Epson America is now shipping an expanded offering of Signature Worthy papers to professional photographers and fine artists, including the new Epson Hot Press and Cold Press Papers and Epson Exhibition Fiber Paper. Optimised for use with Epson Stylus Pro Printers and inks, including new Epson UltraChrome HDR ink technology (found in the Epson Stylus Pro 7900 and 9900), the new Signature Worthy Hot Press and Cold Press Papers yield richer blacks, smoother tonal transitions and an expanded color gamut to produce the most advanced fine art prints. The Hot Press papers offer a smooth surface and Cold Press papers feature a textured surface. In addition, Hot Press and Cold Press Bright offer a bright white point, while the Hot Press and Cold Press Natural offer a warm white point. Epson Exhibition Fiber Paper and Signature Worthy Hot Press and Cold Press fine art cut sheet papers are now available through authorised Epson Professional Imaging resellers.

Website: Epson Pro Imaging

The nine lucky winners of our Christmas 2009 Newsletter Contest have been selected from the list of PhotographyBLOG Newsletter subscribers.

Anna Ling, Milind Patel and Peter Cuthbert have each won a Photo Paper Direct give-away set, a fantastic prize for either the amateur or for the professional photographer. Each of the 3 give-away sets has a combined list price of over £50.00 per set.

Six people have each won one of these O’Reilly photography books:

Rob Seymour has won From Camera to Computer
Ringo Paulusch has won Mastering Digital Panoramic Photography
maria del mar pardiñas has won Build a Better Photograph
Arthur Jankowska has won Photography Unplugged
Michael Powell has won Photoshop Elements 8 for Mac: The Missing Manual
Jorma Heikkinen has won Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows: The Missing Manual

The winners of the December 2009 Photography Blog Competition have been announced. The theme for December was “Feet” - you can view all of the entries in this gallery. Here are the 5 winners:

1st Place
New shoes for my feet by catonic

Prize: X-Rite ColourChecker Passport
Kindly donated by X-Rite
http://www.xritephoto.com/

NTI has announced the newest member in its Backup Now family for Windows PCs - Backup Now EZ. It installs ready-to-run with two predefined jobs to let you start protecting your PC immediately. Use the sleek, easy-to-use interface to create a drive image backup for a full and complete backup of your working PC or a file/folder backup to create a quick and efficient backup of your most important data files. The incremental backup for both drive image backup and file/folder backup will only back up new and changed files saving you both time and storage space. And with the graphical status indicator of your backup jobs, you can keep an eye on the vital stats of your backup jobs in a quick glance, the company says. NTI Backup Now EZ is compatible with Windows 7, Vista and XP, and retails for $49.99, with a free trial available.

Website: NTI Backup Now EZ 2010

WD has recently introduced its fastest My Book external hard drive ever—the new My Book 3.0 desktop external drives are among the first devices certified with the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface. Offered standalone, or in a kit that includes a USB 3.0 PCIe (gen2) adapter card, the 1TB and 2TB My Book 3.0 drives are available now at select retailers and shopwd.com. The SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface on My Book 3.0 drives provides transfer rates of up to 5 gigabits-per-second, allowing users to open and save files up to 4.7 times faster than USB 2.0.  The new My Book 3.0 drive is compliant with the USB-IF SuperSpeed USB 3.0 standard to provide compatibility with other USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 products. SuperSpeed USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and USB 1.1. MSRP for the My Book 3.0 drive 1TB is $179.99 USD. MSRP for the My Book 3.0 drive in a kit that includes a USB 3.0 PCIe (gen2) adapter card is $199.99 USD. The 2TB My Book 3.0 drive retails for $279.99, adapter card included..

Casio has demoed a camera prototype with integrated GPS that knows your position even when it’s lost the signal. According to Japanese website DC Watch, the new Casio has a “hybrid GPS” in that it can geotag images taken indoors with no satellite reception. This is made possible by way of an orientation sensor and a three-way accelerometer that can sense the relative movement of the user, and using this information plus the last GPS coordinate received before reception was cut off, can determine where the photo was taken. This is similar to what regular GPS units do when the car goes into a tunnel, but has been allegedly more difficult to implement as people within a building move in a more complex way than cars in a tunnel. Casio says it needs more market research and testing to determine the commercial viability of the product. DC Watch claims the working prototype they have seen was based on a Casio EXILIM Hi-ZOOM EX-H10.

Via DC Watch (Google Translation)

The Royal Photographic Society’s International Print Competition, the longest standing photographic competition of its kind in the world, is open for entries. This year, the competition is sponsored by Allen & Overy, as in the past two years.The overall winner will receive the Society’s gold medal and a prize of £2,000. Two entrants will win silver medals and £1,000 each. Three bronze medal winners are entitled to prizes of £500 each, while the winners of the themes, “Cities of the World’ and ‘Industry and Commerce’ will receive £750 each. The winner of the Under 25 category will be awatded with the Society’s gold medal and a prize of an Olympus PEN camera. The submission deadline is 29 March 2010. Shown above is one of last year’s bronze medal winners, ‘Who Eats Who’ by David Maitland.

