The compact Olympus mju 410 Digital camera is an updated version of the popular Olympus mju 400 Digital. Olympus have added a number of new features and improvements to this new model. The mju 410 Digital gets a new TruePic Turbo image processor, sunshine LCD screen, wider ISO range, more scene program exposure modes, movie recording function with sound and PictBridge support. So is the new Olympus mju 410 Digital the ideal compact digital camera for you? Read my review to find out.

Website: Olympus mju 410 Digital Review

This is a reminder that the May 2004 competition will end on Monday 31st May. The theme for the May Competition is “Silhouettes”. You just have to submit one photograph to the Competition Gallery that best interprets the theme. The winning entries will be decided by a panel of judges.

The following prizes will be awarded to the top 3 entries:

1st Place
1 copy of Ulead PhotoImpact XL
Kindly donated by Ulead Systems.
http://www.ulead.co.uk

2nd Place
1 copy of Picasa
Kindly donated by Picasa Inc.
http://www.picasa.net

3rd Place
Photobird.com one-year subscription with 100 megabytes of storage space
Kindly donated by Photobird.com.
http://www.photobird.com

PLUS
Each winner will also receive 15 digital prints, kindly donated by MyPIXmania.
http://www.mypixmania.com

Please make sure that you read the Monthly Competition Rules before submitting your entry. Note that you are only allowed to enter 1 photograph. The competition is worldwide and open to everyone.

The 27th Photo of the Week contest is now open. This is a weekly photography contest with no set theme and you can enter as many photos as you like.

The 26th Photo of the Week contest is now closed.

I will choose what I think are the best photographs in my opinion. I will not choose a specific number of images - it could be 5 one week, 13 the next and so on. Please note that my decision is final and I will ignore any attempts to question it!

The overall winner of the contest will then be voted for by you. A Public Poll will be setup on the PhotographyBLOG Forums and you will have 7 days during which you can vote for your favourite photo from the ones that I have chosen. The Poll will then be closed and the overall winner announced.

Vote now for your favourite image from the Photo of the Week 24th-30th May 2004 contest

The 13th PhotographyBLOG Portfolio has been submitted by Rod Gray.

“My name is Rod Gray and I have been taking photographs for about 10 years, although I really got the bug about 3 years ago. I am nearing the end of a City and Guilds progression photography course which has been hard work but great fun.

My main interests are flowers, nature and my children. The images submitted are all flowers taken with my EOS 10 D. Some of them have been converted to greyscale which is something I started doing after the Black & White film section of the City Guilds course.”

Website: Portfolios: Rod Gray

The server move is now complete and all sections of PhotographyBLOG, including the Forums, Gallery and User Reviews, are up and running :-)

If you experience any problems using the site during the next few days, please don’t hesitate send me an email and let me know.

Yes, that’s right, PhotographyBLOG has become too big for it’s boots and is moving to a lovely new dedicated server with more disk space and bandwidth. The changeover is scheduled to happen from 17.00 BST today, when we’ll move everything across to the new server.

Consequently certain sections of the site, such as the Gallery, Forums and User Reviews, will be closed from 16.00 BST until the new site is up and running.

If you experience any problems using the site, please send me an email and let me know. Something is bound to go wrong somewhere…

First announced at the PMA photography trade show in February, the Olympus Camedia C-8080 Wide Zoom is one of a new breed of 8-megapixel digital cameras. It also offers a fast and wide f/2.4-3.5, 28-140mm integrated lens in a tough magnesium body, complete with a tilting LCD monitor and a host of photographic options that make it most suitable for the advanced amateur or professional photographer. So is the C-8080 Wide Zoom a better option than a DSLR like the Canon EOS 300D or Nikon D70? And are 8 megapixels really necessary? Read on to find out.

Website: Olympus C-8080 Wide Zoom Review

The 12th PhotographyBLOG Portfolio has been submitted by Jon Read.

