An exciting new exhibition showcasing a range of stunning images from some of London’s up and coming photographers opened in West London today. ‘Hidden Rivers’ is free to attend, and is the debut exhibition of a group of photographers who honed their technical skills and creativity on Kensington and Chelsea College’s BTEC National Diploma in photography. The techniques used to produce the featured images include processes dating back to the beginning of photography, right through to digitally generated images, and screen-based work. The exhibition runs until Thursday, 24th July at the College’s Chelsea Centre Gallery on Hortensia Road, SW10 0QS.

PocketWizard today announced that its venerable MultiMAX radio transceiver is being retired with immediate effect. The PocketWizard Plus lll radio carries on the primary features of the MultiMAX, like 32 channels, Quad-Zone Triggering, Long Range Mode, and Auto-Relay and is fully compatible with the MultiMAX and the entire PocketWizard line, the company says. PocketWizard will honour warranties and perform customer repairs for the "next few years." If warranty repairs are unable to be performed due to parts depletion, the company will make "reasonable efforts" to help photographers maintain PocketWizard compatibility by offering an alternative product at a "special value." MultiMAX specific accessories like PW-CC (Confirmation Cable) and PW-AC-MX (AC Adapter for older 6-pin radios) will no longer be produced, but may still be available at retailers.

The new MIOPS is a smartphone-controlled high-speed camera trigger developed by the same people who invented the Nero Trigger. Financed through a Kickstarter campaign, MIOPS delivers all of the features required for high-speed photography in a single unit and provides advanced features via a total integration with popular smartphone platforms. "MIOPS is not the first trigger in the market, but it is going to be the best one," the inventors claim. " You can control MIOPS with your smart-phone over Bluetooth. You can adjust the settings using dedicated smartphone application and send them to MIOPS with a simple click on your phone.You can either use MIOPS for basic functions like high-speed and lightning photography, but you can also let [it] perform complex scenarios like combining different modes in the same setup."

Nikon has issued firmware updates for its Coolpix P340, Coolpix P530 (pictured) and Coolpix P600 digital compact cameras. Version 1.1 for all three Coolpix models addresses an issue that, in some rare cases, caused the camera to freeze when the camera was turned on while the shutter-release button was held down. You can download the firmware upgrades from the websites below.

Website: Nikon Coolpix P340

Website: Nikon Coolpix P530

Website: Nikon Coolpix P600

Adobe has released ACR 8.6 and Adobe DNG Converter 8.6 as "release candidates." These updates add support for raw image files generated by the Nikon D810, the Panasonic AG-GH4 and the Panasonic FZ1000 (pictured), colour profiles for the Sony RX100 III, Alpha SLT-A77 II and A7S, and lens profiles for 11 Canon, Nikon Schneider Kreuznach and Sony lenses.

Website: ACR 8.6 Release Candidate for Photoshop CS6
Website: ACR 8.6 Release Candidate for Photoshop CC and CC 2014

Panasonic UK has launched a new camera selector tool for its Lumix G range. The Lumix G ‘The One For You’ campaign is designed to make choosing a camera a quick and pleasurable experience, whether you’re an absolute beginner, passionate amateur snapper or dedicated pro. The interactive selector tool features each Lumix G product in the context of how real consumers take photos – making it easy for the viewer to identify the camera most suited to the kind of person they are. Comprising three easy steps, the tool clearly identifies the five cameras in the Lumix G range in line with the real world specifications consumers want, the company says. The new camera selector is featured on the website below.

Phottix has released the Sony/Minolta version of its Mitros+ TTL flash, which features built-in radio triggering and power control functions. Unlike optical or infrared flash syncing solutions, radio triggering does not require direct line of sight and tends to work well indoors and out, at night and in broad daylight, over relatively long distances. The Mitros+ offers all of these triggering modes plus a 3.5mm sync port. As to basic flash functionality, the PhottixMitros+ has a guide number of 58 (in metres), high-speed and second-curtain synchronisation modes, a zoomable tilt-swivel flash head with 24-105mm coverage (14mm with a wide-angle diffuser), an AF assist light and a quick flash mode. Three sets of flash and function information can be saved in the Mitros+’s memory and be quickly recalled when needed. The Mitros+ TTL Transceiver Flash for Sony will start to ship to Phottix retailers this week.

Tokyo Laundry, a casual fashion lifestyle brand that incorporates vintage Americana influences, has announced a photo contest. Open to UK residents and anyone currently studying and living in the United Kingdom, the competition gives winners a chance to take part behind the scenes in shooting the Autumn/Winter collection for Tokyo Laundry. Each entrant may submit two photographs that capture the essence of the brand. The deadline for entries is the 20th of July 2014. As always, we suggest that you read the terms and conditions before entering your work.

Ricoh has posted a firmware update for the Pentax K-3 digital SLR camera. According to the company, version 1.10 incorporates the following enhancements:

• Added Diffraction Correction on Lens Correction.
• Shortened processing time for Digital Filter and Color Fringe Correction.
• Improved stability for AWB (Auto white balance) performance.
• Changed to ISO Bracketing when using Exposure Bracketing on TAv mode
• Improved stability for general performance.

