As a precursor of Thursday's feature article on imaging, the snapshots that follow (which I took earlier today while roaming the Photo Marking Assocation Conference show floor) exemplify some of the trends I'll point out in my writeup. Click on the thumbnail photo, and tilt your head to the left (or, if you prefer, turn your display clockwise 90 degrees) as needed, for a full-size image.

Check out the relative sizes of the 31.6 Mpixel CMOS sensor in Pentax's new 645 medium format digital camera, versus the APS-format 10.1 Mpixel sensor in the K10D DSLR.

This massive lens is Sigma's 200-500 zoom, with a fixed f2.8 maximum aperature through the entire focal range. Approximate weight is 15 kg (33 lbs). It comes with a matched 2x teleconverter for an effective f5.6 400-1000 mm zoom range.

JVC's Everio GZ-HD7 delivers impressive specifications at an $1800 price point and in a consumer-friendly form factor; full 1920x1080 (interlaced) output, three CCDs (one each for red-, green- and blue-spectrum light capture), a 10x (39.5-395mm 35mm equivalent) optical zoom range, and 2 Mpixel (true resolution, not interpolated) still image capture to SD cards. It'll go into production next month.

Micron's baseball-theme booth, stuck at the back of the LVCC South Hall 2nd floor, was complete with a batting cage but didn't seem to be much of a hit with attendees (at least on Saturday morning).

Vivitar's DVR-530 exemplifies the industry push to blend still and video capture in hybrid cameras that store images to flash memory.

Up to 416 Mpixels!!! BetterLight's digital backs for large format cameras employ three Kodak linear sensors (one each for red, green and blue) that iteratively scan across the image to be captured (think about how a flatbed scanner works and you'll get the picture). At 22 second capture times for the lowest-resolution back at its fastest capture mode, these products aren't exactly designed for fast-moving subjects, but the example image of the Nepal Annapurnas (an area of the world that long-time readers know is near and dear to my heart) was jaw-dropping awesome.

Here's another example of the growing hybrid camera wave; this particular shot was taken in Casio's booth.

Panasonic's AVCHD cameras employ H.264 compression in storing high-def video to HDD and optical disc destinations, and provide a more consumer-friendly alternative to tape- and MPEG-2-based HDV camcorders.

Samsung' GX-10 is a clone of Pentax's earlier mentioned K10 DSLR. I chose to not take a picture of the other 'eye candy' in Samsung's booth; a fetching lass in a tiger stripe-painted, flesh-colored body suit.

Here's a teardown of Canon's latest EOS-1D Mark III professional DSLR, which touts 10 fps continuous image capture capability.

I encountered plenty of seeming competition within some vendors' booths, such as both AVCHD and HDV camcorders or, in the case of Canon, both HDV videocams and this hybrid. The TX1 touts a tempting $500 price point, but because it employs motion JPEG (which doesn't do any interframe compression) as its video codec, it doesn't make efficient use of its flash memory storage media (compared to, for example, MPEG-4 or Windows Media Video).

Reflective both of the diversity of the companies' presences in imaging, and of the the diversity of the PMA audience, cameras constituted only a small percentage of both Kodak and HP's booths.

Fortunately, Supacam didn't show up this time. Maybe they knew better?