The Leica S (Typ 007) medium format camera combines outstanding image quality with maximum speed and flawless handling. The new Leica S brings together maximum burst rate, exceptional sensor sensitivity and an extensive range of capture modes for photos and – for the first time – video footage. With a burst frequency of up to 3.5 frames per second, full-HD video in full-frame medium format sensor size, 4K video recording in Super 35 format, fast Live View mode and exceptional image quality at all ISO settings, the Leica S (Typ 007) reinforces its status as the benchmark in the medium format category.

The Leica S (Typ 007) is available in the UK from selected Leica stockists, at a suggested retail price of £12,900 including VAT, and in the US it's priced at $16,900.

Olympus Japan has posted seven full-resolution sample images captured with the new OM-D E-M10 II compact system camera. Taken at sensitivity settings ranging from ISO200/24° to ISO1,600/33°, these photos were shot with a variety of Micro Four Thirds lenses including the M.Zuikod Digital 25mm F/1.8, 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO, 60mm f/2.8 Macro, 45mm f/1.8, 12-40mm f/2.8 PRO and 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 EZ. You can download these Olympus OM-D E-M10 II samples from the website below.

Website: Olympus Japan

The Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark II is a new compact system camera with a 5-axis image stabilisation system, a brand new 4K time-lapse movie mode, and a large real-time EVF featuring a resolution of 2.36 million dots and 100% frame coverage. It also boasts an electronic shutter with a top shutter speed of 1/16,000 sec, plus a new AF Targeting Pad function that works similarly to Panasonic's venerable Touch Pad AF. This feature enables you to select and modify the position of the AF frame by touch even when using the eye-level viewfinder. The retro-styled chassis, tiltable touchscreen, Micro Four Thirds lens mount and 16-megapixel Four Thirds sensor have been carried over from the original E-M10. The recommended kit includes the M.Zuiko Digital ED 14-42mm 1:3.5-5-6 EZ pancake lens and will cost £649.99/€799.00/$799.00. The body-only configuration is available for £549.99/€599.00/$649.00.

The Family Travel Show 2015 has just launched its Young Travel Photographers Competition. This photo contest has one simple aim - to celebrate the skill of young travel photographers as they capture their adventures while exploring the world with their families. There are two age categories, 11 & under and 12-17, and the winner of each category will win a £150 voucher for CEWE Photobook, a Panasonic A100 wearable camera and a 40 x 60cm acrylic print of their photograph. The winning images and further selected entries will also feature in the Young Travel Photographers Exhibition at the Family Travel Show, Olympia London, held from 31st October – 1st November. The deasline for submissions is 14th October 2015.

On Saturday 12th September The Miniclick Photography Talks - founded by Jim Stephenson in 2010 - will celebrate their fifth birthday with a day of free photography events in Brighton's Unitarian church. Throughout the day, 16 Miniclick collaborators will be taking part in the popular ‘Soapbox’ talks. Each photographer will be given seven minutes to discuss whatever topic they wish. Confirmed speakers include Ewen Spencer, Annie Collinge, Juno Calypso, Natasha Caurana, Ally Lethbridge and Stuart Griffiths. In the ‘Illustrator’s Photo Booth’ visitors can describe their favourite photograph and it will be drawn by a team of illustrators including Billy Mather, Anthony Atkinson, Joey Ellen and Lauren Holder. Visitors will also be able to dissect prints from famous photographers to make unique badges, make a collage as part of Miniclick’s ‘Don’t Cut Me Out’ project and have their photo taken by Sean Hawkey using the tintype process.

Less than a year after its UK launch, calendar publishing platform Calvendo has reached the 1000-user milestone. As a professional publishing platform for wall calendars, Calvendo offers a unique service: creative users can design their own calendars online, and sell them on Amazon and other retail platforms. Before release, each calendar goes through a quality assessment process to ensure that products are fit to go to market. The service is free of charge, and Calvendo self-publishers get royalties for each calendar copy sold. The company’s UK division now has almost 1100 registered users and around 4500 calendars. “We’re very happy that so many English-language photographers and artists are already creating and publishing calendars with us, “ says Calvendo Managing Director Hans-Joachim Jauch. “We see a similarly successful development as when we initially launched in Germany in 2012 and are excited about our platform’s development for the upcoming calendar season.”

Colour Confidence today announced the UK launch of Cube, by Palette. Designed to remove the guesswork from colour matching, Cube is an incredibly accurate colour capture device that makes it easy to record raw colour data with a simple tap. Using an internal spherical light source, Cube picks up the desired hue in a controlled sequence and records the raw colour values for future reference. The Cube Link application enables users to seamlessly import real-world colour directly into Adobe Photoshop and match to multiple colour libraries, including Pantone. Cube can output colours in RGB, CMYK, HEX, Lab, and LRV colour spaces. The device is priced at £149.95. Cube Link is a free download available for Windows, with the Mac edition coming soon.

A group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have proposed a camera that can take a perfect picture, even in extremely contrasty lighting conditions. Called a “modulo camera,” this device designed to never overexpose any part of a photograph, enabling single-capture HDR imaging. Where "traditional" HDR-capable cameras use multiple normal images to create one final high-dynamic-range photograph, the modulo camera only requires one shot to create an HDR image. The new solution gets around the limited well capacity of conventional sensors by resetting the sensor capacitors whenever the "well" gets full, and uses an inverse modulo algorithm to calculate how much light the reset sensors took in. This algorithm recovers a much larger dynamic range. For example, if a certain camera sensor can record eight bits of information, then when those eight bits are filled, the capacitor will be reset to zero. The number of resets is recovered by the algorithm, which then calculates the relative brightness of each area of the photo. Interested readers are encouraged to visit the project's website and read the technical paper published by the researchers.