Website: Ricoh

Topaz Labs have released a major upgrade to their Photoshop image masking plug-in ReMask. Version 4 includes a new Edge Shift feature, a redesigned user interface focused on ease and speed, faster foreground recovery processing, and many usability improvements. It is a free upgrade for existing ReMask customers.

As a limited time offer, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera is now available for £325/$495. With a normal recommended retail price of  £635/$995, this Summer Special represents a saving of  £310/$500 and is available until 31st August only. The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera includes powerful features such as a Super 16mm sized 1080HD sensor, super wide 13 stops of dynamic range, built in SD card recorder for Apple ProRes, lossless compressed CinemaDNG RAW capture and active Micro Four Thirds lens mount. Note that the current Summer Special price is subject to limited availability, after which the price will return to the usual RRP.

Rumanian software firm Bits&Coffee SRL have released version 4.0 of their image editor, BatchPhoto. New features include a completely rewritten user interface with a new Dark-theme, one universal version for both Windows and Mac, a Mac version which is fully Retina-ready, drag&drop functionality for the graphical filters, and a new Auto Crop filter. Pricing starts at $29.95.

Xara have released the latest new version of their creative design software for Windows, Xara Photo and Graphic Designer. Version 10 features new shadow and highlight tools, improved automatic panorama stitching, a new online content catalogue, support for the automatic rotation of images from iPhones and other cameras with orientation sensors, a new insert menu, improved import/export support for .doc and .docx files, RTF files, and significantly improved PDF import. Bundled with this release is a new Photoshop plug-in called PhotoLooks from Red Giant (previously sold by Red Giant for $199) for users wishing to intensify the mood of their photo via various colour and lighting effects or adding a popular film look. Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 10 sells for £69.99 (inc VAT). Upgrades from v9 to Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 10 cost £25 (inc VAT).

Market research and consultancy firm InfoTrends has published a new report entitled Digital Camera End-user Survey Analysis: United States. The report argues that new advances in the digital camera market - such as adding various wireless connectivity options to cameras and accessories - will better enable digital cameras to compete with the popular smartphone; whether users want to share their photos using email, multimedia message or social networking platforms. InfoTrends also highlights in this study that over half of the consumers surveyed reported areas where their current camera was falling short of their needs. Common areas of concern included battery life, low-light capture capabilities, and lack of Wi-Fi connectivity. "Digital camera vendors should focus marketing messages on issues such as these, and how they have improved with newer models," the company says. "Viral forms of marketing including blogs, social networks, and video sharing are effective tools to complement traditional advertising methods." The report can be purchased from the website below.

Ashampoo has released Photo Commander 12, the latest version of its photo storage and editing software. New features and enhancements include support for a variety of raw file formats, increased scalability, enhanced social sharing, more creative options for sharing and transforming photos, enhanced editing and more after-effects. Photo Commander costs $49.99 and can be downloaded from the website below.

Nikon's new Capture NX-D software is now available free of charge. Capture NX-D enables high-quality photofinishing of images captured in raw format by Nikon digital SLR cameras(including the latest D810 model), Nikon 1 compact system cameras, and Coolpix compact cameras that support this capability. The application is compatible with 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista/7/8; and OS X 10.7.5, 10.8.5 and 10.9.2-

Ricoh has published eight high-resolution sample photos captured with the new Pentax XG-1 superzoom bridge camera. Taken by photographer Yoshiaki Kobayashi, these Pentax XG-1 samples were shot at a variety of focal lengths ranging from 4.3mm (24mm eq.) to 188.8mm (1053mm eq.). All of the official Pentax XG-1 sample images were captured at ISO 100/21°.

Website: Ricoh Imaging Japan

Ricoh has announced the Pentax XG-1, a 16-megapixel bridge camera with 52x optical zoom, 9fps continuous shooting and Full HD movies. Able to cover ultra-wide-angle (24mm equivalent) to super-telephoto (1.248mm eq.) ranges, the Pentax XG-1 has a 1cm Macro mode and an Auto Tracking AF function to keep your moving subject in focus. The camera also offers ten shooting modes including the hands-off Auto Picture, Scene (11 options), Program, Face Beautifier and Movie. There’s even a pet detection mode for automatic recognition of up 10 pet faces. The XG-1 is compatible with Eye-Fi wireless LAN SD memory cards so you can share your images and videos straight to your phone or tablet. Available from the middle of August, the Pentax XG-1 carries a suggested retail price of £279.99.

Dreamstime today released Dreamstime Companion, a new free iPhone and Android mobile app that enables photographers to upload their own images directly from their smartphones. “The arrival of the Dreamstime Companion mobile app is not so much a new direction for our company, but one that we hope will continue to inspire the ever-growing smartphone photography community, as well as the changing needs of today’s consumers,” said Serban Enache, the company’s CEO and co-founder. “The size of our community is unparalleled in the industry, and provides mobile photographers with a unique and potentially lucrative opportunity." Users can sell their images as editorial content (with logos and faces visible) or as commercial content, which means no logos or people in the image unless they have signed a model release. The app provides users with real-time stats, sales reports, and up-to-date revenue details.