The Summit Photofix SP is a new film scanner that can be used to digitise 110 and 135 format negatives and transparencies even without the use of a PC. Simply place your film into the supplied carrier, insert it into the slot on the Photofix scanner and you can instantly browse through your images on the SP5’s 2.4-inch colour screen. For viewing negatives there is a convenient switch to make the image appear corrected to positive for easy viewing before scanning. Digitised images are saved on SD cards. Featuring a 5-megapixel area-array sensor and a fixed-focus lens, the Summit Photofix SP5 will be available from the middle of November at a retail price of £119.99.

Hama has unveiled its new Canberra line of camera bags that are black on the outside but colourful on the inside.The nine different-sized models in the Canberra series offer something for every taste: three versions for compact cameras and video cameras, two practical colt cases for SLR cameras, and four models that can hold medium-sized camera equipment with varying amounts of accessories. Plus small pictograms show you where to find the empty batteries, where the charged batteries are, which compartment holds the memory card, and where the rain cover is stored. Pricing starts at €19.99.

The new Action Level Cross from Seculine is a compact digital leveling device for any camera with a hot shoe. This new device will work in standard Landscape mode as well as giving level information for portrait photography and when shooting directly vertically for skyscapes or downwards for applications such as flat copy work. The Action Level Cross offers leveling information in the form of a cross over the horizontal and vertical fields with 7 Colour LED lights for each axis showing level information in a traffic light sequence going from Red to Green in the centre when the camera is level. There is also a handy third set of lights showing information for horizontal level when behind the camera. For those looking to use their camera in low angle or overhead, there is also a remote unit available which will show the relayed information via a cable from the unit on your camera. The SeculineAction Level Cross will be available from the end of October for a suggested retail price of £54.99, with the remote slave unit retailing at £34.99.

JP Distribution has announced the availability of the Lastolite Lumen8 SV 400W Soft Box Lighting Kit. The new two head soft box kit comes complete with 2x traditional 60cm x 60cm soft boxes. The kits are supplied in two handy carry cases (one for the heads and one for the stands) which can be carried on the shoulder or by hand. The kit is priced at £469.99.

Readers of National Geographic around the world are invited to take part in the 2009 National Geographic International Photography Contest. Readers of the English-language edition in eight countries, as well as readers of 20 of the magazine’s international local-language editions, are eligible to participate. The international grand-prize winners will receive a trip to National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C., a digital camera kit, and their winning entries will be published in all participating editions of National Geographic magazine. The submission deadline is Oct 31, 2009. Full details can be found at the website below.

Website: NG Photo Contest

Shutterfly has announced the addition of Digital Download to its Pro Gallery service, a store front for professional photographers to sell their photos. With the new Digital Download feature, professional photographers can now sell high resolution copies of their images to customers directly from their Pro Gallery account. Shutterfly’s Pro Gallery service offers professionals premium service with web presence, top-quality professional photo printing services, full-service order processing and fulfillment and world class customer service.  Pro Gallery photographers also receive online sales reports, photo storage, and image rights protection.

The winners of the International Viewbook PhotoStory 2009 Awards have been announced. Italian photographer Francesco Giusti won the documentary category with an inspiring portrait story of the members of the SAPE, a group of remarkably elegant gentlemen from Pointe-Noire, Republic of the Congo, Africa. The story reflects the wish of young people in particular not to be left apart by society. Swiss - Japanese David Favrod has won first prize in the conceptual category with a very personal story, ‘Gaijin’. Both artists won prizes with a value exceeding $12.000 including lifelong subscriptions to Viewbook PRO online services and GUP magazine, book publications and an exhibition in the Kahmann Gallery in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

WeSay.com, a news site that features photographs from amateur photographers around the world, pays 30 photographers every month for images chosen by their photo editors. The cash prizes paid to citizen photojournalists range from $25 to $500. There is no fee to enter, and photographers retain ownership of their photos. If you are interested in the prizes offered, or simply want to share your photojournalistic images with the world, head to the website below.

Website: WeSay.com

The Leica S2, which was originally scheduled to go on sale in the summer and later postponed until October, will apparently not hit the shelves before December. According to Amateur Photographer, Leica is citing unexpectedly high demand and says, ‘Orders for the system have been much higher than expected, and in order to meet this higher demand, we have decided to adapt the S-System production lines to enable a higher daily output.’ The new launch date is calendar week 50, i.e. mid-December.

Via Amateur Photographer

Athentech Imaging today announced the release of a Windows version of a Photoshop plug-in of its patented Perfectly Clear image correction technology. This plug-in delivers one-click photo correction automatically. The application works on both 8 bit and 16 bit images within Photoshop, the company said. The official introduction of Perfectly Clear Photoshop Plug-in is taking place at the PhotoPlus International Conference & Expo, Oct. 22-24 at the Jacob Javits Center in New York. Athentech Imaging is located in Booth #1066. The company also will show its new Perfectly Clear iPhone v1.2 application – which lets users capture and correct images taken with Apple iPhone and iPod Touch devices and save out the corrected images at full resolution – as well as its entire Perfectly Clear portfolio. Full and 30-day trial versions of Perfectly Clear Photoshop Plug-in for Windows will be available on the Athentech Imaging web site.

