Super Talent has released its newest product, the CFast storage card, which has a bandwidth of 375MB/s, i.e. four times more than the fastest High Speed 600x (90MB/s) CompactFlash card while still keeping the small original CF mechanical form factor.  With a Super Talent CFast storage card installed, there will be no waiting time for the camera to catch up, and it will be much swifter to view pictures on a camera or to copy them to computer, Super Talent promises. The company is offering five different CFast storage cards, 8GB and 16GB based on Single Level Cell flash and 8GB, 16GB and 32GB based on Multi Level Cell flash. Do note that the first generation of these CFlash storage cards supports transfer speeds up to 200MB/s rather than the theoretical maximum of 375MB/s, but this is still over twice the speed of the fastest CF cards on the market today. Pricing to be confirmed.

Website: Super Talent

Verbatim is launching the Pocket Drive, a stylish black 250GB portable 1.8” Hard Disk Drive which is small enough to slip easily into a trouser or jacket pocket or purse. The drive has a number of features and benefits: a blue LED light illuminates when data is being transferred and the drive offers pre-installed Dmailer backup software with data encryption. Verbatim Syncronisation software is also loaded on the drive which allows data to be synchronised with ease between the home PC and the external hard drive. The Sync software works with files of all types and provides synchronisation of mailboxes and web site details such as the favourites that are saved in the browser. Measuring 90x64x14mm and weighing in at 85g, the Verbatim Pocket Drive comes with a black carry pouch. The recommended retail price (RRP) is £99.99.

Website: Verbatim

PLR IP Holdings, LLC, owners of Polaroid, have announced the signing of six licensing agreements for new Polaroid branded products. Polaroid Studio is an online photo sharing service from MyPhotoAlbum that creates unique, highly customisable online photo albums and photo keepsakes. Camera lenses, filters and close-up lenses, lens hoods and caps, flashes, battery grips, batteries and chargers, camera bags, binoculars and a host of other camera accessories from C&A Marketing; entertainment, mobile, computer and gaming peripherals from jWIN Electronics; night vision units from Famous Trails, notebook accessories, from Matsunichi Digital Holdings and precision-cut screen protectors and durable, optically clear protective films for a wide variety of mobile devices from Panaglobal Distribution will also carry the Polaroid logo in the future. Consumers will be able to purchase these Polaroid branded products in the first half of 2010 at major retail outlets as well as through the Polaroid website.

Website: Polaroid

JP Distribution has announced the TriFlash Shoe Lock, a new TriFlash Bracket with Locking Shoe Mount. This new model features an adjustable ‘screw locking’ shoe mount, which offers an additional locking mechanism to work alongside the built in method used on the flashgun. The new bracket will be offered in addition to the original TriFlash bracket, at a price of £54.99.

Website: Lastolite

JP Distribution has announced a new RF flash trigger from Lastolite. With a range of 10 metres, the new battery operated (2 x AAA) RF flash trigger can be used with battery operated flashguns and studio flash systems. Simply attach the transmitter to the hotshoe on the camera, and then attach the receiver unit to the flashgun (via PC or X-sync cord) or to the studio flash head (via the sync socket). The trigger operates at 433 MHZ. The Lastolite flash trigger is available for £49.99, additional receiver units are priced at £29.99 apiece.

Website: Lastolite

Jessops have decreased the price of its own 7” digital photo frame by more than 35%. The device, which features a 480x234-pixel display, USB port, interval timer, slideshow facility, and interchangeable surrounds now costs £25 at www.jessops.com.

Kenro has released a new CD folio case aimed at professional photographers. Made from a leatherette material the CD folio comes with a frame on the front for a photo or message. The folio inside has been designed to hold a single CD and has a designated space for a photo. The folio has a magnetic closure and is supplied in a presentation box. The CD folio is available now with an RRP of £8.95.

