Landscape and travel photographer David Noton has confirmed the first in a series of inspirational evening events – the ‘Chasing the Light’ Road Shows. The first events – billed as being ‘an evening of photographic discovery’ - will take place at the Olympus Theatre , WISE Campus, Filton College in Bristol, on 9th & 10th September. For full details and to buy tickets online visit www.davidnoton.com. Tickets are priced at £15.

The new Epson Stylus SX515W is a high-speed compact printer, scanner and copier with Wi-Fi. A 6.3 cm LCD viewer, in-built PictBridge and memory card slots, and an Ethernet connection for wired networking complete the Epson SX515W’s headline specs. Richard Aplin, Product Manager at Epson UK commented: “With more households having several wireless laptops or computers, flexibility and the capacity to share a printer becomes essential. The Epson Stylus SX515W incorporates Wi-Fi which allows multiple users to print and scan wirelessly from around the home, eliminating the need to have more than one printer.” The Epson Stylus SX515W will be available on 1st June, 2009 for £149.99.

The Adorama Imaging Resource Center has undergone a significant facelift, and has been renamed the Adorama Learning Center. New features include the ability for visitors to comment on and rate any article. Easy social network bookmarking tools, RSS feeds for every category, and a new blog and podcasts have also been added and the layouts widened in order to accommodate larger illustrations, while navigation has been made more flexible and user-friendly, Adorama claims.

Website: Adorama Learning Center

The Epson Stylus SX415 is a new all-in-one printer with individual inks offering printing, scanning and copying. With a 6.3cm LCD viewer, memory card slots and in-built PictBridge, there is no need for a PC to print all your photos. Richard Aplin, Product Manager at Epson UK says: “The versatile Epson Stylus SX415 offers high-quality output to meet all the printing, scanning and copying needs of our customers. What’s more it comes with individual ink cartridges, which is a cost-effective solution to printing. The Epson SX415 will be available on 1st July, 2009 for £119.99.

Sony Ericsson has announced an “international smile hunt”, in which participants are asked “to capture as many smiles as possible on their mobile camera phone”. Forty-four countries are taking part and only a select few from each country will be chosen as official Smile Hunters. They will get to go to the most prestigious events, exclusive parties, meet new people and travel to exciting places as a Sony Ericsson VIP – for free. Anyone who thinks they could be a Sony Ericsson Smile Hunter must first apply online at www.sonyericsson.com/smilehunter. If you find yourself among the lucky few, you will receive a ‘Smile Hunting Kit’ including a new Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot™ C510 or C905 Plus camera phone with Smile Shutter technology, gig tickets, VIP passes to exclusive events, trips for you and your friends, festival tickets and entrance to exclusive club nights.

Website: Smile Hunt

Condé Nast Traveler has announced its annual Dream Trip contest for 2009. Participants are asked to send in a photo of a great travel moment, accompanied by a short description. The lucky winner will be awarded a $25,000 dream trip to anywhere on Earth. Additionally, ten finalists will each win a Sony Alpha DSLR-A350. Plus, for every photo submitted, you will automatically be entered for a chance to win a five-night trip for two to Hotel Cala di Volpe on Sardinia, Italy.

Website: Condé Nast Traveler’s Annual Dream Trip Contest
Review: Read our in-depth review of the Sony A350 DSLR

A photographic exhibition entitled ‘Emergence’ will be held in the Custard Factory, Birmingham, from 5 to 13 June. The exhibition showcases the finest works of students on the HND2 and HNC2 courses at Sandwell College. The photos span a wide range of genres, including fashion, portraiture, social documentary and wildlife. The exhibition is open 10am-7pm every day - except Sunday when it closes at 3pm.

Following a press release by Panasonic USA, the company’s UK branch has also announced an approximate price for the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1. The new Mirco Four Thirds digital camera with Full-High Definition video recording ability will be available in early June on Panasonic’s eshop for approx. £1299.99 including the new Lumix G Vario HD 14-140mm lens.

Following a press release by Panasonic USA, the company’s UK branch has also announced an approximate price for the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1. The new Mirco Four Thirds digital camera with Full-High Definition video recording ability will be available in early June on Panasonic’s eshop for approx. £1299.99 including the new Lumix G Vario HD 14-140mm lens.

Varta Consumer Batteries have announced a new charger that uses solar power. If you’ve ever found yourself in the middle of nowhere with a “battery low” indicator blinking on the LCD of your camera or phone, you’ll surely appreciate the VARTA Solar Charger, which needs no mains socket or power cable to charge your batteries. Just put it in a sunny place and connect it to the camera, phone or media player via USB - that’s it! The Solar Charger will become available in June, at a recommended retail price of €39.99, including two Ready2Use AA batteries and several adapters.

