Bogen Imaging has announced the Gitzo Ocean Traveler extra lightweight tripod. Gitzo has developed the world’s first stainless steel tripod casting, and integrated the technology into its popular Traveler series to produce the new Ocean Traveler. The stainless steel casting is made using a production process involving Metal Injection Moulding. The casting is treated in a way that completely closes porosity, even at microscopic levels – something usually associated with the production of surgical equipment – eliminating any opportunity for corrosive substances to attack. The recommended retail price of the Gitzo Ocean Traveler tripod is £799.95 including VAT.

The Technical Image Press Association (TIPA) has announced the winners of the 19th round of the TIPA Awards. This year, there were no less than 40 different categories, from ‘Best Studio Generator’ to ‘Best Retail Finishing System’. Among the more consumer-orientated categories, one can find the best film (Kodak Ektar 100), the best entry-level dSLR (Olympus E-620, pictured), the best superzoom digital camera (Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX1), the best entry-level lens (Sigma 18-250mm F3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM), and others. For a complete lising, visit the website below.

Website: TIPA Awards 2009

David Zimmerman has been announced as the winner of L’Iris D’Or Award, the 2009 Sony World Photography Awards Photographer of the Year. Zimmerman received the award at this year’s Sony World Photography Awards Gala ceremony in Cannes, France on Thursday 16 April. The American photographer’s entry in the Landscape category beat off stiff competition from some of the world’s finest photographers to win the title, accompanied by a $25,000 cash prize along with Sony camera equipment. His winning landscape series “Desert? hauntingly depicts the American southwest desert environment as a fragile ecosystem. The eleven other professional category 2009 winners also collected their awards at the ceremony.

Animoto has introduced a white label feature for commercial accounts. Photographers can now create high-quality videos free of Animoto branding to sell on DVD or as high-resolution digital files, or to share on websites, blogs, social networks and mobile devices. Animoto for Photography is a subscription service that provides unlimited access to create, present, view, share, download and sell professional-quality videos.

The Federal Bankruptcy court for the district of Minnesota approved the acquisition of all the assets of Polaroid by Gordon Brothers Brands and Hilco Consumer Capital. The joint venture partners plan to develop a full-scale global licensing and marketing strategy. The Polaroid brand began 72 years ago with polarised sunglasses, evolved into instant film, camera and camera accessories, and expanded well beyond into flat panel televisions, portable DVD players, digital photo frames, digital HD camcorders, waterproof digital cameras and more. In December 2008, however, Polaroid filed for bankruptcy and was subsequently auctioned off. At first it seemed that Patriarch Partners had won, but the auction was reopened after complaints by Polaroid’s creditors that the bidding had been flawed.

A new online photo community called snapizzi enables photographers to manage and sell their photos online with a new tagging technology and website. The service is possible through snapizzi’s digital barcode and tagging technology that automatically captures and manages photos for sale.

Panasonic has just announced the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS62 digital camera. The 10.1-megapixel compact features Panasonic’s Mega O.I.S image stabilisation system, Intelligent ISO control, Face Detector and Intelligent Scene Selector. The image stabiliser offers Mode 1, Mode 2 and a new Auto mode; while the Face Detector can recognise up to 15 faces and allows continuous AF/AE adjustment even if a face turns sideways. The camera, which boasts a 4x Leica DC Vario-Elmarit zoom lens, will be available from May, in a choice of silver, black, blue, red or pink.

VICE magazine has launched a competition to find find five creative talents for The Creating Sense5 party. The winning talent will be selected by award winning band Hot Chip. Enter the competition and you could be personally chosen by Hot Chip and other judges, to show off your talent at an exclusive event on the 4th of June. The competition hopes to uncover creative talent that can cleverly stimulate the 5 senses with flair, imagination and individuality. One of the senses is of course sight, so photographers are welcome!

Website: Creating Sense5

Art House Co-op Gallery has announced the project, ‘Your Life in 24 Frames - A Million Little Pictures’. In the course of the summer, one thousand artists from around the world will document their lives in 24 frames using a simple disposable camera with a flash. While maths-savvy readers will easily calculate that this won’t exactly amount to a million pictures, the resulting 24,000 photographs will still make up a huge collection, which is going to be exhibited at Art House Gallery in Atlanta, opening on 25 September 2009. In addition to that, the exhibition will also go to the US city that has the most participants. If you want to be one of those who give people 24 glimpses into their lives, sign up by 1 July 2009 via the link below.

