Epson have developed an all-in-one LCD screen with an integrated cover and touch panel. The All-in-One Touch Screen LCD offers high visibility thanks to an all-in-one optical design that reduces brightness/contrast loss and prevents glare. Thanks to Photo Fine Vistarich wide viewing angle and anti-reflection technologies, it offers clear views from any angle. The new screen is intended for use in in-car systems, such as satellite navigation, and in digital cameras and advanced mobile phones with built-in digital TV receivers. 3.1-inch and 7-inch prototypes will be shown at FPD International 2007, which will be held from October 24 to 26 at Pacifico Yokohama, Japan.

The Wacom Cintiq 12WX is a 12.1” interactive pen display for direct pen-on-screen drawing, painting and sketching. Users can work with the pressure sensitive pen directly on the high quality screen, which provides a WXGA resolution of 1,280 x 800 pixels with 24-bit colour depth and a wide viewing angle of 170°. The new Cintiq 12WX will be available from November 2007 in the UK and is priced at £829.99 including VAT.

The new Canon PowerShot A570 IS camera, together with the Canon WP-DC2 underwater housing unit, has been chosen by PADI for its Digital Underwater Speciality course. Focusing on today’s point-and-shoot cameras, the course gives step-by-step instructions on how to easily obtain great underwater images. “The Canon PowerShot A570 IS packs a variety of high-end features into a remarkably compact camera making it ideal for aspiring aquatic photographers and divers.  The camera combines ease-of-use with creative flexibility.” commented Mark Caney, Vice President of Training, Education and Memberships of PADI International Ltd.

DIWA member Photoxels have just reviewed the Fujifilm S8000fd digital compact camera, which offers an 18x zoom lens equivalent to 27mm-486mm.

“The Fujifilm S8000fd has good performance for an ultra zoom. A large 2.5 in. LCD monitor makes focusing and composition easy. Both the high-resolution EVF and LCD gain up very well in low-light situations. An AF-assist Lamp helps achieve focus in low-light. The on-board flash is quite good with a 8.8 m reach. TheFujifilm FinePix S8000fd makes a great digital camera for beginner and serious amateur photographers.”

Website: Photoxels - Fujifilm Finepix S8000fd Review

Website: Read our Fujifilm Finepix S8000fd Review

Steves Digicams have reviewed the Casio EX-V8, which offers a a 7x optical zoom and 8.1 megapixels plus a YouTube video mode.

“The 7x internal optical zoom lens provides an amount of versatility that you will not find in most ultra- compacts. With a 35mm film equivalent of 38mm-266mm, you have an excellent wide angle for shooting landscapes and large group portraits, and there is more than enough zoom to single out a subject in the distance or single out a person from a large group. There is slight barrel distortion at the wide angle end, and because of the anti-blur technologies, some of the images when using the telephoto end of the zoom are a little softer when handheld, so a tripod or monopod could be useful with this camera. There is also some evident pincushioning.”

Website: Steves Digicams - Casio EX-V8 Review

DPReview have reviewed the new Canon SD870 IS camera, which offers 8 megapixels and a 3.8x, 28mm wide zoom.

“The SD870 IS follows in the footsteps of some highly regarded cameras so it’s understandable that Canon has chosen not to tinker too much with a successful formula. The camera’s image quality is generally very good, especially considering its use of a genuinely wideangle lens. A reasonable amount of manual control for what is ostensibly a point and shoot camera means that occasional metering difficulty in tricky scenes can be compensated for, but does require the user to concentrate on what they’re doing.”

Website: DPReview - Canon SD870 IS Review

Website: Read our Canon SD870 IS Review

DigitalCameraInfo have reviewed the Fujifilm Finepix F50fd compact digicam, which has a 12 megapixel sensor, Dual Image Stabilization, and Face Detection 2.0 technology with a a new Automatic Red-Eye Removal feature.

“We want to love the F50fd, but we can’t give it our full recommendation. Yes, it’s packed with lots of features at a great price. But its noise and dynamic range performance are terrible, and its colors aren’t anything to brag about, either. The resolution may be fantastic, but the processing time is so annoying that it’s hard to enjoy much about this camera. It takes too long to open up the Playback mode, scroll through pictures, and write images after a 3-shot burst. Those logistical concerns coupled with the lackluster performance overpower the excellent resolution and great price.”

