Serif MoviePlus 4 is announced today. Serif MoviePlus 4 is the fastest video editing software program currently available. All adjustment made in MoviePlus 4 can be viewed in realtime without interrupting the preview. Serif MoviePlus 4 costs £59.99.

Serif (Europe) Ltd Press Release

Serif (Europe) Ltd – the UK’s leading independent desktop publishing, design and graphics software developer – today announced the launch of MoviePlus 4, the intuitive new version of their package, offering everyone unbelievable digital video-editing power at an affordable price.

Serif MoviePlus 4 (List Price £59.99; Upgrade Price £39.99*) is the outstanding new digital video-editing application, with a brand new rendering engine that Serif believes makes it the fastest digital video-editor on the market, at any price point. Combining advanced technology with Serif’s trademark ease-of-use and value for money, MoviePlus 4 is a formidable program that should be taken
seriously by everyone with an interest in exploring the creative limits of their PC.

Praktica Luxmedia 6003 is announced. The Praktica 6003 is a 6 megapixel digital camera with a 3x optical zoom and 1.5” TFT color monitor. The Luxmedia 6003 has 16 MB of built-in memory and supports the SD Card format. The Praktica Luxmedia 6003 offers a full range of manual shooting modes and 4 ISO settings from 50-400.

Luminous Landscape publish an article by Pete Myers titled “Making Images – Not Taking Images”, which I suspect you will either completely agree or disagree with…

“Taking an image and making an image are two completely different animals. What I often see in landscape photography are photographers taking beautiful pictures, and performing minimal work on the image in postproduction before printing the image. For these photographers, they believe that their work relies on mastering the tools at hand – the camera and lens – and using them to best advantage in the field – not working on the image in postproduction.

While many of these images are beautiful and compelling in their own right, I would suggest to these photographers that they have not availed themselves of the true magic of photography in the digital photographic era. We need not take beautiful pictures, we can make beautiful pictures – and the computer is the tool that lets us perform the magic.”

Website: Luminous Landscape - Making Images – Not Taking Images

Reuters has an interesting interview with Canon’s European chief of Consumer Imaging, Mogens Jensen, about Canon’s short-term strategy.

“Surging demand for digital compact cameras in Europe is slowing, and Japan’s Canon Inc. said on Friday it was focusing on more expensive cameras, printers, and even flat screen televisions. Last year saw digital camera sales in Western Europe increase 58 percent to just over 25 million units, but while that growth may slow to 25 to 30 percent amid continued price pressure, the market for more advanced digital Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras will double by the end of 2006.”

Website: Reuters - Canon refocuses as digital camera growth slows

Slovenian website Slo-Foto.net have just posted their review of the 4 megapixel, 8.3x optical zoom Nikon Coolpix 4800.

Website: Slo-Foto.net - Nikon Coolpix 4800 Review

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DIWA member and Czech website FotoAparat have reviewed the 8 megapixel Konica Minolta DiMAGE A200 digital camera, which incorporates anti-shake technology and a swivelling LCD monitor.

Website: FotoAparat - Konica Minolta DiMAGE A200 Review

Website: Read my Konica Minolta DiMAGE A200 Review

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DIWA member and Norwegian website DiGIT.no have just reviewed the 8 megapixel Nikon Coolpix 8400.

Website: DiGIT.no - Nikon Coolpix 8400 Review

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Trusted Reviews have just posted their review of the new Konica Minolta Z5 digital camera.

“In terms of performance, the Z5 matches up to the best. It starts up in just under two seconds, and in single-shot mode at the highest resolution and quality setting, shot-to-shot time is approximately 2.5 seconds, which while not exceptional is far from slow. If that’s not fast enough, the Z5 has a special ‘Progressive’ mode for capturing fast-moving action. Press the shutter button down and hold it, and the camera starts shooting at a machine-gun like 10 frames per second, and keeps this up until you release the button. At that point, the last 20 shots in the sequence are recorded. This way you are almost certain to get a good action shot.”

Website: Trusted Reviews - Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z5 Review

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Konica Minolta USA have announced a $200 cashback promotion on the purchase of the Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D DSLR (known as the Konica Minolta Dynax 7D in the rest of the world). To qualify, you must purchase a Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D between March 14th and June 30th 2005 and then fill-in and post the coupon back to Konica Minolta no later than August 15th. Please note that this offer only applies to the Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D DSLR camera in the USA.

Download the Cashback Coupon (PDF format)

So this is what professional photographers get up to in their spare time. Northlight Images has published a comprehensive guide to using your expensive digital SLR camera as… a pinhole camera?! Treat yourself and make a 50mm and even a 200mm zooming pinhole lens today :-)

Website: Northlight Images - Canon EOS-1Ds Pinhole Images

Luminous Landscape have just published a show report from the Photo Imaging Expo in Tokyo, which is Japan’s biggest photography show, including news of 3 pigment-based large format printers from Canon - the Canon W8400, Canon W6400 and Canon W2200S.

“More interesting were the new Canon large format printers W6400 (A1) and W8400 (B1). These were released in Japan just a week ago. They seem to offer 2400*1200 DPI at 4 pl and use 7 inks (Bk, MBk, C, M, Y, PC and PM). Just like on the Epson printer, one black is for glossy paper, the second one is for matte paper. The W6400 can print up to 609*18000 mm, while the W8400 can go up to a paper width of 1117 mm. They are able to do exact borderless prints on A and B standards papers. The default print drivers ships with .icc profiles for the Canon papers compatible with this printer (at least Glossy photo and semi-gloss photo). Canon does also market 12 meters rolls of Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 188 and 308 for the 2 printers.”