UK photo specialist Jessops has just opened the doors to three brand new stores located at the Sainsbury's in Murrayfield, Edinburgh, Gloucestershire’s Cheltenham and Abbey Wood, South-East London. These new Jessops stores aim to bring a fresh photography experience to its local shoppers, whilst still offering try-before-you buy product displays, one-to-one photography tuition in-store, on-site lab for photo products made in-store within the hour, and the widest ranges of the latest cameras and photographic accessories from the world’s leading imaging brands. New services on offer at the three stores include the Jessops rental service, a trade-In offering and sensor cleaning. The Murrayfield and Cheltenham concession stores also have a Jessops Academy Training room to deliver their photography courses.

Nikon have postponed the launch of their new AF-S Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8E ED VR lens. Originally planned for an August 27 release, the new image stabilised full-frame standard zoom is now expected to hit the shelves in October 2015. Offering up to four stops of image stabilisation, the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8E ED VR is constructed of 20 elements arranged in 16 groups - including a number of aspherical and ED glass elements as well as a new ASP/ED element - and features an iris diaphragm with 9 rounded aperture blades. Nikon's exclusive nano crystal coating is also employed to reduce flare and ghosting. The lens has a minimum focus distance of 38cm and a maximum reproduction ratio of 1:3.6, and is equipped with a Silent Wave Motor for fast and quiet auto focus. The suggested retail price is £1,849.99 / €2,499.00 /$2,399.95.

Source: Nikon Japan via The Digital Picture

Lytro has opened its imaging platform to developers, photographers and producers, enabling them to explore light field photography and integrate the underlying 3D data into new applications. Lytro Power Tools (LPT) Beta was developed to give programmers, researchers and artists complete control at every step – from capture on the camera to post-processing light field data. Initially announced as an Alpha program only available in the United States, LPT Beta is now available to anyone who’s interested. Alpha participants have created and shared tools to generate time-lapse video as well as panoramic video that can be viewed with virtual reality headsets like Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR. To learn more and download Lytro Power Tools Beta, visit the website below.

Magix have released a free video editor for Android devices. The new Fastcut app uses your video clips to automatically create dynamic short films right on your smartphone or tablet. After selecting your footage and a template you can rearrange individual clips, or have Fastcut automatically rearrange them for you if you are not satisfied with the initial result. All of your creations can be exported in all resolutions up to Full HD, uploaded to the Internet and shared on Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook and other platforms. The app can be upgraded with extra templates and features for £0.89 or $0.99 per month.

Corel have just released Paint Shop Pro X8 (read review) and PaintShop Pro X8 Ultimate. New features include text wrapping, a content-aware Magic Move tool, a comprehensive set of lens corrections, UHD monitor support, a Before/After button in the Adjust workspace, new swatches in the Materials Palette, Text & Shape Cutter preview, Gradient preview and more. This latest version of the application also boasts an enhanced Batch Mode, an updated Camera Raw Lab, an expanded range of selection tool options, various performance gains and an improved layer workflow. PaintShop Pro X8 Ultimate offers the versatility of PaintShop Pro X8, plus a collection of photo-focused add-ons including AfterShot 2, Perfectly Clear 2 SE and Perfect Effects 9.5. Suggested retail pricing for PaintShop Pro X8 is $79.99 (USD/CAN) / €69.99 / £59.99 / $99.95 AUD. PaintShop Pro X8 Ultimate is available for $99.99 (USD/CAN) / €89.99 / £79.99/ $129.95 AUD.

Grizzly: The Bears of Greater Yellowstone by Thomas D. Mangelsen is a new title from Rizzoli International Publications. Celebrating the most famous family of grizzly bears in the world — matriarch 399 and her offspring — Mangelsen has been tracking and photographing them for 10 years, amassing an incomparable portfolio that offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of this celebrated bear family. With more than 150 breathtaking images, this is a dramatic tale of life and death, near annihilation and survival, and the relationship between people and grizzly bears. A treasure for naturalists and conservationists as well as photography enthusiasts, this 240-page hardback will be available from October, priced at $60 / £40.

DxO have released DxO OpticsPro 10.4.3, DxO FilmPack 5.1.5 and DxO ViewPoint 2.5.7. These updates add support for the Canon EOS 750D / Rebel T6i, the EOS 760D / Rebel T6s and the EOS M3, as well as the Leica T (Typ 701), the Nikon 1 J5 (pictured) and the Pentax K-3 II. DxO OpticsPro 10.4.3 also adds 672 new camera/lens combinations to the DxO Optics Module library, providing support for Canon, GoPro, Leica, Nikon, Pentax, Samsung, Sigma, Sony, Tamron, Tokina and Zeiss lenses for numerous Canon, GoPro, Leica, Nikon, Pentax, Samsung and Sony cameras.

UK photo accessory distributor Kenro has announced the upcoming launch of its own brand range of supports. The initial line-up consists of four tripod kits and one monopod kit, each of which is supplied with legs and head along with a bag to transport it all in. Out of the four tripod kits, three of them convert into monopods, while the fourth one boasts an ultra-compact design, ideal for the traveller with restricted luggage space. All five models come with a 6-year limited warranty. Retail pricing to be announced.

Impossible have just launched their new Instant Film Starter Pack. Consisting of 3 packs of film, the starter pack comes complete with a list of tips on how to make the most of every photograph. There are two options available, the Starter Pack Film combined with a Polaroid 600 camera priced at €150, and the Starter Pack film alone for €52 for those who already have an original Polaroid camera but have not had the chance to start using it yet. Both are available from the website below.