiasts and brand loyalists, hungry for news or rumors, monitor the internet for weeks before this annual event, the largest of it's kind in the United States. (The largest in the world, Photokina, convenes every other year, with the next Photokina scheduled for this September in Cologne, Germany.)

Photography forums on the internet already abound with PMA-related messages. These messages can be filled with much weeping and gnashing of teeth (when, for example, one group's favorite brand announces a new camera that falls short of the hoped-for number of megapixels) or the messages can be wildly exuberant (a group celebrating because their brand has announced a new model, stuffed with innovative features, that seems to have caught the stunned competition off-guard).

Future entries at Variable Focus will contain more observations on pieces of camera gear and the "gearheads" who love them, but today seems like the perfect time to offer a photographic representation of one photographer's dream camera. Please click on the photo to see a larger version. You will want to read closely as you review the functions of the various dials and buttons.