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

Phase One is going to host a free webinar for Capture One Pro users on Wednesday, 23rd April. In this webinar, David Grover will take participants through a typical photo editing scenario, importing directly from memory cards and through a full Capture One Pro Session workflow, finishing with multiple image output types and a web gallery. For more information and to register, visit the website below.

The Technical Image Press Association (TIPA) member magazines recently convened for their General Assembly to vote for the best photo and imaging products launched by the industry in the last 12 months. The voting took place on the 5th during the General Assembly that was held from the 3rd to the 5th April 2014 in Vancouver, Canada. The award-winning products for 2014 will be announced on Wednesday, 23rd April.

Samyang Europe has posted a new teaser ad on its Facebook fan page. Hinting at an April 28 product announcement, the company accompanied the advert with the following words: "The journey to the next level of creativity starts now. Stay tuned for more."

The Mitakon 50mm f/0.95 is a new ultra-fast full-frame lens for Sony's E-mount compact system cameras. Manufactured by the Chinese company Zhongyi Optics, the manual-focus Mitakon 50mm f/0.95 features 10 elements in 7 groups, weighs in at 720g, and has a distance scale with depth-of-field marks and a 58mm filter thread. According to MXCamera, Zhongyi's Hong Kong based distributor, the lens will retail for approximately US$800.

Via PR

Cypress Innovations have released Cloud Studio, an iOS app developed for photographers looking to edit and share images stored on Dropbox. The program offers users the ability to alter saturation, gamma, brightness, contrast, hue, and vibrance. With Cloud Studio, you can view and edit curves and levels, and can crop, rotate, and sharpen images. The app gives users the option to re‐upload the altered image to Dropbox, save it in the camera roll, or share the photo via Facebook, Available in two versions, Cloud Studio and Cloud Studio HD, the software can be downloaded for $0.99.

Akvis have updated their ArtSuite application to version 10.5. This release adds a Share option that allows users to post pictures from the program to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr and Google+; improves the Halftone effect; enables the saving of last used settings; and adds support for additional raw image file formats generated by various digital cameras. Registered users of ArtSuite can upgrade to the new version for free.

Google has added new features to the standard Android camera app. Currently available for devices running Android 4.4 Kitkat, Lens blur allows users to mimic shallow DOF and even to virtually "refocus" the photo after it's taken, quasi-Lytro style. "You can choose to make any object come into focus simply by tapping on it in the image," Google's Carlos Hernández writes in a blog post. "By changing the depth-of-field slider, you can simulate different aperture sizes, to achieve bokeh effects ranging from subtle to surreal... Instead of capturing a single photo, you move the camera in an upward sweep to capture a whole series of frames. From these photos, Lens Blur uses computer vision algorithms to create a 3D model of the world, estimating the depth (distance) to every point in the scene." The Google Camera app is available as a free download from the Google Play store.