The 7th Annual Smart Photography Awards were presented last evening at a glittering function held at Westin Garden City Hotel, Mumbai. The awards night saw the stalwarts of the Imaging Industry in attendance, which included corporate head honchos, multinational captains, representatives from the trade and renowned professional photographers. Even though Canon was not present at Photofair’12, the company was present in full strength at the awards.
As seen every year, SP Awards celebrate the excellence in the imaging industry by honouring the deserving products. These results are arrived at based on the reviews done in the preceding year, featured in the Smart Photography magazine. This year too, the SP Awards were preceded by the Computer Active Awards (the sister-IT platform of the NextGen Publishing Group). The opening speech at the venue, by Hoshang Billimoria, CEO, NextGen Publishing Ltd, brought out some insightful points. He stated that despite the unprecedented events that curtailed production in the industry, the Indian imaging market was able to withstand these shocks fairly well. However, he went on to point out that with Nikon joining the fray in the Interchangeable Lens Compact Camera category, the market seemed to be really hotting up. He highlighted that the SP Awards have firmly established itself as benchmark for imaging excellence. This is due to the selection procedure by the SP technical team, who come to a decision only after subjecting the product to multiple tests.
The show stealer of the night was Canon, owing to the four awards they bagged in various categories. Nikon closely followed them in the second position, with Olympus and Fujifilm sharing the third spot honours. The Most Prestigious Camera of the Year award went to Olympus PEN E-P3. The jury for this category comprised of Hoshang Billimoria, Rohinton Mehta (Technical Editor, Smart Photography) Arko Datta (Award winning Photojournalist), Jatin Kampani (reputed Fashion Photographer), and Sharookh Mehta, (Industralist and nature photographer). The voting pattern for this award was completely unbiased, with each member of the distinguished jury voting only after testing the product vigorously at the meet held earlier.
After the finale, the guests were seen interacting with friends, peers and colleagues from the industry over cocktails and dinner, with the winter chill keeping the mood and spirits upbeat long into the night.
Mathew Thottungal
