The 3 lucky winners of our fantastic March 2009 Newsletter contest have been randomly selected from the PhotographyBLOG Newsletter subscriber list.

John Frenzel wins a 160GB Clickfree Portable Backup Drive worth £93.99.

Jon McGovern and Sam Radford each win a Billingham Large Hadley bag, worth £125.99 each.

We’ve been burning the midnight oil to bring you the completely new and revamped Photography Blog website! Our in-depth Camera Reviews  are now bigger and better than ever before, the brand new Techniques section will help you get more out of your photography, and our comprehensive News coverage has been improved too. So have a look around, and let us know what you think by leaving a comment here.

World exclusive! We’ve published 41 sample photos taken with a production version of the brand new Olympus E-620 DSLR camera. There are 27 full-size JPEG images at the best quality setting, an ISO sequence from 100-3200, and 8 images shot with some of the new Art Filters. The Olympus E-620 is the world’s smallest and lightest DSLR camera with built-in image stabilisation. An Olympus UK spokesman hinted at a possible UK launch price for the E-620 of £650 with a kit lens (US price already confirmed as $699 body-only).

Website: Olympus E-620 Photos

The 5 lucky winners of our fantastic February 2009 Newsletter contest have been randomly selected from the PhotographyBLOG Newsletter subscriber list.

Steve Pritchard, Patrick Stroobach, Dawn Clutterbuck, John Pring and Jim Davies each win a copy of 99 Digital Photo Art Ideas, worth £19.99 each.

The winners of the February 2009 PhotographyBLOG Competition have been selected by a panel of judges. The theme for February was “Temptation” - you can view all of the entries in this gallery. Here are the 5 winners:

1st Place
I must, I must, I must deny my lust by catonic

Prize: Photobird.com one-year subscription with 500Mb of storage space
Kindly donated by Photobird.com.
http://www.photobird.com

The Sony Cyber-shot T700 is a stylish 10 megapixel compact camera with a massive 4Gb of internal memory. Available in red, champagne gold, pink, dark gray and silver, the Sony T700 is almost completely controlled via its 3.5 inch, 921,600 dot, touch-screen LCD panel. Other stand-out features of the Cybershot T700 include intelligent scene recognition, Smile Shutter and face detection with child and adult priority, high sensitivity shooting (up to ISO 3200), anti-blink function, and optical image stabilisation. Zoltan Arva-Toth finds out if the Sony Cyber-shot T700 is worth the £290 / $400 asking price.

Website: Sony Cyber-shot T700 Review

The Sanyo Xacti HD2000 is the first camera in the world to shoot progressive, Full HD 1920x1080 video at 60fps. This dual stills / video model also features a flip-out 2.7-inch LCD screen, 8 megapixel CMOS sensor, 10x optical zoom, 12fps burst mode, and Face Chaser technology, all in a pocketable up-right body. The Sanyo HD2000 is the most advanced offering in the new Xacti range, and has a launch price of £549. Gavin Stoker braved the deep snow and arctic conditions of the wintery UK to bring you our 315th review.

Website: Sanyo Xacti HD2000 Review

Autodesk Stitcher Unlimited 2009 is a photo stitching software program that quickly creates wide-angle images and panoramas. Formerly known as RealViz Stitcher, Autodesk Stitcher Unlimited‘s intuitive user interface, five-step workflow, and powerful image stitching technology enables you to merge your images in just a few clicks. It also offers support for industry-standard image, web, and video file formats, including high dynamic range images (HDRI). Jon Canfield found out if Autodesk Stitcher Unlimited 2009 is worth the $350 / £300 asking price.

Website: Autodesk Stitcher Unlimited 2009 Review

Today we bring you the World’s first review of the new Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS25 compact digital camera. The Panasonic FS25 replaces the FS20 and now offers a 12 megapixel sensor, 5x optical zoom with 29mm wide-angle setting, and an improved Intelligent Auto mode. Find out if the FS25 can live up to the high standards set by its predecessor…

Website: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS25 Review

The 54 lucky winners of our fantastic January 2009 Newsletter contest have been randomly selected from the PhotographyBLOG Newsletter subscriber list.

Sandra Maria de Souza, Kim Lam, Caroline Lewis and Suella Orme each win a Trek-Tech Optera 230, worth £45 / $60 each.

50 runners-up all win a set of Energizer Advanced Lithium Batteries, worth $7.99 each.

Portraiture 2 is a new skin retouching plugin for Adobe Photoshop from Imagenomic. Portraiture 2 intelligently smooths and removes imperfections whilst preserving skin texture and details such as hair, eyebrows and eyelashes. The built-in Auto-Mask feature quickly identifies most of the skin tone range of the image automatically, saving you time and effort. Portraiture 2 supports both Mac OSX and Windows XP/Vista operating systems and is fully compatible with Photoshop Elements and Photoshop (32 and 64-bit versions). Jon Canfield finds out if Portraiture 2 is worth $199.95 in our latest review.