Website: Your Life in 24 Frames - A Million Little Pictures

Cooliris Inc. has released version 1.10 of its popular browser extension, Cooliris. The plug-in is availbale for Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari, and allows you to browse photos, videos, games, and news stories from all of your favorite sites on an interactive “three-dimensional” wall. Version 1.10 works under Linux as well as Windows and Macintosh, introduces raw support for images stored on users’ computers, and gives users the ability to search through the My Computer icon and be able to access any of their image galleries in Cooliris.

Nikon UK has announced that the ‘Sports Photographer of the Year’ and the ‘Photographer of the Year’ awards both went to photographers using the Nikon D3. Dickie Pelham of The Sun won the former, while the latter was awarded to Stephan Rousseau of PA Photos for his photographs that “sum up the British political year brilliantly”. Dickie Pelham won the ‘Sports Photographer of the Year’ for the fourth consecutive year, but it was only one year ago that he switched back to Nikon.

Infinite Photograph is a new Web 2.0 application from National Geographic, which turns hundreds of online media users’ photographs into infinitely clickable photo mosaics. Infinite Photograph - As Seen On Earth is part of The National Geographic Green Guide and can be reached via the first link below. The application is great fun if a bit slow to load. By clicking your way deep into the Infinite Photograph, you are promised to “get a truly boundless picture of Earth”. If you would like to submit an image, you can do so by visiting the second link. You will need to create a National Geographic account first if you haven’t got one yet, but after that, things are pretty straightforward. Submitted images must be in JPEG format and at least 1,600 pixels in the longer dimension.

Website: Infinite Photograph As seen On Earth
Website: Submit Your Photos

Jessops has revamped its New Oxford Street branch in London, and will be offering substantial discounts to accompany the grand re-opening. The opening offers are available in-store from Friday 17th through to Sunday 19th April. Some items and bundles are offered at half price, including the Nikon D300 body (now £549) and the Canon EOS 450D + EF 18-55mm IS kit (now £264). Do note that the offers are limited and restricted to the New Oxford Street store.

Fameart have announced a range of Camlink COMO Camera Bags. There are seven models, all of them allegedly “designed for maximum protection, weather proofing and style for today’s modern digital DSLR cameras”. The bags are manufactured from high tech Cordura weather resistant nylon, and they incorporate hard cell foam inner construction and full length Velcro hard cell foam dividers all covered in Tricot nylon non-abrasive material. Each bag has a built in sprung loaded camera strap so the bag can be carried like a handbag or you can pull out the internal strap and carry the bag on your shoulder. With the flick of a switch the strap will retract into the case in a matter of seconds. Pricing starts at £29.99 for the simplest model.

Casio have released a firmware update for the Casio EX-Z100 and the Casio EX-Z200 digital cameras. Version 1.02 of both models’ firmware fixes a problem that causes the wrong month to appear initially when the calendar screen is displayed.

Website: Casio EX-Z100 Firmware Update Page
Website: Casio EX-Z200 Firmware Update Page
Review: Read our in-depth review of the Casio EX-Z200

The AgfaPhoto AF5135MS is a new, large digital photo frame featuring a resolution of 1280x800 pixels. The AgfaPhoto AF5135MS measures 13.3” diagonally and is less than 1” thick. It accepts SD/SDHC, xD and CompactFlash cards as well as Memory Sticks. Additionally, it has 256 megabytes of internal memory. The recommended retail price is €279.99.

Website: AgfaPhoto AF5135MS Product Page

The Leica M8 White Edition, which we wrote about last week, now has a retail price and an availability date. German photography website photoscala.de reports, based on a newsletter issued by Leica retailer Martin Meister, that the white Leica M8 is to become available mid-June at a retail price of €7,000 (including German VAT) in a bundle with a silver-coloured Elmarit-M 28mm f/2.8 wide-angle lens. Meister Camera Hamburg is already taking pre-orders.

Hitachi has released GazoPa for iPhone, an application that allows users to search for similar images on the web by uploading any photo captured with an iPhone. Since GazoPa uses image features such as colour and/or shape, users can look for images without typing any words. This gives users an easy way of searching images on the web. GazoPa for iPhone can be found by searching for ‘GazoPa’ in the iPhone App Store.

Nikon has updated the firmware of the Nikon D40 and Nikon D40x DSLRs. The D40 firmware has been upgraded to v1.1.2, and the D40x to v1.01. The updates resolve the following issue: the number of images that could be captured (battery performance) when an EN-EL9a was used was less than when an EN-EL9 was used. Upgrading maximises EN-EL9a performance, so that more images can be captured when an EN-EL9a is used than when an EN-EL9 is employed.

Website: Nikon D40 Firmware Update
Website: Nikon D40x Firmware Update