Velux has teamed up with Joe Tree, photographer and founder of Blipfoto, in a new short film to promote the transformative effect of daylight for The Daylight Project, an online hub launched by Velux last year to highlight the importance of designing with light. The video, which was shot against a striking Edinburgh skyline, draws on Joe’s wealth of photographic experience to showcase the creative benefits of daylight and has been released to correspond with longer days. Click through to watch the video.

Calumet UK has announced that it is supporting established photographer, Rory Lewis for his up and coming exhibition of high-profile celebrity faces, titled "Northerners." This exhibition is an entirely new collection of over 100 portraits featuring a cross section of Northern celebrities, sports personalities, actors, politicians and people encountered; featuring sittings with Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Patrick Stewart, David Warner (pictured), Karl Pilkington, Ian McShane, Emma Rigby, Claire Sweeney and many others. Before the Exhibition opens to the public in the Liverpool Met Quarter, there will be a private open evening with a champagne reception on Thursday 24 July, accompanied by a talk from Rory about the work. Tickets cost £15.00pp. Rory hopes to raise £10,000 for UNICEF, to help children all over the world in need of support, water, food, medical care and education.  The Exhibition will then be open to the public from Friday 25 July and is free. for further information and dates for the exhibition, visit the website below.

Social Photography by Daniela Bowker is a new title from Ilex Press. This guide will show you how to create photos that will be clicked on, liked, shared, and go viral. Containing hundreds of posing and shooting ideas, this book will show you how to give your photos aesh look and let you share your life’s most exciting moments wider than ever before, the publisher says. Social Photography will become available in May, priced at $14.99.

The Technical Image Press Association has recognised two Epson products in the prestigious 2014 TIPA Awards. The winning Epson products this year were the Epson Expression Photo XP-950 (pictured), which was named “Best Photo Printer,” and the Epson EH-TW7200, which won the award for “Best Photo Projector.” Mark Reynolds, director of consumer sales, Epson UK, commented, “TIPA members are all experts in the field and therefore select products according to the strictest standards. The panel has a huge variety of choice so we are very proud to learn that Epson products have once again been selected for these much valued awards.”

Sigma has announced that the “Sigma Mount Conversion Service”, “Sigma dp Quattro camera series” and “Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 DC Macro OS HSM / SIGMA 18-200mm f3.5-6.3 DC Macro HSM” lens have all won TIPA Awards. The Sigma Mount Conversion Service has been named 'Best Photo Service' by the Technical Image Press Association (TIPA). The Sigma dp Quattro (pictured) has won the 'Best Design' category, and the Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 DC Macro OS HSM has been crowned Best Entry Level DSLR Lens.

Canon has been awarded four honours by the Technical Image Press Association (TIPA). The EOS 70D was named Best Advanced DSLR, the title 'Best Expert Compact Camera' went to the Canon PowerShot G1 X Mark II, the EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM Extender 1.4x (pictured) was dubbed 2014's Best Pro DSLR Lens, while Canon's Dual Pixel CMOS AF technology won the Best Imaging Innovation category.

Ricoh UK has announced that the Pentax K-3 camera was selected as the Best Expert DSLR by the Technical Image Press Association (TIPA). In its official product citation, TIPA noted: 'Developed by Ricoh Imaging as the flagship of the Pentax K digital SLR camera series, the Pentax K-3 with 24MP APS-C CMOS sensor adds the unique “anti-aliasing simulator” to its low pass filter-less design. Housed in a weather-sealed magnesium alloy body, the camera can deliver 8.3 frames per second in bursts of 23 RAW or 60 JPEG images. Utilising the sensor-shift image stabilisation mechanism it adds a controllable “anti-moiré” effect. The K-3 delivers Full HD video with stereo sound and an upgraded interval movie mode for capturing 4K movie clips. It also incorporates a new PRIME III processor and 27-point SAFOX II AF system, with 25 cross-type sensors. The shutter is now rated at a robust 200,000 actuations.'

