Canon Europe has launched a campaign to educate and inspire entry level DSLR users about photography. The Canon ‘EOS Adventure’ campaign aims to encourage amateur photographers to take their photography adventure to the next level and hone their photography skills by providing inspiration, education and an opportunity to showcase their work on Yahoo! and Flickr. A competition is also part of the campaign, offering users the chance to win their very own EOS Adventure; an exclusive photography adventure in Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve with Canon’s wildlife photography experts, Jonathan and Angela Scott. Visitors to the EOS Adventure website will be encouraged to use their new photography skills and enter the resulting shots into the competition via the dedicated EOS Adventure page of the Yahoo! site. The Canon EOS Adventure competition will run in eight European countries (UK, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Poland) until Sunday 20th November 2011.

Green Hills Software, an independent vendor of embedded software solutions, has announced that its compilers, Green Hills Probe and MULTI integrated development environment (IDE) have been used by Phase One in the development of the Phase One IQ series digital cameras. “An 80-megapixel sensor generates a vast amount of photographic data—the typical image size is almost 500 Mbytes—and Phase One needed its new digital camera to process and stream the data through multiple channels at the same time,” the company said. According to Søren Ilsøe, software architect, Phase One, “Green Hills Software was able to support the processors faster than any other vendor and made their compiler and MULTI IDE available to us at an early stage… Green Hills is a very professional partner and its technical team supported us in a smooth and efficient manner, allowing us to concentrate on delivering our application on schedule.”

Travel photographer Michael Freeman has teamed up with his publisher, Focal Press, to create the Picture Your City challenge to help inspire fledgling photographers and highlight interesting scenes in and around New York City. “We’re asking photography students to submit an image that exemplifies how they picture their cities and, from the submissions, I’ll choose one photographer to spend time shooting with me and I’ll share some tidbits of inspiration along the way,” said Freeman. “When I was a new photographer, I really enjoyed learning from seasoned professionals. I look forward to giving back to new photographers – and seeing New York City through their eyes!”. To be selected to spend time with Freeman, student photographers should go to the website below to fill out a brief form and upload a photograph of their city. Entries will be accepted through 30th September.

Ritz & Wolf Camera & Image has just announced a revamp of its online imaging site RitzPix.com. The redesigned, Silverlight based site features a new look, enhanced photo editing tools and extended product offerings.To complement the product expansion, RitzPix.com has added a wider variety of themes including more than 50 new photo book layouts, new calendar and collage choices, and more.

Rocky Nook’s latest title, Panobook 2011, is now available in the UK. Filled with 156 high-quality panoramic photographs from Kolor’s 2011 Panoramic Photography Competition, Panobook 2011 is a beautiful, 224-page hardback that opens to 24 inches across two pages. “This collection of images provides an introduction to the best of today’s panoramic photography and serves as inspiration for the interested photographer,” the publisher says. “Laymen and photographers alike are certain to be delighted as they embark on a tour of the world.”

Nik Software has released version 4 of its Color Efex Pro filter suite. Announced three weeks ago, Color Efex Pro 4 is now shipping. New effects include Detail Extractor, Vintage Film Efex, and Image Borders. The release also includes stackable filters, a new History Browser, improvements to imaging algorithms, greater performance, and enhanced usability. Two versions are available: the Color Efex Pro 4 Complete Edition contains 55 filters with a suggested retail price of €199.95/$199.95. The Color Efex Pro 4 Select Edition contains 26 filters with a suggested retail price of € 99,95/$99.95.

Cypress Innovations have released piRAWnha 3, a new version of the first app to enable raw processing on the iPad. piRAWnha features both raw developing and post?processing options, including exposure
compensation, white balance correction, highlight recovery, denoise operations, gamma correction, saturation?hue?brightness adjustments, high?quality contrast adjustments, sharpening and an image histogram that is updated with each edit. Version 3 introduces a LivePreview to view edits in real time, an improvement that is claimed to “dramatically speed up” the editing process. piRAWnha 3 is available on iTunes for £5.99 / $9.99..