Website: Portraiture 2 Review

The winners of the January 2009 PhotographyBLOG Competition have been selected by a panel of judges. The theme for January was “Birth” - you can view all of the entries in this gallery. Here are the 5 winners:

1st Place
One day old by Igor

Prize: 1 x 24x24” or 24x18” Canvas Print of a Photo of Your Choice
Kindly donated by Photo Artistry.
http://www.photoartistry.co.uk

The new Olympus E-30 is the first mid-range DSLR camera from Olympus, positioned between the cheaper E-520 and more expensive E-3 models. Going head-to-head with the likes of the Canon EOS 50D and Nikon D90, Olympus have decided to try a different approach with the E30 by offering a number of creative possibilities built into the camera. The Olympus E30 offers six Art Filters (Pop Art, Soft Focus, Pale & Light Colour, Light Tone, Grainy Film and Pin Hole), and there’s also a Multiple Exposure mode for combining images and nine separate aspect ratios, all of which can be previewed on the free-angle 2.7” LCD screen. Olympus certainly haven’t forgotten the more traditional features, with fast 11-point autofocus, 5fps sequential shooting, shutter speeds of up to 1/8000th sec, Supersonic Wave Filter dust reduction system and built-in image stabilisation all on offer. The Olympus E-30 retails at $1300 / £850 body only or £1200 with the new 14-54 Mark II kit lens. Mark Goldstein gets in touch with his artistic side in our latest in-depth review.

Website: Olympus E-30 Review

The Sony A900 DSLR currently offers the best bang for your buck in terms of sheer resolution - about $3,000 / 2800 Euros / £2100 buys you this 24.6 megapixel, full-frame pro-level camera. Leading the megapixel race isn’t the only ace up the A900‘s sleeve, with a host of professional features on offer including a body-integrated image stabilization system, large optical viewfinder with 100% field of view coverage, 5fps continuous shooting, maximum shutter speed of 1/8000s, x-sync speed of 1/250s and high-resolution LCD screen. The A900 is Sony’s first attempt at persuading pro shooters and well-heeled prosumers to turn away from Canon and Nikon and buy into a relatively young system. Zoltan Arva-Toth finds out if the Sony A900 deserves your consideration…

Website: Sony A900 Review

The new Olympus SP-565 UZ joins the ever-growing ranks of the Ultra-Zoom compact camera, offering a 20x optical zoom lens that provides a versatile focal range of 26-520mm in a more portable body. This should adequately cover wide-angle landscapes, portraits and close-up action shots, with the SP565 UZ‘s Dual Image Stabilisation system helping to prevent blur caused by somewhat inevitable camera shake. A 2.5 inch LCD screen, P/A/S/M exposure modes, Advanced Face Detection, and xD-Picture Card and microSD Card compatibility complete the 10 megapixel SP 565UZ‘s headline specs. Priced at £349.99 / $399.99, Gavin Stoker got up close and personal to find out if the compact Olympus SP-565 UZ is the right ultra zoom camera for you.

Website: Olympus SP-565 UZ Review

Do you want to drastically increase the size of your photos without sacrificing image quality? Are you frustrated by the results from Photoshop? Enter stage left, Genuine Fractals 6, the latest version of one of the oldest, most popular image enlargement programs around. Version 6 adds texture presets, gallery wrap function, batch processing, tiling for smaller printers and integreation with Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 2. Genuine Fractals 6 is available in a Professional Edition and a Standard Edition for $299.95 and $159.95 respectively. Jon Canfield discovers if Genuine Fractals 6 is still “The Industry Standard for Image Enlargement”...

Website: Genuine Fractals 6 Review

The new Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX150 is one of the more intriguing compact cameras on the market, offering something to both beginners and keen photographers alike. The 14.7 megapixel Panasonic FX150 has a 3.6x, 28mm wide-angle lens, Venus Engine IV image processing engine, 2.7 LCD screen and the ability to shoot 720p HD movies. Panasonic’s innovative IA (Intelligent Auto) mode is ideally suited to the point-and-shoot user, while manual control over aperture and shutter speed and the option to shoot in RAW format should appeal to the more experienced shutterbug. Officially priced at £299.99 / $399.95, the Panasonic DMC-FX150 is also good value too. Gavin Stoker discovers if the FX150 can live up to its early promise…

Website: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX150 Review

The Canon PowerShot SX1 IS is a new 20x ultra-zoom digital camera offering an effective focal length of 28-560mm. The big brother of the SX10 IS that we reviewed before Christmas, the Canon SX1 additionally offers full HD movie recording, a CMOS sensor, larger 2.7 inch tilting LCD screen, 4fps continuous shooting, as well as the same 10 megapixels, built-in image stabilisation, and full range of manual shooting modes. It also costs substantially more - £529 / €679.99 to be precise - making it more expensive than most entry-level DSLRs. Gavin Stoker discovered if the Canon SX1 IS is worth splashing out for…

Website: Canon PowerShot SX1 IS Review

The HP Photosmart B8550 is a new 13x19 / A3 printer aimed at the photographer on a budget. Retailing for just $299, the HP B8550 can print everything from 4 x 6-inch album snapshots up to large posters in both black-and-white and colour, whilst being able to comfortably fit on your office desk. Jon Canfield finds out if the HP Photosmart B8550 is worth considering…

Website: HP Photosmart B8550 Review

The winners of the December 2008 PhotographyBLOG Competition have been selected by a panel of judges. The theme for December was “Christmas” - you can view all of the entries in this gallery. Here are the 5 winners:

1st Place
An Age Old Tradition by steve cherry

Prize: ShutterPoint.com one-year subscription with 100Mb of storage space
Kindly donated by ShutterPoint.
http://www.shutterpoint.com