Yokohama, Japan. Feb 9-12. Report by Dorian Weber.

65,120 visitors attended the annual CP+ Show at the Yokohama Pacifico Exhibition Hall near Tokyo. The show was a big success–up 130% from last year. Lots of new products. The Nikon booth was way crowded as you can see in the accompanying pictures in our Flickr Slideshow. Nikon was rubbing shoulders with Canon. Canon pulled people over from the Nikon booth with an idol on stage: Yuriko Yoshitaka. A man holding a Japanese sign that says “Only accredited media is allowed to take photo, others not” was not always successful enforcing the rule in such a camera-crazy crowd.

Pictures 51 and 54 show the crowds at the entrance queuing up to get a ticket. The other sign with the 60 says that there is a 60 minute waiting time to get your fingers on a Nikon D4 or D800. There were equally long lines waiting to try the new X-Pro1 from Fujifilm.

Every maker tried to put on the best shows  to attract visitors. But clearly, the one who had most visitors was Nikon, because of their new cameras, stage shows and seminars.

Agfa launched a new camera… so new, that they still had to hide it behind glass…. not sure if it was a working model. An interesting new item: the new XQD cards from Sony with a transfer speed of 125 MB/sec.