Website: Athentech

M-Rock is introducing a fresh new look, along with several new sizes and capacities to its complete line of camera bags at this year’s PhotoPlus Expo trade show in New York. The new bags include a complete re-design of its existing line, along with new selections including backpacks, roller bags, shoulder and messenger bags as well as a new trolley system that makes taking your gear on the road or to a location easy and convenient. The toploaders pictured above are priced from $52-$84, the sling-bag backpacks cost from $95-$166, whilst the M-Rock compact camera bags range in pricing from $31-$44.

The Casio Exilim CA003 is a twelve-megapixel camera phone with 3x optical zoom (28-84mm equivalent) and autofocus. According to Engadget, the Casio Exilim CA003 has a 3.3-inch WVGA OLED screen, integrated GPS and Wi-Fi support. It also boasts a 20fps burst mode, though the buffer appears to be big enough to accommodate one second’s worth of images only. The Casio Eximilm CA003 camera phone records images on microSD memory cards of up to 16GB. A smaller-resolution sister model, the eight-megapixel Casio Exilim CA004, has also been announced. It comes with a slightly smaller screen and supports cards of up to 2GB only, but is otherwise identical to the CA003. There is no word on international availability and pricing.

Via Engadget

The Leaf Aptus-II 5 is an “affordable” 22-megapixel digital back for medium-format cameras. Take the word “affordable” with a grain of salt though - while the Leaf Aptus-II 5 is the least expensive Aptus back manufactured today, it still sets you back some $7,995; and that’s without a lens, or indeed a camera body. However, for $2000 more, you can get both a Phase One 645 AF body and a 80mm lens, which means that for just under $10,000 you can now have a completely functional medium format digital system up and running. While this is still nearly $2000 more than the price of a Nikon D3x with a comparable 50mm lens, the Leaf back does have a couple of head-turning features in its favour, like a 16-bit A/D converter and a claimed 12 stops of dynamic range.

Website: Leaf Aptus II-5

Ichikawa Soft Laboratory has published a new release candidate version of Silkypix with support for cameras with Foveon x3 sensors. The full name of the product is Silkypix Developer Studio Pro Foveon 4.1.24.1. The trial period expires on 30 November 2009. The cameras supported in this test version include the Sigma DP1, DP2 and SD14. To download the program, visit the website below.

Website:  Silkypix Developer Studio Pro Test Version for Foveon

Vicon, a UK company based in Oxford, has obtained a licence from Microsoft to mass produce their wearable camera, which was originally developed to help people with Alzheimer’s disease. According to The New Scientist, the ViconRevue camera, which is worn around the neck, can automatically take a picture every 30 seconds, and can store up to 30,000 such snaps at a time in its built-in 1GB memory. Therefore it can help create a visual log of one’s life (as long as the photos are backed up on a regular basis, of course). Vicon will initially market the ViconRevue to its original target market of researchers but plans to launch a consumer model next year. The price is expected to be in the region of £500.

Via The New Scientist

Canon has released a firmware update for the Canon EOS 7D digital SLR camera. Version 1.0.9 incormporates the following fixes:

  1.  Improves AF accuracy during Live View shooting.
  2. Corrects a phenomenon where in rare instances, movie images shot by the camera may exhibit abnormal colours.
  3. Corrects a phenomenon that at certain timings, the shutter cannot be released when the camera’s built-in flash or an external Speedlite is used for shooting.

Website: Canon EOs 7D Firmware Update Page

Seven Snaps is an ongoing international iPhone photography contest which runs until 18 December. The contest challenges you to be creative and share the fun of telling a story in a sequence of seven images. The most funny, touching and amazing seven snaps will be selected around Christmas by an international jury of diverse creative backgrounds including the writer Paulo Coelho, composer Max Richter and sculptor Jason de Caires Taylor. The winning entries will be rewarded and will be published in a book and exposed in a public environment. For more information, visit the website below.

Website: Seven Snaps

Dell has announced Where Do You Like to Learn photography competition. This is a children’s photography competition that celebrates the digitally connected world we live in. “Today, learning is no longer limited to the four walls of a classroom,” says Mark Horan, vice president and general manager of Dell’s K12 education business. “Whether it’s in your favorite bookstore or on your living room floor; in your neighborhood park or your best friend’s backyard, we can all be a little more creative with where we choose to study. Learning can take place anywhere!” To take part in the month-long contest that kicked off yesterday, email your photograph(s) to [email protected]. The grand prize is a Latitude 2100 netbook (pictured) for the student and a tablet PC and projector for his or her classroom. Parents or teachers must enter for children under 18 years of age. As always, make sure to read the rules beforehand.