I've just heard about this UK convention (15-16th Oct) in the Midlands and will be visiting it with a friend on Thursday 16th. The exhibitors list looks promising. Any DVinfoer's going and what's it like????

The official Institute of Videographers home page is below

IOV | Institute of Videography (http://www.iov.co.uk/)

I may pop along on Wednesday.

Well to answer my own question we went today and it was a very interesting day. Had a good look at the new Z5, it's cousin the Z7 (which I so nearly contemplated getting before I got my EX3 back at the end of July) as well as lots of other great gear from a wide range of manufacturers. Many of the stands were selling selected items at much reduced special show rates and seemed to be shifting gear pretty fast. Met some friendly videographers too!

First time I'd been - but for me well worth the trip and I'll plan on visiting the IOV event next year.

I went on Wednesday and thought it a pretty good show too. The Z5 was being fondled and stroked by one and all (though none of the dealers had any) and the Panasonic (SD card) HMC151 was strutting its stuff in the background.

Side by side the two cameras look poles apart - the Sony oozing quality and the Panasonic looking like a prototype I'm sorry to say. As if they'd got a DVX100 and simply deleted the tape deck and added a card slot. But the screen results on a big plasma showed what the Panny was capable of, and SD cards are about £1 per gig now, so at 13x the cost of tape, not too bad.

The Z5 is a mild upgrade from the Z1 but all the changes are well worth while, and I especially like the zero overscan v'finders. What seems to be missing is the ability to have two assign buttons devoted to white balance fine-tune, but we'll see.

tom.