LaCie today introduced its most complete HD multimedia hard drive player, combining Full HD 1080p playback, allegedly unsurpassed format compatibility and DLNA media server functionality – LaCinema Classic HD, design by Neil Poulton. According to claims made by LaCie, LaCinema Classic HD will play all your files without concern – from the most popular DivX format to high-quality MKV H.264 video format via its HDMI 1.3 connection. You can use it as an external hard drive to load media from your Mac or PC. Then, simply connect the LaCinema Classic HD to your HDTV for instant playback. Finally, the LaCinema Classic HD also features the option of connecting a USB Wi-Mark,Fi 802.11N adapter (sold separately) for wireless access to the home network. LaCinema Classic HD is available through the LaCie Online Store, LaCie Reseller+ and LaCie Corner, starting at the suggested retail price of £199.

Website: LaCie

By visiting California Sunbounce’s website every day from 1 to 24 December, professional photographers and semi-pros are giving themselves the exciting opportunity to win a bundle of prizes consisting of the famous Sunbounce reflectors or Sniper-strap camera straps. California Sunbounce will open a new door on its virtual calendar every day in December making a new offer available. The promotion idea is taken from the Lutheran tradition of the advent calendar, which is used to count or celebrate the days of advent in anticipation of Christmas. You will find the virtual advent calendar from 1 December at the website below.

Website: California Sunbounce

JP Distribution has announced the new Tilthead Bracket with Locking Shoe Mount from Lastolite. The new bracket, which will be offered alongside the original Tilthead, eatures an adjustable ‘screw locking’ shoe mount, which offers an additional locking mechanism to work alongside the built in method used on the flashgun. The suggested retail price is £22.99.

Website: Lastolite

Transcend has introduced the latest addition to its StoreJet external hard drive lineup, the Transcend StoreJet 35T. About the size of a hardback book, the black streamlined StoreJet 35T offers up to 1.5TB capacity. Its slender design allows it to be placed upright, thus occupying a smaller footprint to save precious desk space. The StoreJet 35T features Transcend’s TurboHDD USB technology that enhances write speeds from 33MB/s to an average of 42MB/s—an increase of nearly 30%. Additionally, the StoreJet 35T bundles with StoreJet Elite software that offers 256-bit AES file and folder encryption with compression options to maximise the storage space and protect data at the same time. The 1TB version has a list price of $195, the 1.5TB variant is available for $264.

Website: Transcend

Kenro have released two new ranges of photo frames, Rio and Whisper. The Rio collection features a dark wooden surround with a wide 40mm moulding and is supplied with a white mount. The Whisper frame range is aimed at the photo and gift market. It features a stylish black glass mount with elegant 5mm polished silver surround and is supplied in a gift box. Recommended retail prices of the Rio frames range from £14.90 to £23.90, while the Whisper frames are priced from £9.90 to £17.90.

Website: Kenro

Samsung has announced the STORY Station Plus, its new line-up of 3.5-inch external hard drives featuring an eSATA interface for faster data transfer. The 3-gigabit-per-second, high-performance drives are available in up to 2-terabyte densities. The addition of the eSATA interface raises the data transfer speed of the STORY Station Plus series by more than six-fold when compared with models using a USB 2.0 interface, the company says. Having said that, the Samsung STORY Station Plus does retain the USB 2.0 port alongside the faster eSATA interface, should you need to use it with a USB-only computer. The STORY Station Plus line-up will also feature Samsung’s low standby power design that allegedly reduces the standby power by 96 percent to 0.1 watts from the conventional 2.5W. The STORY Station Plus drives will be available globally by the end of November 2009. The STORY Station Plus features a three-year limited warranty and the 2TB version has a $299 MSRP.

Data Robotics has introduced the five-bay Drobo S with eSATA, a professional-class storage solution designed for Windows, Mac, and Linux users who require high-speed data transfers and reliable data storage. Thanks to the improvements, the Drobo S is claimed to offer 150 percent of the performance of the current four-bay Drobo. Built on Data Robotics’ BeyondRAID virtualised storage platform, which eliminates the lock-in of traditional RAID configurations, the Drobo S features a one-click toggle between single- and dual-drive redundancy and provides protection against up to two concurrent drive failures. Drobo S is currently available starting at a price of $799 MSRP, with multiple configurations to $1,799 for a 10TB (5x 2TB) solution.