Ocean Leisure Cameras have just launched their website. A new photographic venture of Ocean Leisure, the UK’s premier marine and water sports superstore, Ocean Cameras offers a broad portfolio of underwater photo gear ranging from camera housings to accessories including filters, flashes and lenses. The new website also features a compilation of amazing underwater images and video footage taken on a mixture of compacts and DSLRs.

iStockphoto today announced the first Italian iStockalypse, a five-day photography event. Held from 28 September - 2 October in Milan and surrounding villages, iStockalypse Milan is organised in partnership with Canon. Artists and photographers from the international iStock contributor community will come together to collaborate, share knowledge, and exchange tricks of the stock photography trade. Each day iStock sets the stage for participants to launch into high-end photo-shoots — carefully planning and selecting locations, models, wardrobe and fashion designers, hair and make-up professionals, props, professional equipment and mentorship. Click through / read on for details including a brief shooting schedule.

ACD Ssytems International has released ACDSee Pro 5 and ACDSee 14. ACDSee Pro 5 is billed as the most complete solution for the post-processing of digital photos, with functionality ranging from raw image development to editing features like dodging and burning, split toning and advanced sharpening. The standard version, ACDSee, gains extra features like geotagging support, custom metadata views and the ability to conveniently upload local files using Sync to Web folders in version 14. The company also announced today that its online photo sharing and storage site, ACDSeeOnline.com, is now free. ACDSee 14 is available now for $79.99, while ACDSee Pro 5 costs $239.99.

Ambarella announced availability of the A7L system-on-chip (SoC), enabling the development of a new generation of HD video enabled digital still cameras. The A7L supports full 1080p HD H.264 video at 60 frames per second and can capture up to thirty (!) 16-megapixel still images per second. “The A7L offers a unique combination of outstanding still image quality and full 1080p60 HD video for the next generation of hybrid digital still cameras,” said Fermi Wang, Ambarella CEO. “We believe the chip’s incredibly low power consumption will not only extend battery life but inspire innovation in new camera form factors.”

The Redrock Micro LiveLens MFT is the first active lens mount to allow Canon EF lenses to be used with any Micro Four-Thirds camera body. With the LiveLens MFT’s control touchpad, the EF lens’ aperture can be opened and closed in increments as small as 1/3 stop. The LiveLens MFT works with virtually every EF lens available today, including variable aperture zoom lenses, prime lenses, consumer-level lenses, professional L-series lenses and most third party EF-compatible lenses. Introductory pricing for the LiveLens MFT is $442.50. The adapter can be purchased now at the website below.

Nikon has released Capture NX 2.2.8 for MacOS and Windows. This update adds support for raw image files produced by the new Nikon 1 J1, V1 and Coolpix P7100 cameras. Additionally information for lenses used with the Auto Distortion correction function under Camera & Lens Corrections in the Develop section of the Edit List has been updated. To download Capture NX 2.2.8, visit the website below.

Website: Nikon

Olympus has released a firmware update for the Olympus Tough TG-310 camera. Version 1.1 improves on the exposure compensation algorithm. To update your camera’s firmware, install the Olympus Digital Camera Updater program on a computer with Internet connectivity, connect the camera, and start the program.

The Honestech Film Scan&Save is a 35mm film scanner with a 5-megapixel area-array sensor. Featuring 32 megabytes of internal memory, an SD card slot and a built-in preview screen, the Honestech Film Scan&Save can be used as a standalone device, but can also be hooked up to a computer via USB. The scanner is available at £79.99 from PC World and Amazon.

Sony has issued a service notice to owners of the Sony NEX-5N compact system camera. The company says it has received reports of a “clicking” sound in videos recorded by the NEX-5N, and claims this phenomenon “occurs if the camera undergoes sudden motion while recording”. Sony says it has developed a fix for this problem, and will offer a performance improvement to NEX-5N end users during the period of its limited warranty accompanying the product.

DxO Labs have released their detailed findings on the Sony A77’s 24-megapixel sensor. The overall DxOMark Sensor Score is 78, which is significantly higher than the Canon EOS 7D’s 66 points, and only marginally lower than the Nikon D7000’s 80. The company puts the sensor’s raw dynamic range at 13.2EV (at base sensitivity). The Sony A77’s Low-Light ISO score is 801, which is comparable to the A55’s 818, but lower than the D7000’s 1167.

Website: DxOMark

Having already posted a number of hands-on photos of the Nikon 1 V1 and Nikon 1 J1 cameras and their accessories, it’s now time to share with you our first impressions of the system, based on our limited but intensive use of both cameras and a couple of lenses at the launch event.