Fujifilm UK has announced availability and pricing for the Fujinon XF18-55mm F2.8-4 R LM OIS lens. The 27-84mm equivalent Fujinon XF18-55mm F2.8-4 R LM OIS is a compact standard zoom with optical image stabilisation and a linear motor-driven focussing system that allows the camera to lock focus on the subject in a matter of 0.1 second. In the United Kingdom the lens will go on sale at the end of October / beginning of November, priced at £599.00. (The US MSRP is $699.95, as announced earlier.)

Canon U.S.A,, Ron Howard and the public have selected 91 winning photographs from the “Project Imaginat10n” contest, which will see five innovative celebrities direct short films based on ten of the photos. A consumer vote helped narrow down the photographs, where one of the selected winners’ photos was chosen by Ron Howard in the “Discovery” category to be a thematic tie across the celebrities’ films. The directors will now each select one additional photograph from the other nine storytelling categories that personally inspire them, ultimately utilizing ten photos to represent their creativity and imagination.  In addition to “Discovery,” the themes include Character, Mood, Goal, Backstory, Setting, Obstacle, Relationship, The Unknown and Time.  The winning photographs determined by Ron Howard and the consumer vote can be seen at the website below.

Last month, Samsung issued a call for every Briton called David Bailey to meet up in London and take part in a photography project. The initiative was successful as 142 David Baileys came together to meet their namesake, iconic fashion and celebrity photographer David Royston Bailey. The company gave all participants the new Samsung NX1000 camera (read review) to test the theory that “it’s so good that it lets everyone take photos like the world’s best photographer.” For more information, visit the website below..

SF Photo School has announced a brand new webinar series, entitled ‘Masters of Wedding’. “Ray Lowe, Kevin Wilson & Martin Grahame-Dunn share their unique styles, experience & some of their best work, tips & techniques to take your wedding photography to the next level,” says SF Photo School’s Uzair Kharawala. “This is a 6 hour webinar series which will cover topics such as how to pose couples, use of ‘directional light’, composing your images, off-camera flash, use of reflectors, engagement photography, destination weddings, how to create your ‘signature’ black & white images, marketing your business, how to organise wedding photography, how to price your services, post processing workflow and much much more…” For more information and to book your place, visit the website below.

Sigma UK has announced a short-term special offer that enables anyone who purchases a Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM lens to claim a free Sigma 77mm UV DG filter. Worth over £60, the Sigma 77mm UV DG filter benefits from a special multi-layer lens coating, developed to counteract the highly reflective characteristic of image sensors. Starting today, the offer is open to UK residents only and runs until 31st December. To read the terms and conditions, download the claim form.

Photography Blog and Corel have teamed up to giveaway 5 copies of Corel PaintShop Pro X5!

The 5 lucky winners are: James Hackett, Cees Buitendijk, Ron Zigelhofer, Paul Smith and Burkhard Schrammel.

Whether you want to create powerful photos or dynamic digital works of art, Corel® PaintShop® Pro X5 provides all of the photo editing and creative design tools you need. Manage, adjust and edit your work with a few simple clicks. Create stunning photos with intense visual contrast using new and enhanced HDR features - including the new ability to create HDR-style effects from single RAW photos. Organise your photos and tag people and places using the new Find People and Map View features. Get inspired with creative brush and vector tools, including new text and layer options. Hone your skills with built-in tutorials and use new social media integration to instantly share your creative vision on Facebook®, Flickr® and Google+™.

The new Find People feature of PaintShop® Pro X5 helps you identify the people in your photos, making it easy to find and share photos of family and friends, or sync with your social contacts on sharing sites. In addition to manual tagging, you can also use powerful face detection technology to automatically analyze facial characteristics and help identify and organize the people in your photos.

Steidl has announced new editions of two of Joel Sternfeld’s classic photobooks. The reprint of his seminal American Prospects (€88 / £75) features new photographs, and a revised format and cover. The subjects of the now classic American Prospects include a fireman shopping for a pumpkin while a house burns behind him; motorcyclists at the side of the road taking in a stunning, placid view of Bear Lake, Utah; the hi-tech world headquarters of the Manville Corporation in picturesque Colorado, obscured by a defiant boulder; and a lone basketball net in the desert near Lake Powell in Arizona. The other book, Stranger Passing, (€65 / £50 / $88) contains portrait photographs that form in Douglas R. Nickel’s words, an “intelligent, unscientific, interpretive sampling of what Americans looked like at the century’s end.”

In 2011 the Hasselblad HTS1.5/ Tilt/Shift adapter was removed from the US market pending litigation involving a patent infringement claim. The legal process has been concluded in favour of Hasselblad. As a result the HTS1.5 Tilt/Shift adapter is immediately available for purchase in the US. Hasselblad Bron President and CEO Michael Hejtmanek commented “Today was a good day for Hasselblad and for photographers across the United States.  The courts have decided that the patent infringement lawsuit preventing the sale of the Hasselblad Tilt Shift Adapter is without merit.” Designed for the HCD28mm, HC35mm, HC50mm, HC80mm and the HC100mm lenses the HTS 1.5 adds, in effect, five different “tilt and shift lenses” to the Hasselblad HC/HCD lens range.