Website: DigitalCameraInfo - Fujifilm Finepix F50fd Review

Website: Read our Fujifilm Finepix F50fd Review

Steves Digicams have reviewed the Casio EX-Z1080 digital camera, which features a special YouTube scene mode, high ISO 6400 sensitivity and 10.1 megapixels.

“The overall image quality of its 10M Fine images was very good. Both indoor and outdoor shots were crisp and sharp with good color saturation. The 3x optical zoom helped produce these sharp images throughout its 38 - 114mm (equivalent) zoom range. At the 38mm range, there was a little barrel distortion when shooting landscapes and group portraits, however it produced excellent quality when the macro feature was enabled. The 114mm end was very sharp and was more than enough to single in on an individual or get you a bit closer to a distant object.”

Website: Steves Digicams - Casio EX-Z1080 Review

The Fujifilm Finepix F40fd is an 8 megapixel point and shoot compact camera with a 3x optical zoom lens and 2.5 inch LCD screen. Successor to the Finepix F20, which we gave a Highly Recommended award exactly one year ago, the Fujifilm F40fd also adds the ubiquitous Face Detection feature found on virtually all recent cameras, along with a slightly redesigned user interface and sleeker styling. Mark Goldstein found out if the F40fd still has what it takes…

Website: Fujifilm Finepix F40fd Review

The Lowepro Cirrus TLZ is a new line of top-loading camera bags designed for compact, pro-compact digital cameras and digital SLRs. The Cirrus line of top-loading shoulder bags is available in three models: Cirrus TLZ 5, 15, and 25. “The arrival of the Cirrus line of top-loading camera bags reflects Lowepro ongoing dedication to photographers by delivering products with the highest level of protection for the very latest digital cameras,” said Suzanne Caballero, marketing communications manager of Lowepro Worldwide. The Lowepro Cirrus TLZ range will be available in black and ultra marine blue.

Olympus Studio 2.1 is a new version of Olympus’ professional workflow software, with added support for the E-3 DSLR. Studio 2.1 provides various functions and powerful tools to assist your workflow, such as examining and selecting the best shot from a large number of images, searching for a desired image from folders and albums, editing and processing images you have shot. Olympus Studio 2.1 includes the following improvements:

- Support for “E-3”
- Added “Add IPTC Information” function under Transfer Images, RAW Development and Batch Processing.
- Added New skin (Professional) which is the most suitable for viewing and sorting photos.
- Added the function to show Pop-up Information for a file.
- Improved the function to narrow down by Color Mark.
- Improved the operability of the function to sort images.
- Added the function to display the background processing status in the status bar.
- Added the function to select the next operation after saving files.
- Improved the display speed in Thumbnail Area (Windows).

Website: Olympus Studio 2.1

Clickbooq, an easy-to-use website creation service, are offering $100 off their One-Time or Annual License Fee. Clickbooq allows photographers to create one-of-a-kind websites they can update anytime, without any technical know-how. In honour of the annual PhotoPlus Expo going on in New York right now, use the promo code PPE2007 at sign up and save $100.

Website: Clickbooq

The Royal Photographic Society have released details about their range of Winter 2007 photography workshops. Topics include Studio Portraiture, Documentary Photography, Colour Management and Adobe Lightroom. All workshops are open to non-members and members of The Society, with most held at the RPS headquarters in Bath.

Luminous Landscape have posted their first impressions of the new Canon 1Ds Mark III, a 21.1 megapixel full-frame digital SLR camera with 5fps continuous shooting and 45 AF points.

“My quick summary is that the 1Ds MKIII is Canon’s best camera yet for anyone that doesn’t specifically need higher frame rates for sports or similar subjects. The camera has excellent image quality, much improved features and user interface, a much superior battery system, faster frame rate, etc etc. There’s still a great deal for me to analyze, but it will be several weeks until I am back from my shoot in Madagascar and have a chance to write a full hands-on report.”

Website: Luminous Landscape - Canon 1Ds Mark III First Impressions

CameraLabs have reviewed the Panasonic DMC-FZ18 digital camera, which features a 18x optical zoom lens, equivalent to 28-504mm on a 35mm film camera.