Website: Luminous Landscape - Photo Imaging Expo Report

Further information on Canon’s new large-format printers can be found here:

Website: JCN Network - Canon Introduces Versatile New Large-format Inkjet Printers

DIWA member and Czech website FotoAparat.cz have reviewed the successor to the popular Caplio R1, the Ricoh Caplio R1V, which is a 5.0 megapixel digital camera with a 28mm wide-angle, 4.8x optical zoom in a slim 25mm body.

Website: FotoAparat.cz - Ricoh Caplio R1V Review

Write a Review of the Ricoh Caplio R1V

DIWA member and Slovenian website e-fotografija have just reviewed the new 3 megapixel Casio EXILIM Card EX-S100.

Website: e-fotografija - Casio EXILIM Card EX-S100 Review

Website: Read my Casio Exilim Card EX-S100 Review

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Nikondigital.org have published their review of the new 12 megapixel Nikon D2X digital SLR (found via digicamera.net).

“What I found was that I’d really purchased 2 cameras in 1. When used in its normal full-resolution mode the D2X is suitable for the most demanding architectural and landscape applications. Used either in the full resolution or high-speed crop mode it makes a great wildlife and sports camera. The ability to quickly shift to 8 frames per second and a tighter 6.8 mega-pixel crop with the twist of a dial is like having a 1-click Teleconverter always with you. Sure, I know it is really just pixel magic and I could crop the same way in Photoshop, but this way I get the faster frame rate and don’t have to waste time with a large image workflow when I don’t need it. I’d prefer the feature was a little easier to get to, as the “function” button in the lower front of the camera is a little hard to reach while you turn the command dial, but it’s still a piece of cake compared to adding a teleconverter.”

Website: Nikondigital.org - Nikon D2X Review

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Praktica Luxmedia 6103 is announced. The Praktica 6103 is a 6 megapixel digital camera with a 3x optical zoom and 1.6” TFT color monitor. The Luxmedia 6103 has 9.7 MB of built-in memory and supports the SD Card format. The Praktica Luxmedia 6103 offers 19 different scene modes and 4 ISO settings from 50-400.

Praktica Luxmedia 5008 is announced. The Praktica 5008 is a 5 megapixel digital camera with a 8x optical zoom lens and 1.6” TFT color monitor. The Luxmedia 5008 has 16 MB of built-in memory and supports the SD Card format. The Praktica Luxmedia 5008 offers a continuous shooting mode of 3 shots/sec and 4 ISO settings from 50-400.

CNET have today published their review of the 4 megapixel Sony Cyber-shot DSC-L1.

“Casual photographers will like the compact design, above-average performance, and long battery life of Sony’s Cyber Shot DSC-L1, along with the extrawide view offered by its 32mm-to-96mm (35mm-camera equivalent) 3X Carl Zeiss zoom lens. However, mediocre image quality, a tiny 1.5-inch LCD viewfinder that’s difficult to use, and a lack of even basic manual-exposure controls (other than exposure compensation) put this pocketable camera securely in the nonenthusiast snapshooting camp.”

Website: CNET - Sony Cyber-shot DSC-L1 Review

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Olympus RAW file import plug-in for Photoshop is released. The The Olympus RAW file plug-in supports the new RAW data file format of the Olympus E-300 digital SLR. The Olympus RAW file plug-in is available completely free of charge.

Olympus Europe Press Release

Olympus digital camera owners can now benefit from improved image quality and more user-friendliness during RAW file development processing. The new Olympus RAW file import plug-in for Photoshop which is now available provides several adjustment options to enhance pictures and is dialogue-based for intuitive operation. It is available for downloading, free of charge.

When it’s the quality of an image that counts, digital photographers often rely on the RAW format for capturing shots faithfully and later use image processing software for fine-tuning the photos. Olympus has now released a new RAW file import plug-in for Photoshop. It enhances image quality as it is optimised for use with the Olympus camera RAW algorithm.

Following the lead of virtually every other camera manufacturer (except Canon), Konica Minolta has lowered its full-year to March 2005 earnings and revenue forecasts, according to a news report on Yahoo. Recent digital camera price falls in what has become a competitive market are partly to blame, along with a failure to introduce new products in its information equipment business. “Although we introduced high-end SLR digital camera products in the third quarter (to December), which raised the average price of digital cameras by 20 pct from a year earlier, the average price for the whole year (to March) is estimated to fall by 4 pct,’ said Kiyofumi Tanida, head of accounting.”

Website: Yahoo News

Bibble Labs have just released Bibble 4.2, professional image-manipulation software for RAW images. There are 2 versions available, Bibble Pro ($129) and Bibble Lite($69), which support Windows, OS X, and Linux. There’s also a trial version of Bibble available if you want to “try before you buy”.

Bibble 4.2 Ships with new features including:

  * New Camera Support for:
      o Nikon D2X, 8800, 8700, 8400
      o Canon Rebel XT 350D, G6, S70, S60, Pro1
      o Olympus E300 Evolt, 8080
      o Minolta Maxxum 7D
      o Pentax *ist DS