GoPro’s new mobile app is now available for free download from Apple’s App Store and coming soon to Google Play. Compatible with GoPro’s HD HERO2 camera, the GoPro App enables full camera control and live scene preview for easy framing on smartphones or tablets. Subsequent releases of the GoPro App will enable streaming playback of videos and photos from the camera to a smart device, sharing of photo and video content from the camera to social networks, controlling of multiple cameras, and streaming live video from the camera to the web.

The Plugin Site has released FilterHub, a panel extension for Photoshop CS4, CS5, CS5.5 and CS6. Described as “a powerful replacement” for the program’s Filter menu, FilterHub supports both built-in Photoshop filters, filter plugins and third-party automation plug-ins. The FilterHub panel stays open as long as you wish and displays a configurable list of filters and plug-ins. Before running a filter it can automatically create a duplicated layer, a merged copy of all layers (stamped layer), a smart object or flatten the image. FilterHub costs $39.95 (Academic/educational licence: $24.95).

Boinx Software has released FotoMagico 4, an update to its slideshow software. Highlights include an ability to work with up to six layers per slide, a new Timeline mode for making precise adjustments to each individual slide’s duration as well as the transition length between slides, easier syncing of photos and music, and more. FotoMagico 4 is now available both from the Mac App Store and the Boinx website for $99.99.

TeoreX has released Inpaint 4.7, a functional tool for effortless retouching of photos and images. The product features a range of instruments for one-click intelligent removal of unwanted objects from a picture, such as: accidental strangers, camera time stamps, watermarks, and more. Version 4.7 offers improved performance and a Magic Wand tool for quicker selection of objects. The price for a single licence of Inpaint is available for $19.99 (Mac/Windows).

Photography education and entertainment site PhoozL has announced the launch of a new photo contest series: “Weekly Wednesdays.” Each week, participants submit their best images that display the essence of that week’s theme. Entry is free and open to all logged-in members of PhoozL. Winners are selected by the week’s judge and added to the Winners Showcase and the PhoozL Points scoreboard, which puts them into the running for the PhoozL Photographer of the Year. “Photographers have been asking us for a more-frequent contest cycle,” explains Harald Johnson, PhoozL’s founder, “and we’ve come up with a great option to motivate and inspire them.”

The latest in a series of NAND Flash Deprivation Experiment videos from Toshiba, the company that invented the technology 25 years ago, takes a humorous look at how photography has changed since the invention of flash technology. Although the short clip/advert has evidently been produced with tongue firmly in cheek, we wouldn’t be surprised if some film aficionados took exception to it… Click through / scroll down to watch the video.

The Lens: A Practical Guide for the Creative Photographer is a new title from Rocky Nook. Decoding the arcane terminology used by lens manufacturers, the book provides practical tips for both amateur and professional photographers to help them make smart purchasing decisions, and also covers the foundations of lens design, including the optical, mechanical and electronic properties of photographic lenses. The 320-page volume is available for $44.95.

Following controversial claims made by Nikon Australia regarding the suitability of the Nikon D4 and D800 to professional television programme-making, The PhoBlographer contacted the European Broadcasting Union and Andy Quested, the Head of Technology for BBC HD and 3D. Originally, the Australian My Nikon Life website had claimed that “both models have become the first DSLR cameras to pass the very elaborate European Broadcasting Union (EBU) test, commonly referred to as the BBC Test.” After the Wolfcrow blog pointed out that the D800 had basically failed the test, Nikon Australia changed the text of its article to focus solely on the D4. However, in his reply to The PhoBlographer, Andy Quested starkly concluded that “neither camera is acceptable for HD programmes for any of the UK broadcasters,” citing “sparse” sound facilities, “coloured spatial aliasing”, “very limited controls… in video mode” and sub-par [video] resolution as the main reasons. On a more positive note, Mr Quested praised the D4’s low noise levels and wide dynamic range as potential assets to videographers, but these apparently weren’t enough to change his overall verdict.

Gary Fong’s recently announced Lightsphere Collapsible Snoot and Coloured Dome Kit are now shipping. The Lightsphere Collapsible Snoot ($49.95 on its own or $59.95 with a PowerGrid) gives photographers maximum efficiency and directional control over strobe lighting when mounted off-camera, allowing one to create cutting edge, “fashion style” special effects, while the Coloured Dome Kit (pictured)includes a Red, Blue and Green Dome for creating special effects as well as a Gray Dome for white balancing. Compatible with the renowned Lightsphere Universal and Lightsphere Collapsible, the Coloured Dome Kit is available for $24.95.