Website: RPS 153rd International Print Competition

Bogen Imaging, the photo-video accessories distributor and part of the Vitec Group which also owns the Manfrotto brand, is changing its name to become Manfrotto Distribution. The rebrand is part of a strategy by the Vitec Group to address the fast growing amateur, high-end P&S and Four Thirds chip DSLR camera sectors, while also maintaining focus on the enthusiast and professional photography and video markets that it is known for. The name change is effective from 1 January 2010, and affects all markets including Germany, France, Italy, UK, Japan and the USA.

Website: Manfrotto Distribution

Etre, a digital communications agency, has created the Etre Touchy gloves as a stylish, fun and practical way to keep your hands warm while fiddling with your gear outdoors. Originally targeted at users of mobile phones, music players and portable games systems, Etre Touchy gloves have proven particularly popular with photographers, the company says. They give you the warmth and dryness of a normal pair of gloves combined with the electronic device compatibility of fingerless gloves. That’s because they are part normal pair of gloves, part fingerless pair of gloves. That is, they cover your middle, ring and little fingers completely, keeping your hands cosy, clean and damp-free; while exposing only the tips of your thumbs and index fingers, allowing you to.access the controls. The gloves are made from 100% lambs wool and are available in four different sizes – men’s, women’s, youth’s and children’s – and in four different colour combinations. Etre Touchy gloves retail at £19.99 and are available for consumers to purchase at the website below.

Website: Etre Touchy

Digital photography school Photography Made Simple launches the UK’s first ever mobile phone photography course this month. The courses will take place around the UK, starting with the first mobile phone photography class in London on 16th January. The mobile phone photography class schedule includes practice sessions on composition, making the most of natural light, using the flash, timing and focus. Phil Hibberd, co-founder of Photography Made Simple said, “Kids have a real interest in photography but we find they can’t afford an expensive camera so we thought it would be a good idea to run a photography course focused solely on mobile phone photography as it’s still possible to take good creative photographs even with a mobile phone.” The London event will take place in Crystal Palace, and will be followed by classes in Ashton Court, Bristol and Birmingham Central Library on 5 and 7 February, respectively. Book your place online via the website below.

Website: Photography Made Simple

Colour Confidence has announced the availability of ‘Seeing The Light’ a free educational paper which provides a comprehensive introduction to, and overview of, the importance of light and shade as part of an accurate colour management workflow. The ‘Seeing The Light’ document discusses the importance of introducing a consistent light source to the workflow, in order to achieve total accuracy when it comes to assessing final proofs and outlines the various ways of achieving this. In addition, it takes a look at how adding a monitor hood can shield unwanted light from the working environment so that what is seen on the display is free from distractions and irregular light levels, making it as colour accurate to the eye as it can be. The newly published ‘Seeing The Light’ document is the latest addition to Colour Confidence’s already comprehensive online ‘Learning Centre’ archive, which offers a wealth of free information on every aspect of colour management. This includes easy to follow guides to digital photography, monitor comparisons, top tips from the professionals, video tutorials and much more.

Website: Seeing the Light

Ricoh today announced a desktop slideshow application for displaying pictures that are stored in its visual online service “quanp.” The company had commenced private beta testing of “quanp” in the summer of 2009. Users have been testing quanp’s innovative 3D visual search as an intuitive way to collect, store and share personal photos, videos and other files. They can now store pictures permanently online with the quanp service and can access them anywhere on the Internet. The new desktop slideshow application is installed locally and is especially good for displaying a regular stream of photos like vacations or family gatherings. The unobtrusive 200 pixel by 200 pixel display is built on the Adobe AIR platform, allows for extensive real-time commenting on photos, and has a highly customisable look and feel. The quanp slideshow application requires Windows XP SP2 or higher, Windows Vista or Mac OS X 10.4.9 or higher and 10.5.1 or higher.  It also requires Adobe AIR 1.5 or higher. To download the quanp slideshow application, pay a visit to the website below.

Website: quanp

Dr. Pierre A. Kandorfer’s newest work, the Digital Video Production Handbook, is a new kind of “how-to” book targeted at photographers who would like to know more about videography. “Most photographers are not just still-photographers anymore. Journalists, reporters, editors, camera operators, photo journalists depend on digital video knowledge,” Kandorfer says. The book takes a didactically new, learning-focused approach presenting all basic “standard knowledge” you need in order to professionally write, produce, shoot and direct digital video. The Digital Video Production Handbook is available through your local bookstore’s order desk and online retailers such as Amazon.com, BarnesandNobel.com, Borders.com and Exlibris.com. It comes in a choice of hardcover, soft-cover or e-book.