“We’d love to say the new 8 Megapixel sensor and image processing have also solved the noise issues of its predecessor, but sadly pixel peepers should prepare for a disappointment. If you examine images at 100% on your computer screen, you’ll see tell-tale texturing from noise at all sensitivities including 100 ISO. This inevitably gets worse as the sensitivity is increased, although we found shots taken at 400 ISO still looked fine on smaller prints and even 800 ISO samples contained a reasonable amount of detail.”

Website: CameraLabs - Panasonic DMC-FZ18 Review

Website: Read our Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18 Review

TrustedReviews have reviewed the HP Photosmart A826, a compact photo printer that features a massive 7 inch color touchscreen. The HP A826 can print borderless 4x6 and 5x7 inch photos, holiday cards, wallets and panoramas.

“Print speeds were generally very acceptable, with 15 x 10cm prints coming through in just under a minute from both PC and memory card. Printing from a PictBridge camera took around 40 seconds longer, so it’s best to take the card out and use it directly. The printer can work with HP’s Premium Plus Photo Paper in both gloss or satin finishes, but is best with its new Advanced paper. Prints are good quality, with plenty of detail and natural reproduction of blues, greens and reds.”

Website: TrustedReviews - HP Photosmart A826 Review

TrustedReviews have reviewed the Kodak M873 camera, which offers 8 megapixels, a 3x zoom lens and 2.5 inch LCD screen.

“Unfortunately the M873 falls down badly in the crucial area of image quality, and for several reasons. While the exposure metering was generally accurate, I was surprised to find that colour rendition, usually a Kodak strong point, was actually rather poor. Colours lacked saturation and looked very drab and washed-out, and I found image noise in the shadow areas of almost every shot, even at the lowest sensitivity setting of ISO 64. At higher ISO settings the image quality deteriorated even further, and pictures at 400 ISO were very poor. At 800 and the maximum of 1600 the images were pretty much unusable, with distorted colour and loss of fine detail.”

Website: TrustedReviews - Kodak M873 Review

ThinkCamera have reviewed the Olympus E-510 DSLR camera, which features a built-in image stabiliser in the camera body. The E510 also has a new image processing engine that offers excellent noise performance and 3fps with a seven image RAW buffer in burst mode.

“Olympus had issues in the past with certain colour reciprocities - the E400 suffered from a slight blue tint, while the E410 had suffered with green colour issues. The E510 doesn’t evade such problems, but the colours are very rich and vivid which can only be taken as a positive. Noise isn’t much of an issue either, with the 100-400 ISO region being virtually without noise. ISO 1600 is noisy, but it’s not ‘bad’ by any means.”

Website: ThinkCamera - Olympus E-510 Review

Website: Read our Olympus E-510 Review

Color Efex Pro 3.0 is the latest version of Nik Software’s award-winning Color Efex Pro collection of photographic filters for Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. The new Color Efex Pro 3.0 filter collection now integrates Nik Software’s patented U Point technology for precise selective editing control, includes new and updated filters, and features a completely redesigned user interface. “Color Efex Pro 3.0 is the biggest advancement in the way photographers work with digital photographic filters and will change the way that photographers edit images,” said Michael J. Slater, CEO of Nik Software. “We have always been committed to placing creative control in the hands of photographers and the new filters in Color Efex Pro 3.0 and our U Point technology does exactly that,” Slater concluded. Color Efex Pro 3.0 is available in three versions The suggested retail price for the Complete Edition is $299.95; the Select Edition is $159.95; the Standard Edition is $99.95.

Capture NX photo editing software from Nikon and Nik Color Efex Pro 2.0 digital photographic filters for Capture NX can be purchased separately for $329.95 or together for a limited time at a $30 discount. “Professional photographers and advanced amateurs have recognized Nik Color Efex Pro as a big part of their photographic workflow because of its simplicity and power. Bringing Color Efex Pro 2.0 and Capture NX together offers photographers an easy to use and complete photo editing solution,” said Michael J. Slater, president and CEO of Nik Software, Inc. Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro 2.0 for Capture NX includes 75 award-winning filters that offer a tremendous range of traditional and stylistic photo enhancements.