“The theme is “Cuban Candids” - you may have seen some of them before! All shots were taken on my holiday last year in Cuba, mostly in old Havana. The place really is totally unlike anywhere else I’ve ever been, and is a photographer’s paradise. Old cars, crumbling buildings, peeling paint, musicians in every bar - and relatively few tourists, especially out of season. For this portfolio I’ve chosen to concentrate on my favourite topic, candid portraits, of the people of Havana.”

Website: Portfolios: Jon Read

The 26th Photo of the Week contest is now open. This is a weekly photography contest with no set theme and you can enter as many photos as you like.

There have been some significant changes to the way in which the Photo of the Week contest which affect how the contest is judged. The following rules have been added:

10. After the contest has closed, I will choose what I think are the best photographs in my opinion. I will not choose a specific number of images - it could be 5 one week, 13 the next and so on. Please note that my decision is final and I will ignore any attempts to question it!

11. The overall winner of the contest will then be voted for by you. A Public Poll will be setup on the PhotographyBLOG Forums and you will have 7 days during which you can vote for your favourite photo from the ones that I have chosen. The Poll will then be closed and the overall winner announced.

Click here to read the new Photo of the Week Rules.

The winner of the 25th PhotographyBLOG Photo of the Week contest is daniel with the entry “Golden Gate”. There are no prizes as such for this contest, but the winning photo is displayed on the PhotographyBLOG homepage for a week, and the winner can display the Photo of the Week logo on their website if they wish.

The 11th PhotographyBLOG Portfolio has been submitted by Alan Reid.

“Photo Canvas - The technique produces a truly unique look to photographic images by working with hand coated photo sensitive emulsions directly onto a stretched canvas surface. To complete the look of the canvases acrylic colour is applied in a variety of styles depending on client’s requirements. see www.photo-canvas.co.uk

From start to finish I have complete hands on creative control of the image. Using traditional printing techniques I project a black and white negative onto a hand crafted stretched canvas. Under darkroom conditions each canvas is photo sensitised with a hand coated emulsion and then processed to yield a unique silver image, the characteristics of which are both stunning and timeless, and have a unique warmth and charm impossible to achieve with digital computer based imaging. Each canvas is finished with acrylic varnish to allow for cleaning and to protect the image surface.

I have been involved in photography most of my working life and have studied photographic technology to degree level. My wide ranging experience and knowledge of photography and printing techniques having been complemented whilst working as a freelance printer in London for titles such as Country Living and Harpers and Queen.”

Website: Portfolios: Alan Reid

The Ricoh Caplio RX is the successor to the Caplio G4wide, with Ricoh claiming that the new model is quicker, slimmer, lighter and even easier to use. The Ricoh Caplio RX stands out from the rest of the market because of its wide-angle 28mm lens, and because it has the world’s fastest shutter response and start-up times. Other features, such as the 3 megapixel sensor and 3x optical zoom, are standard for this class of camera, so does the Caplio RX have what it takes to catch your attention? Find out in my review.

Website: Ricoh Caplio RX Review

The winner of the 24th PhotographyBLOG Photo of the Week contest is gav_davies with the entry “Who’s the Daddy!!!”. There are no prizes as such for this contest, but the winning photo is displayed on the PhotographyBLOG homepage for a week, and the winner can display the Photo of the Week logo on their website if they wish.

The 25th Photo of the Week contest is now open. This is a weekly photography challenge where you decide who the winner is by voting for your favourite photos. It’s an open contest with no set theme and you can enter as many photos as you like.

Click here to read the Photo of the Week Rules.

Please note that this is the final round of the Photo of the Week contest in its current format. I will be changing the rules for next week’s contest - more news later this week.

The 10th PhotographyBLOG Portfolio has been submitted by Pete Nicholls.

“Originally from England, Pete Nicholls emigrated to America in 1961. Combining a life-long interest in photography and nature, he began photographing the natural world in 2001. Much of his photography has been done without leaving home, in fact, this series of images were all captured without leaving home.

Back in his younger years as a member of the armed forces while stationed in the far east, he purchased his first 35mm camera, a Petri 7s. During his tour in the far east, he studied photography and shot several thousand slides, developing many of them himself in a photo lab on the base. After his tour was over, photography faded and was overtaken by other life events and interests until receiving a 3 megapixel camera from his wife in 2001. This re-kindled his interest in photography and has resulted in over 10,000 images being taken with Olympus, Minolta, and Canon cameras. He continues to study the art and looks forward to spending his retirement years with camera in hand.

