OK, it's been a while, sorry I was just too busy. Anyway, for those who couldn't be there.
We can safely say that this years Photokina was all all about duplex printing and photo books, albums. The latter in every possible quality, from the good old cheap plastic sleeves to the hand made Italian luxury ones like Bandinelli, something for everybody's wallet.
Photo books and photo book making solutions was the real hit I think. From the super high quality automated printing and binding to the do it yourself. Fascinating how much the industry around and supporting the album and photo book making advanced also lately. Album and book binding machines, manual, all in one, hot bind, staple bind, coating, glittering, cutting, cold press, hot press and the rest of them. And a lot of software to help end customers as well as service providers in composing, ordering, producing albums.
I found that most of the album machine making companies were not totally ready for the duplex prints yet. They should be, (I guess by next years fair they will be) because double sided printing was everywhere. Dry minilabs mainly, like HP, Noritsu etc, some dry subs and of course drawing quite a bit of attention the RA4 duplex from Prismlab (which we also sell from this very site to the Eastern European market.) The RA4 Duplex is a great alternative compared to the ink minilabs. You can save a lot, I mean a lot of money on the production.
So to sum it up, the industry is ready to give photographs back into the hands of the people. What digital cameras took away, now albums and books will give it back. Question is how long before the people start thinking in albums. I guess they will be forced to. Anyway if you don't have albums or books to offer your customers yet, it is probably time to look into the topic. There is one more thought I wanted to add to the photo book revolution, finally illiterates can also have a pleasurable library... :)
What's with the rest of the Photokina, cameras, lights and the rest, you may ask. Well, no idea. This thing is so big and I had only 2 days. I was trying to absorb as much as I could but my brain capacity is just not like it used to be. I saw a couple of cool things but I was looking at the big picture mainly. If you know something I don't please share.
Vy píšete! 
