Rubber chickens . Chocolate visiting cards. A camera support that looks (and performs) like a big, sticky limpet. Every bit as much as cameras, films, and imaging software, this weird and wonderful stuff is what the Photo Marketing Association show is about.

We are talking, after all, about marketing. It is literally their middle name.

Epson is really pushing the limits with desktop scanners, bringing near drum-scanner quality down to the sub-$800 price range. With two new scanners on display at PMA, Epson had the major news in this category. First up is the Perfection V700 PHOTO. With an estimated price of $549.99, the scanner uses Epson's Dual Lens optics. The Dual Lens System automatically selects...

Times change. Last year, dye sublimation snapshot printers were all the rage. This year the focus on printers at PMA was on permanence with more and more printers available with archival image-printing capabilities. Many included the availability of multiple cartridges capable of using pigment-based inks for creating long-lasting, gallery-quality output. The upside is, of...

Argraph introduced several brand-new Sunblitz Digital Lighting Products. The Sunblitz DAF 4500C ETTL is designed to work with Canon digital SLR and film cameras and has a GN (Guide Number) of 135 at ISO 100. The Sunblitz A 6000 Macro Ring Flash provides shadow-free light for medical, industrial, and creative subjects. It has a GN of 40, works with cameras having filter...

If there's anything you can count on with digital products, it's faster speeds, higher capacities, and lower costs. Nowhere is this truer than with memory cards. There was plenty of news from a variety of vendors.

SanDisk doubled the capacity of several of their most popular cards, including the Extreme III line of cards to 8GB in CompactFlash, and 2GB...

There was only one major large format printer announcement at PMA, but what an announcement! Canon showed off the new imagePROGRAF iPF5000 printer. This is brand-new from the inside out. Canon's first 17" wide photo printer, the $1945 iPF5000 is a direct competitor to the Epson Stylus Pro 4800. The printer features Canon's new Lucia pigment inks in 12 colors.

The obvious big news at this year's show was the "proliferation" of pigmented ink-based printers--and with that comes a new level of inks and print longevity. We used to think that pigmented inks could not deliver the color saturation and punch of dye-based inks, but that no longer appears to be the case with this new generation of inksets with expanded...