Website: Drobo S

PocketWizard has released a new firmware update for the ControlTL MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 products. Version 4.374 offers truly automatic camera detection, optimised HSS crossover auto detection, flash exposure compensation, pre-flash boost refinements and support for the Canon version of the Metz 58 AF-1 flash unit. Read the download instructions here.

Website: Beta Firmware Overview

Eye-Fi users can now choose which photos or videos to wirelessly upload to sharing sites - like Facebook, Flickr, Snapfish or Picasa - before it leaves their camera. The new feature is aptly named Selective Share. If you already own an Eye-Fi card offering the online sharing feature, all you need to do is log in to your E-ye-Fi account at manager.eye.fi, click “Upload Settings” under “Settings”, plug your card in and enable Selective Share. With Selective Share enabled, all your photos and videos will be automatically and wirelessly backed up on your home computer, plus you can select which images and clips you would like to share online by marking them using your camera’s Protect or Lock feature.

Website: Eye-Fi Manager

Imation has announced availability of its next-generation Solid State Drive (SSD) Upgrade Kit, simplifying migration from a hard disk drive to SSD in just three easy steps. Simply transfer existing files from an HDD to the new SSD, then install the SSD and finally, repurpose the existing hard drive into an external USB drive for additional backup and storage using a specially designed case. The M-Class SSD Upgrade Kit is available in a 2.5-inch form factor in capacities of 64GB and 128GB. Products are available for a starting MSRP of $110.99 for the M-class drive and $194.99 for the M-Class Upgrade Kit through authorized Imation distributors, wholesalers, resellers and e-tailers in the US and Europe.

Website: Imation

Hoodman and Trek-Tech have introduced a new toolkit for macro photographers that makes positioning and stabilising cameras for close up, macro photography quick and easy. The toolkit combines the Hoodman Right Angle Viewer and a Trek-Tech T-Pod table top tripod. The right angle viewer with 360° rotation gives photographers the flexibility to position a camera to get down and up close to the subject matter. The table-top tripod supports cameras with “rock solid stability” for sharp focus. The Hoodman Right Angle viewer fits all Canon, Nikon, and Fuji Digital SLR cameras and comes with a compact, protective storage case included. The Trek-Tech T-Pod is very versatile and high quality table top tripod which comes complete with ball head, quick release system and travel pouch. The T-Pod with the upper tube attached adjusts from 10” to 13.5” in height. The ball head may also be connected directly to the legs creating a very stable platform which is 4” high. The Macro Photography Toolkit costs $129.99.

Website: Trek-Tech

Imation today announced the US availability of its Pro WX Wireless USB hard drive, billed as the “world’s first wireless USB external hard drive. With a fast Wireless USB data transfer rate of up to 15MBs/second, the product can back up a typical CD in under 50 seconds, and store up to 300,000 photos or 750 hours of video. Available in 1.5TB capacity, the Imation Pro WX will be demoed at the Pepcom Wine, Dine & Demo media event at the Hammerstein Ballroom at Manhattan Center Studios tonight from 6 to 9 p.m. The manufacturer’s suggested retail price is $449.99.

Website: Imacon

Leica has today announced a limited edition Ever Ready Case for the Leica D-LUX 4. Made of premium calfskin leather in a rich, deep ‘mocha’ shade, the new case is designed to hold the D-LUX 4 with its accessories (hand grip and viewfinder). The camera can be securely mounted into the Ever Ready Case with a small screw, allowing the photographer to take spontaneous pictures by simply flipping the front cover – without the need to remove it from the case. The Leica D-LUX 4 Ever Ready Case in mocha will be available in the UK from the end of November 2009 for a limited period only, from authorised Leica dealers, at a suggested retail price of £160.