Helen Levitt, an American master of street photography, passed away peacefully yesterday. Levitt was born on 31 August, 1913, started to work for a commercial portrait photographer in 1931, and purchased her first Leica in 1936, not long after an encounter with Henri Cartier-Bresson. She went on to become famous for her street photographs of New York City, including poorer neighbourhoods such as Spanish Harlem. Although she liked black and white, Levitt was one of the first truly gifted street photographers to use colour film from 1959 onward.

Website: Obituary in The New York Times

Current users of NikonCapture NX 2.0 and 2.1.1 will be entitled to download a free update in early April. The new version, Capture NX 2.2, offers improved batch processing speed, support for the NRW format - introduced along with the Nikon Coolpix P6000 -, a vignette control function utilising lens information, and axial colour aberration correction.

Website: Free download service for Capture NX 2 (Ver. 2.2) update
Review: Read our in-depth review of the Nikon Coolpix P6000
Review: Read our Canon PowerShot G10 vs. Nikon Coolpix P6000 head-to-head review

Sigma has announced a firmware update for the Sigma 50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM for FourThirds. This update improves the communication between the lens and FourThirds bodies featuring sensor-shift image stabilisation, enabling the Sigma 50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM to transmit all the information necessary for the camera’s processor to calculate the right amount of sensor movement. Sigma warns that updating your lens’ firmware is done at your own responsibility.

Website: Firmware update program for SIGMA’s FourThirds mount lenses

Bogen Imaging has announced the launch of four new Manfrotto Baby Lightweight Stands. The new Baby Lightweight Stands are extendable to between 240cm and 385cm, with various payloads between 4kg and 10kg and all feature the new Quick Stack System (QSS) patented by Manfrotto. Available in four models: the 1051BAC and 1052BAC can hold loads of up to 4kg and 5kg respectively and have collars and spider casting made of Adapto, the technical polymer specifically developed by Manfrotto that’s 50% lighter than aluminium; the 1004BAC and 1005BAC (9kg and 10kg respectively) in aluminium. They all feature a 3/8’’ screw top fixing with a 1/4’’ adapter. Read on for more information, including prices.

PowerShovel Ltd. have released a snap-together 35mm film camera with a 28mm lens. If you have ever wanted to shoot with a camera that was built by yourself, but a lack of manual dexterity has prevented you from being able to do so, now’s your chance to fulfill your dream. This do-it-yourself camera promises to be just as easy to assemble as a Kinder Surprise toy, and fully functional to boot. Something tells us that corner sharpness - or indeed sharpness as such - might not be up there with the best glass money can buy, but at $17, this camera will certainly not break the bank.

Website: Do-it-yourself 35mm film camera at Unica
Website: PowerShovel Ltd.

Kaiser Fototechnik has just introduced ProDisk, a universal tool for managing white balance, exposure and colour. The ProDisk combines a grey card, a white balance filter and a colour checker in a slim folding plastic housing. The grey card and the colour checker are normally placed within the scene and are helpful tools for exposure metering or a follow-up colour comparison. When doing a manual white balance the translucent white balance filter with its special surface pattern needs to be held in front of the lens. The Pro Disk is available in two sizes, ProDisk mini and ProDisk II.

The MSRP is €59.99 for the ProDisk mini and €69.99 for the ProDisk II.

The jurors of the Photography.Book.Now 2009 competition have been announced. We wrote about this $25,000 competition at the beginning of this month, when it opened, saying, “the contest celebrates self-published photography books and the photographers behind them”. The lead judge, Darius Himes, was already known back then, but the organisers now named the other jurors as well. Read on to find out who they are.

Major online retailers now list the Sigma DP2, accepting pre-orders. Amazon and B&H both quote a price of $649 for the camera, though neither has it in stock yet. Amazon says, “usually ships within 1-2 months”, while B&H expects the it to become available by May. The Sigma DP2 is a compact camera with a 41mm equivalent fixed-focal-length lens and a nearly APS-C sized Foveon sensor, first shown at Photokina 2008. Read on for the spec list.

Corel has announced its support for the new Wacom Intuos 4 professional pen tablet. Those using both Corel Painter 11 and the Wacom Intuos 4 can achieve “a heightened level of realism in digital art”, Corel claims. Corel Painter 11 has a trial version available for free, whereas the full version can be purchased individually or in a bundle with one of the Wacom Intuos 4 tablets. The bundle prices start from $547.95.

Panasonic Japan has disclosed the launch date of its new Lumix DMC-GH1 interchangeable-lens digital system camera. The Panasonic GH1, announced earlier this month, is the second Micro FourThirds camera, which closely resembles the Lumix DMC-G1 but adds HD video recording with continuous autofocus, high-quality stereo sound and manual exposure control in its Creative Movie mode. In a recent press release, Panasonic has revealed that the camera will hit the shelves on April 24th. Production will be limited to 5,000 units per month, at least initially.

