The London Camera Show 2025
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This weekend I combined 2 trips. I saw Grandma, she’s recovering well, and visited the London Photography and Video Show.
Living in the north of Scotland, this was an opportunity to meet some new potential guests, see some awesome work and maybe even flirt with the odd camera. And actually, the camera I mainly flirted with was indeed odd. Clad in a Prime Lenses T-shirt my M and a stack of business cards I embarked upon the show.
The show layout at Excel was fairly compact. Big enough for the major brands to have showy stands filled with staff and gear to try, but small enough that you can get from one meeting to another fairly quickly. The most varied and one of the largest stands I saw was Canon’s. They had EVERYTHING! Want to capture an image? In 3D? Of a cake? While listening to music from their own speaker lamp? And then print that? All while streaming or broadcasting live from a tuc tuc? Then you were in the right place. I didn’t know their ecosystem well, I’d done a bit of research following Danny Bligh’s switch to their kit more of which next week, but the sheer breadth is very impressive and the folks I met could not have been nicer as they walked me through everything.
The Fuji and Sony stands were also suitably flash with plenty of long lenses to try and in the case of Fuji some very lavishly attired models you could practice taking pictures on. This was something I hadn’t expected but makes a lot of sense. If the aim is to sell kit then giving you something that makes the camera look good will definitely help. Lighting companies often had little scenes set up with folks in costume so you could get some of that studio experience and of course, if you liked what you were seeing, nab that all important show discount.
The Sigma stand was very popular with the new BF proving exciting to some and confusing to many. This camera is very much “my shit” with insane care and attention to detail that in the flesh makes for a very tactile and exciting piece of hardware.
It looks great in black or silver, but personally I’d be tempted to combine a silver lens with a black body. The texture etched into the right side of the body is very grippy and the buttons on the back are easy to find and operate. Many have compared it to the Leica Q or even suggested it’s a spiritual successor to the TL series, but to me it felt like an interchangeable lens GRIII. I predict a dedicated audience for this system, but it’s going to require time to get there and it won’t be for everyone. I felt that the size of the lenses in relation to the body, they’re often quite long, combined with the lack of a few modern conveniences like an app for WiFi transfer rule it out as an M replacement. I adore the audacity of the thing and I’d love to own one but there are rules and they control the fun 😄
Gabrielle Motola gave a great talk about printing and her process for preparing files to print. A whole new world to me it was a great primer and I’m excited to apply what I learned to some images once I’m home. I also need to calibrate my screen!
I also need to shout out my school mate Sam at Sony who introduced me to some of the pros they had on hand and I was excited to see fellow Scot Libby Penman on stage at their stand talking about how getting her start at skate parks prepared her for the wildlife photography she does now for broadcast outlets like the BBC!
Across 2 days I managed to say hi to 4 previous guests, 2 old friends I hadn’t seen in nearly 20 years, 1 old school friend I hadn’t seen in even longer, walked around 30,000 steps and crucially, stuck to the rules by buying 0 new cameras.
The stages, show deals and speakers were a great mix and I’m keen to attend again but on the train back to the airport a fanciful notion popped into my head. I wondered if next year I could convince someone to let me host a live podcast episode from one of the stages. Now that would be something worth traveling to a show for!