Photokina 2012 Köln

Two years ago I thought I’m not going to visit Photokina -then one week before the fair I changed my mind and went. And enjoyed my time there. This time I didn’t do same mistake. Köln is a great city and I always find something new from there. You just have to to visit “Belgian Quarter” -what a low key, bohemian atmosphere. I really liked the restaurants, cafés and boutiques there. But back to Photokina… what did I find…

Sunbouce – The Bounce Wall

Sunbounce.com

Because of my bookproject I’ve been building lately different kind of reflectors by myself. That’s why it was interesting to visit Sunbounce’s booth to see what new they have to offer in a professional level. I really like their products -they are professionally designed and manufactured. Their reflectors and diffusers are really usable in a different kind of locations. And they have a wide range sizes, colours etc.

The Bounce-Wall was their new product. It can be attached to a camera body and it bounces the speedlite’s light beam. “The arm” of the product is flexible material which makes it more sustainable. It can be  take to pieces, so it makes it easy to carry along. It’s also quite big and long. The light beam spreads already before it hits to the Bounce-Wall and eventually when it hits to the “target” it’s already a bit softer.

The Bounce-Wall Reflector itself looked like cardboard, but it supposed to be plastic. It didn’t feel really sustainable, but probably when you own it, you keep it properly. Right? You can have it in several colours.

The whole set was really easy to assemble. The only thing I was missing was some kind of carrying bag for all parts, so you could easily carry them around. At least bounce-wall reflectors themselves should have one.

Anyway, if you shooting events or do a lot of documentary photogarphy, I think this product might be interesting.

The Bounce-Wall Set

And if I knew this before… Sunbouce had a competition before Photokina in their website: it was possible to win Greg Gorman‘s workshop. He had few workshops in Köln during Photokina. I only had a possibility to see his exhibition and hear that he had been presenting the exhibition a night before 🙁 I’ve admired his work already a long time because of his way of using light. The other photographers who I missed where: Steve Thorton, Mike Larson and Michael Grecco. So, let’s keep on checking Sunbouce website more often…

Tiltall – umbrellas upside down

This product I saw basickly straight away when I arrived to the fair. The product was in Tiltalltripods booth. Open Flash Bulbs has been seen already in quite many times (even I’m a rookie -this was my fifth time in Photokina). I was fascinated by the idea of umbrella as an open flash system -it would be easy to carry on in locations. Tiltall’s umbrella was for continuous light. The diameter of the hole where you attach the light source was too small for studio flash. I really liked the shape of the umbrella. It’s almost like the round bulb.

Tiltall
Open Flash

K 5600 Lighting

This was also interesting light solution. It was introduced to me in K 5600 Lighting‘s booth. I stopped their booth because I saw fresnell-type of light modifier, which looked portable. It was manufactured for continuous light. Studio flash couldn’t fit inside the light modifier but probably speedlite could. You could easily move light source about 25 cm closer or further from fresnell (plastic, not glass). Unfortunately the hall was so bright that I couldn’t see how much transfering the lightsource effect on the light beams’ wideness. But it came with a carrying bag!

The Big Eye
The Big Eye and Carrying Bag

So that’s about light in Photokina. About pictures later on.