He maintains an internet presence at http://vividprints.com”

Website: Portfolios: Pete Nicholls

The 9th PhotographyBLOG Portfolio has been submitted by Greg Taylor.

“My theme is ‘contrasts of light and dark’.

My name is Greg Taylor. I am 16, live in one of the suburbs of London and am a student in the first year of college, but due to lack of funds, my school is unable to run any kind of photography class, so I do it in my own time.

I usually have sudden urges to take photos of a certain location, often at a ridiculous time of day (5:30 am for the London sunrise shots!). At the moment I use a fuji S7000 and a range of wideangle and other lenses. This will be the first time I will have shown my photos to anybody and certainly the first time to be possibly displayed on the net!

I like to take emotional style pictures, often including some form of heavy light and dark contrast, and a focal point on the picture (where the eyes are drawn to). I also like to take action photography of anything that moves, really! Objects such as running, greyhound racing, mountain biking etc.”

Website: Portfolios: Greg Taylor

The 8th PhotographyBLOG Portfolio has been submitted by Elie Dinur.

“This portfolio is drawn from a large body of work done along the Mediterranean shore of the Western Galilee, Israel which may be viewed at http://www.imageevent.com/elied/coastofgalilee.”

“I began photographing fully forty years ago while living in New York and studied photography at NYU and The Visual Studies Workshop. After immigrating to Israel I was for many years the resident photographer of my kibbutz - doing everything from advertising brochures to documentation of kibbutz life to my own “art” photographs - but eventually drifted away from it and left the cameras to gather dust. Now, however, excited by the possibilities for creative control offered by the “digital revolution” and the level of quality of affordable digital cameras, I have returned. I started a year and a half ago with a Minolta 7i and have recently traded it for a Minolta A1.”

Website: Portfolios: Elie Dinur

The 7th PhotographyBLOG Portfolio has been submitted by David Leafe.

“I am a very amateur photographer (as you can see) just starting out on a new hobby but very excited by images I saw on a recent holiday in Morocco. Tried to capture some of the flavour of the people of the country in relaxed and un-posed shots as well as a few other interesting details e.g. the urns and the flags attached to the mooring buoys in the beach town of Essouria.”

Website: Portfolios: David Leafe

It has come to my attention that the Photo of the Week contest is not being conducted in the spirit in which it was originally intended - to be a fun way to show off your latest photos and invite constructive criticism. Today one of our most active members has decided to delete all of their photos and leave the Gallery for good.

I am therefore planning to change the way in which the Photo of the Week contest is run, in the next couple of weeks.

I’m currently looking at something along the lines of the contests over at [URL=http://www.fredmiranda.com]http://www.fredmiranda.com[/URL], where Fred selects the best X number of entries from the week (in his humble opinion), and then sets up a Poll where everyone can vote for their favourite - therefore you would effectively only get one vote, which would remove any chance of vote-rigging.

So it would be a 2-stage process. I would pick my favourites and create a Poll on the Forum, and you would have a certain number of days in which to vote for the overall winner.

This will only work if:

i) you all trust my judgement and don’t question it too much :)
ii) you all take the time to vote for the overall winner

I may also introduce a weekly theme, rather than it being an open contest, and also add some prizes.

The Monthly Competition will stay as it is.

You will still be able to rate photos and leave comments on the Gallery, where you can choose to ignore them if you want to. These will not be taken into consideration when either the Monthly Competition or Photo of the Week is judged.

Please leave your comments in this thread on the Forums:
http://www.photographyblog.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=101&st=30&#entry522

Whatever I decide to do will probably not please everyone, but it will hopefully prevent people being driven away from the community…

The sixth PhotographyBLOG Portfolio has been submitted by Mario Martino.

“All these images were taken in windows of fashion shops in Milano or Monza during last two years. The doubt between false and true is the theme of this Portfolio.”

Website: Portfolios: Mario Martino