Avis and Getty Images have announced a photography competition titled "I Can't Believe My Eyes." Andy Letting, Head of Social Media at Avis Budget Group says, “Car travel is often seen as less glamorous than other modes of transport but with the I Can’t Believe My Eyes campaign we hope to show that this is not the case. Traveling by car opens up a whole world of possibilities - we want to celebrate road trips so are calling for people to share their best driving images to prove that how you get there can be as exciting as where you’re going.” Photos can be submitted via Avis UK's Facebook page, where you can also immerse yourself in a specially made film of beautifully captured landmarks from across the globe for inspiration. The winning shot will not only win a trip from BA Holidays, but it will also form part of the Avis advertising campaign to encourage others to open their eyes.

Nikon has issued a firmware update for its Coolpix AW110 all-weather compact camera. According to  the company, version 1.1 incorporates the following bug fixes:

• An issue that resulted in deviation in the timing of movie video and sound has been resolved.
• An issue that caused latitude and longitude information displayed with Data imprint to be incorrect has been resolved.
• An issue that, in some rare cases, caused the camera to freeze while shooting with acquisition of GPS position information has been resolved.

Website: Nikon Europe

Nikon has released a firmware update for its D4S digital SLR camera. Version C 1.01 fixes various bugs related to image playback, histogram display and raw shooting. You can download the firmware upgrade from the website below.

Website: Nikon Europe

Fuji has posted a firmware update for the Fujifilm X100S and Fujifilm X100S Black cameras. Version 1.20 adds support for the TCL-X100 teleconverter. In practice, this means that the 'Wide Conversion Lens' menu item - whose selectable settings were On and Off - has been changed to 'Conversion Lens,' and now offers Wide, Tele and Off settings. When "Tele" is selected, the size of the bright frame in the optical viewfinder will switch to showing the shooting area for the tele conversion lens.

Website: X100S / X100S Black Firmware Update Ver.1.20

The LYTRO ILLUM is a new light field camera for professionals. The LYTRO ILLUM camera features a 40-megaray light field sensor, 8x optical zoom lens (30mm-250mm equivalent) with a constant aperture of f/2, 1/4000 of a second high-speed shutter, extreme close-focus macro capability, articulating touchscreen and a flash hotshoe. The LYTRO ILLUM camera will ship starting July 2014 for a retail price of $1,599.

SP/ Silicon Power today released the Thunder T11 external solid state drive. Marketed as the lightest and smallest Thunderbolt SSD in the market, the Thunder T11 promises read speeds of up to 380 megabytes per second and write speeds of up to 340MB/s. Thunder T11 is now available in 120GB and 240GB with two colour options, silver and blue.

Wacom’s Cintiq Companion (pictured) and the Intuos Pen & Touch S Tablet have both been awarded two of the highest accolades in the design industry this year - an iF Design Award and a prestigious Red Dot award. Hartmut Woerrlein, Director Global Product Management at Wacom, commented: “We are extremely proud that two of our products have won such well known design awards. Wacom continues to manufacture products for a more creative world, that combine technological innovation with outstanding design and these accolades confirm that we are creating the right tools for creative people.”

Lensbaby have announced that their Sweet Spot Lens, originally developed for the Apple iPhone, will also be available for certain Android handsets. The company has added a $50 Android pledge level to the project's Kickstarter page and vowed to commence development on an Android app "shortly." The Android version of the lens and associated smartphone app will be available in October.

Cloud Preview by Cypress Innovations is a new iOS app for photographers looking to view raw image files stored on Dropbox. Designed to work seamlessly with Dropbox, CloudPreview works with all raw files supported by Apple, and supports most files generated by Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Sony, Panasonic, Pentax, Fujifilm and Leica cameras. For more information, visit the website below.

Canon Hong Kong have posted a rather mysterious teaser on their Facebook fan page. The advert hints at an April 24 product announcement, but details are sketchy (and that's an understatement). According to Canon Watch, the accompanying text reads, "beauty lies not in objects but in the interaction between the shadow and light created by objects." This line, which is apparently a quotation from an essay by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, has prompted commenters on Facebook to make wild guesses about the new Canon product, ranging from a monochrome camera to an f/0.95 lens.

Via PhotographyBay