Website: VARTA Press Release (in German)

The Garmin Oregon 550 is a hand-held GPS device with an integrated 3.2 megapixel digital camera, which creates geotagged images. The Oregon 550 is waterproofed, boasts 850 megabytes of internal storage plus microSD compatibility, and has a fixed-focal-length AF lens. Once your Oregon 550 is connected via USB, you can use my.Garmin.com to detect Oregon’s photos, simplify the selection and uploading processes and then store those photos on Picasa. Weighing only 6.8 ounces, the Oregon 550 comes with two precharged AA NiMH batteries, a charger,a carabiner clip and a USB cable. Pricing and availability to be confirmed.

The winners of the Burrad-Lucas wildlife photography competition have been announced. Thomas Vignaud’s picture of a Tompot Blenny was selected as the overall winner. “The perfect framing and spot-on exposure combine to beautiful effect. Thomas has used the strobe light masterfully to gain a sense of the blenny looming out of the darkness. Ultimately however, it was the blenny’s characterful face and frilly appendages that clinched it for us!” commented judges William and Matthew Burrard-Lucas.

Photo Credit: Tompot Blenny by Thomas Vignaud

The Clickfree Traveler is the first flash memory-based Clickfree product. Available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities, the Clickfree Traveler automatically starts when connected to a computer, then searches for, copies and organises all of your important data. Pricing for the Clickfree Traveler card is £79.99 for the 16GB model, £119.99 for 32GB and £199.99 for 64GB.

TweetPhoto has introduced a new, free photo sharing service for Twitter, which is claimed to “revolutionise photo sharing”. TweetPhoto allows users to easily upload and automatically publish links to photos on Twitter. The new service boasts many toolsets currently unavailable on other sites which make photo sharing on Twitter convenient and transparent, the company says. “As more people use the service the velocity of the social river of tweets increases exponentially. This makes it exceedingly difficult to view every tweet, especially the ones with links to photos. TweetPhoto was specifically designed to meet this challenge,” stated Rodney Rumford, co-founder of TweetPhoto.

Website: TweetPhoto

Epson has announced the Stylus Photo P50, a new, compact A4 photo printer designed for home printing. The Epson Stylus Photo P50 uses Epson’s Micro Piezo print head technology which, combined with Epson Claria Photographic Ink, produces detailed and sharp images that allegedly last up to 98 years in a frame or over 200 years in an album. The new printer uses individual ink cartridges so you only need to replace the one that has gone empty. The RRP is £89.99 including VAT, availability is slated for July. The package contains an Epson Photo Paper Pack, so you can start printing photos immediately after installation.

Panasonic announced a contest exclusively on LivinginHD.com in which they will give away one HD product each day for 30 days. The three prize options include two LUMIX Digital Cameras featuring 720p HD video recording (the DMC-ZS3/TZ7 and the DMC-TS1/FT1) and the new HDC-TM20 1080p HD Camcorder featuring a 16GB internal memory. Current and new members of the LivingInHD.com community will be eligible to register daily for the Living In HD 30x30 contest. More information, including complete contest rules and requirements, can be found online at http://www.livinginhd.com/go/promo/30x30entry.

Andrey Tverdokhleb has announced version 3.9.5 of his Mac-only raw developer, Raw Photo Processor. The new release includes entirely new camera profiles for the Canon 5D MkII, 1Ds MkIII, 50D, the Sony A900, the Olympus E620, E3, E30, the Panasonic G1 and LX3 and more accurate profiles for the Sony A700, A350, A300, A200, A100, the Olympus E410, E420, E510, E520 and the Kodak SLR/c, SLR/n, 14NX, 14N and ProBack. Furthermore, it adds support for the Canon EOS 500D (T1i, KISS X, pictured), the Canon SX1 IS and the Kodak Z1015 IS.

Website: Raw Photo Processor

The winners of the second International Garden Photographer of the Year competition have been announced. The overall winner of the £5,000 prize for the best single image is UK-based photographer, Jonathan Berman for his infrared shot, In Tresco Abbey Gardens. The Best Portfolio Prize is awarded to Sebastian Kaps, from Germany, for Georgengarten: a collection of six images illustrating the landscape garden at Dessau, Germany, following a heavy snowfall. The Young Garden Photographer of the Year title goes to 15-year-old Kat Waters for the best single image from an under 16 year old. The category winners are Deborah Casso, Paul Debois, Jonathan Berman, Colin Varndell, Dennis Frates and Bapi Chakraborty.