A new title has been added to BenVista’s digital image enlargement software series PhotoZoom, as BenVista recently released PhotoZoom Classic 3. With the new product, BenVista strives for widening the PhotoZoom user base. While the Pro version of the software is designed mainly for professionals, PhotoZoom Classic 3 targets home users. BenVista’s CEO, D. Schoolwerth, explains: “PhotoZoom Classic 3 offers a number of S-Spline based presets that were specially designed for different types of images. With these presets a lot of preliminary work has already been done, and the user won’t have to bother with technical settings. Results can be compared with one another in a large preview window. This way the user is able to determine in a fast and convenient way which preset is most suitable for enlarging the given image.” PhotoZoom Classic 3 runs as a stand-alone application, and is available for both Mac OS X and Windows. Free demo versions can be downloaded directly from the BenVista website.

Website: BenVista

Savoy Software has developed a highly polished, content-aware image resizing application for the iPhone called Liquid Scale. The program resizes pictures without deforming or cropping the content. Pictures can be transformed to a new aspect ratio in a fast and intuitive way. The elegant iPhone application enables all the possibilities of content aware image resizing. It works on all kinds of images—intelligently removing or adding pixels to preserve important parts of the picture. Liquid Scale will become available later this month.

Website: Liquid Scale

Over the past week we posted over 50 CES-related articles, mostly product announcements, so don’t blame yourself if you are feeling a little overwhelmed and wondering if there have been any major pieces of news among these. We’ve just put together a list of what we thought were the most interesting photography-related products announced before or at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. But before we delve into these, let’s summarise in a few words the main tendencies that emerge from this avalanche. Firstly, the sheer number of digital compact cameras announced was way beyond expectations. In some cases, the companies didn’t even bother to highlight the differences between the models in any detail, or indeed differentiate the cameras in any meaningful way. Secondly, it’s evident that certain features that used to come at a premium are now must-haves in entry-level models too. These include HD video, at least 4x zoom and image stabilisation. While there still are 3x zoom models with VGA video recording and no optical or mechanical image stabilisation, these are becoming the exception rather than the rule. Thirdly, 2010 has brought the almost total victory of the SD card, with both Olympus and Sony giving in to the trend. While Sony is still making Memory Sticks, it has announced its own branded SD/SDHC cards, and made all of its new compacts capable of reading them. Olympus apparently said goodbye to its xD cards and also made its newest cameras compatible with SD. Meanwhile, CES 2010 also saw the appearance of the first SDXC cards and SDXC host devices.

After these general tendencies, let us now see the products that have grabbed our attention the most.

Sean Arbabi, a 20-year commercial travel pro out of California recently wrote a book on photographic exposure. The BetterPhoto Guide to Exposure, published through Amphoto, a division of Random House, is a 224-page full colour how-to, with over 50,000 words and 250+ images, discussing the various aspects of exposure. Sean follows a step-by-step approach with chapter assignments to help the reader truly understand one of the most important aspects of photography. The book is on sale now around the globe and on Amazon. You can also buy a signed copy directly from Sean via his website.

Website: Sean Arbabi

Lowepro has introduced a new line of GPS cases, and unveiled its latest camera bags. The Lowepro Navi Series of cases and pouches for GPS units provides the protection and accessibility needed for this increasingly ubiquitous device and its many destinations. The Lowepro Pro Runner AW is a six-backpack series that offer an array of carrying solutions from smaller standard photo backpacks to convertible designs that keeps gear accessible whether the bag is configured as a backpack or a rolling case. The built-in All Weather AW Cover and rain flap lids covering all the zippered closures offer added protection from the elements. Designed in the likeness of a bicycle courier bag, the Lowepro Exchange Messenger features a fully customizable interior which can accommodate a standard dSLR kit with an extra lens or flash, added accessories and personal items.  Fashioned from durable contrasting fabrics, the Exchange Messenger provides plenty of protection for photographers seeking a low-key trendy carrying solution.  The soft-sided courier bag also features three spacious interior pockets to secure a phone, wallet or keys, and the main compartment is fastened with a two buckle closure that ensures quick and easy access to photo gear. Finally, the Lowepro Geneva Pouches are billed as the ideal solution for point-and-shoot camera owners.

Website: Lowepro

Kubota Image Tools has announced its Webinar Wednesdays Winter 2010 schedule, open to professional photographers of all levels. “Last year we began the Webinar Wednesday series of free webinars to help professional photographers learn all they can about using software products from Kubota Image Tools to enhance their competitive edge and improve their day-to-day workflow,” said Kevin Kubota, Idea Man of Kubota Image Tools and creator of all Kubota Actions. “These popular 30 minute webinars are great educational experiences for all that attend and we’re happy to be continuing them in 2010.” Each seminar begins at 10:00 am PST, 1:00 pm EST. Upcoming webinars will take place January 27th, February 3rd, 17th and 24th, and March 3rd, 17th and 24th. Webinar Wednesday’s will cover topics such as Kubota DASHBOARD Creative Effects, Advanced DASHBOARD Tips, Using Kubota AutoAlbum V.3 to create a 10-page sample book in record time, and Kubota DASHBOARD image enhancing techniques such as: Black-and-White, Colour Effects and Advanced Tips.

Website: Kubota Image Tools