Website: Panasonic Press Release (in Japanese)

PhotographyBB announced today the release of the 14th edition of the PhotographyBB Magazine Online. The March 2009 edition explores some of the issues facing photographers as of late; Photography and the Law. This month’s issue also features an in depth look at DSLR sensor sizes and how they relate to lenses, focal lengths, and crop factors. Additionally there are Photoshop and Lightroom tutorials for photographers to get the most out of their post processing techniques. PhotographyBB Online Magazine is available for free download.

This time around, we got word of an olive green Olympus E-3. We’ve told you this was a 2009 thing: Leica started it with the Leica M8.2 Safari Edition, then Pentax followed on with the Pentax K-m Olive, and now here’s the green version of the Olympus E-3. The guys over at dc.watch.impress.co.jp snapped a photo of it at the Photo Imaging Expo held in Tokyo, Japan. The olive green Olympus E-3 also features in Episode 7 of Olympus’ Global Warming Witness movie. However, unlike the Leica and the Pentax, the Olympus is not for sale - yet.

Photo credit: dc.watch.impress.co.jp

Calumet are to stage a UK-wide Hasselblad week starting March 30th. If you happen to be in the UK next week, you will be able to try out the Hasselblad H3D-II in a number of Calumet shops. The Bristol, Edinburgh and Nottingham outlets will host this event Monday through Friday, while in other shops, this will be a one-day affair. Hasselblad will also be demonstrating the HTS1.5 tilt and shift adapter as well as their Phocus software. The sessions are free of charge, but advance registration is required. Once registered, all you need to do is “turn up and start shooting”, says Alison Dodds, Calumet’s Product Manager for Hasselblad. Read on to find out about exact dates and locations.

Phase One has inked a deal with Mamiya Digital Imaging, to become a “major shareholder” in the Japan-based company. Looks like it’s medium-format week - just two days after Pentax’s announcement that the Pentax 645 Digital would finally see the light next year, Phase One and Mamiya have issued a press release saying the former is “making a significant financial investment” in Mamiya Digital Imaging, Ltd; allegedly to “accelerate the development of advanced, world-class medium format camera systems”. This entails Phase One taking on “strategic leadership” in R&D, marketing and ditribution management. Read on to find out about all the details.

British photographer Paul Graham has won the £30,000 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. This award, originally set up 13 years ago by The Photographers’ Gallery in London, has been sponsored by the Deutsche Börse Group since 2005, and is claimed to be “the most prestigious photography prize in Europe today”. Graham, 53, was selected by the jury for his publication, A Shimmer of Possibility, which assembles images from everyday life in today’s America. Read on to learn about the other photographers shortlisted for this year’s award.

Photograph by Paul Graham, published here courtesy of The Photographer’s Gallery.

The Nikon D90 Companion by Ben Long is a new book from O’Reilly Media. This tutorial goes beyond exploring all the buttons and dials, and aims to teach readers about the art of photography as well. In that sense, it is more like a photography class built specifically around the D90 than simply a technical guide to a camera, the publisher claims.

Review: Read our in-depth review of the Nikon D90

Germany’s Reflecta GmbH have just announced the reflecta x³-Scan, successor to their budget x²-Scan 35mm film scanner. The new model boasts the same one-second-per-frame scanning speed and 1800ppi optical resolution as its immediate forebear, but adds a 2.4” LCD for immediate image review. Scanned images can be stored either in the 32-megabyte internal memory or on SD memory cards. You can hook the reflecta x³-Scan up directly to a television set via its TV-out port or a PC or Mac via USB - but it can also be used as a standalone device. The x³-Scan comes bundled with two film holders - one for up to 3 mounted slides and one for film strips of up to 6 six frames. The reflecta x³-Scan will cost 199 euros, with shipments commencing in April. Read on for the detailed specifications.

Focal Press have just released a number of new books about using Adobe Photoshop CS4. These include new editions of Creative Photoshop CS4 by Derek Lea, The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Layers Book by Richard Lynch, Black and White in Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom by Leslie Alsheimer and Bryan O’Neil Hughes, The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Dictionary by Philip Andrews, and two new titles: Digital Painting in Photoshop by Susan Ruddick Bloom, and Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers: The Ultimate Workshop by Martin Evening and Jeff Schewe. Printing with Adobe Photoshop CS4 by Tim Daly will be published in April to round out the list.

ADP has announced the winners of its student photography competition ‘Bricks and Mortals’. The competition focused on the relationship between people and buildings and was open to entries from higher education students in their final year of photography and similar courses, as well as Part II and Part III architectural students. The first prize goes to Simon Johnson, from the University of Edinburgh, for his photograph, ‘Figure’. Neil Boyd of Strathclyde University finished second with his entry, ‘Disrupted Space’. The third prize was awarded to Nicholas Humes of Queens University Belfast, for his photo, ‘Architecture Under the Obvious’.