Show Review by: Michael Gazzola

Images captured on Olympus E-520

If fans of Star Trek were to attend the Olympus stand they could almost be tricked into thinking this was the 'Next Generation', and to keep a look out for Captain Jean Luc Pickard...

The award for Best Stand simply goes to Olympus. When a few extra coins are thrown in to give a show stand more than just a lick of paint, the designers came up with a two-storey circular stand offering an 'arena' on the ground level where

visitors could test Olympus' wares, or step up the spiral staircase to the 'upper deck' where a groovy coffee lounge area is accompanied by an 'observation deck'. Here, a series of DSLR's were mounted to the balcony edge with Olympus' best lenses on offer - for photographers to trial out and zoom their way across the entire show.

I was met on the stand by Olympus Marketing manager Lisa Coggan who gave me nothing short of a 5 star performance with her knowledge and detail on Olympus' latest product lines.  She established with me quickly that Olympus was using the show as a vehicle to simply present their best range, just their DSLRs. And when you step back to see just what's on offer you realise how much of a serious player in the DSLR market Olympus has become.

An interesting point Mrs Coggan made was that people don't go along to car shows to see plain old Commodores, they go to see a new release

Ferraris, Lamborghinis or Hummers... so Olympus have adapted this approach to put on show their

with a rrp price of a lazy AUD9,999.

There was also the 50-200mm f2.8 on show which now offers twice the focus speed of non SWD

lenses - Supersonic Wave Drive. 

Note: All of our show images published with the articles were captured using the Olympus E-520  with a 14-54mm (28-108mm equivalent) lens. The 

E-520 camera was nice to handle considering it is 

smaller than your average DSLR and very responsive. Although it was not put through review conditions the images delivered were excellent capturing most of the internal light and balancing it well with on camera flash and auto white balancing.

So if you're planning to head down to the show be sure to allow a full day to work your way through the hallway photo exhibitions, the plethora of stands inside and be sure to put the Olympus stand at the top of your 'must-see' list.