Those who subscribe to the monthly newsletter of the New York Institute of Photography (NYIP) will receive NYIP’s Three Guidelines and Six Tips for Great Photographs. A colourful collection of ideas and eye-catching photographs that will quickly and easily help photographers take better pictures, the document is available as a PDF download to all new subscribers. To subscribe to the monthly NYIP newsletter and receive the free download of NYIP’s Three Guidelines and Six Tips for Great Photographs, visit the website below.

Website: The New York Institute of Photography

Kenro have released two new ranges of photo frames, Rio and Whisper. The Rio collection features a dark wooden surround with a wide 40mm moulding and is supplied with a white mount. The Whisper frame range is aimed at the photo and gift market. It features a stylish black glass mount with elegant 5mm polished silver surround and is supplied in a gift box. Recommended retail prices of the Rio frames range from £14.90 to £23.90, while the Whisper frames are priced from £9.90 to £17.90.

Website: Kenro

Crash Taylor, recently voted one of the UK’s top ten winter wedding photographers by Professional Photographer magazine, will return to Calumet Nottingham for a wedding photography seminar. Crash is known for his use of location, light, artistic eye and unobtrusive style. The six-hour seminar will take place on Friday 21 May 2010, and is limited to 35 delegates. The cost is £95. To book your place, call 0115 9586888 and refer to the seminar code ZSMNOT0047.

Colour Confidence have teamed up with a number of their key dealer and manufacturer partners to announce the ‘True Colour, True Prints 2’ roadshow. The tour is a perfect opportunity to see the very latest products from onOne Software (Plug-in Suite 5), X-Rite (ColorChecker Passport) and Nik Software (Viveza 2) and will be touring the UK during November and December. ‘True Colour, True Prints 2’ is also a great chance for attendees to enjoy professional face-to-face advice, see product demonstrations and image enhancement techniques, workflow management and all things colour. The ‘True Colour, True Prints 2’ roadshow will be held in a variety of locations around the UK during November and December 2009. For a full overview of venue and date details, visit the website below.

Website: True Colour, True Prints 2

Samsung has announced the STORY Station Plus, its new line-up of 3.5-inch external hard drives featuring an eSATA interface for faster data transfer. The 3-gigabit-per-second, high-performance drives are available in up to 2-terabyte densities. The addition of the eSATA interface raises the data transfer speed of the STORY Station Plus series by more than six-fold when compared with models using a USB 2.0 interface, the company says. Having said that, the Samsung STORY Station Plus does retain the USB 2.0 port alongside the faster eSATA interface, should you need to use it with a USB-only computer. The STORY Station Plus line-up will also feature Samsung’s low standby power design that allegedly reduces the standby power by 96 percent to 0.1 watts from the conventional 2.5W. The STORY Station Plus drives will be available globally by the end of November 2009. The STORY Station Plus features a three-year limited warranty and the 2TB version has a $299 MSRP.

If you have any interesting photos taken with a Lensbaby, now’s your chance to get published! Your shot might become one of a dozen photographs that will illustrate a new book by Lensbaby guru Corey Hilz, due out from Focal Press in the Summer of 2010.  “The book will feature ‘how to’ and inspirational content, along with galleries of Lensbaby photos by some of the foremost Lensbaby photographers in the world,” Lensbaby says. “At least 12 of the submitted images will be featured in the Lensbaby book. Popular voting on the Lensbaby forum will be used to help decide one of the chosen images. Corey Hilz and Craig Strong will pick the remaining images”. You have until the end of the year to submit up to two photos for consideration. Voting will take place from 1 to 7 January 2010 and the selected images will be announced on 15 January.

Website: Lensbaby

Opera Software’s Photo Sharing application turns a folder on your computer into a into a fully functional photo gallery that can be directly accessed by your friends and family, in any Web browser. The Photo Sharing application in Opera Unite is available as part of the free Opera Web browser. All you need to do is download the Opera browser, run the Opera Unite Photo application, designate a folder on your PC or laptop as your photo gallery, and it becomes instantly available to friends and family via the World Wide Web, without your having to wait long hours for the photos to upload.

Website: Opera

Data Robotics has introduced the five-bay Drobo S with eSATA, a professional-class storage solution designed for Windows, Mac, and Linux users who require high-speed data transfers and reliable data storage. Thanks to the improvements, the Drobo S is claimed to offer 150 percent of the performance of the current four-bay Drobo. Built on Data Robotics’ BeyondRAID virtualised storage platform, which eliminates the lock-in of traditional RAID configurations, the Drobo S features a one-click toggle between single- and dual-drive redundancy and provides protection against up to two concurrent drive failures. Drobo S is currently available starting at a price of $799 MSRP, with multiple configurations to $1,799 for a 10TB (5x 2TB) solution.

Website: Drobo S

The Mail Tribune is now accepting submissions for its annual Oregon Outdoors Wild Bird Photo Contest. Open to everyone from long-time birders, to amateur photographers, to nature enthusiasts, the Oregon Outdoors Wild Bird Photo Contest invites participants to capture the beauty of their feathered friends in their natural habitats. Participants may enter as many bird photos as they like, but will only be eligible to win one award. All submissions must be accompanied by a completed entry form. Submissions will be accepted through 4:00 pm on 11 December 2009. Full contest rules, as well as submission guidelines and entry forms, are available online at the website below.

Website: Wild Bird Photo Contest

PocketWizard has released a new firmware update for the ControlTL MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 products. Version 4.374 offers truly automatic camera detection, optimised HSS crossover auto detection, flash exposure compensation, pre-flash boost refinements and support for the Canon version of the Metz 58 AF-1 flash unit. Read the download instructions here.

Website: Beta Firmware Overview

The entry deadline for Eyes Wide Open with Jillian Edelstein and Sony Ericsson Satio on Vodafone has been extended until Sunday, 29 November. To celebrate the launch of the new, 12.1-megapixel Sony Ericsson Satio handset on Vodafone, photographer Jillian Edelstein has been commissioned to capture the beauty and individuality of 121 eyes in only 12.1 hours. While Julian Edelstein has become famous for her portraits of celebrities, the Eyes Wide Open project “takes her gaze from the world of famous faces, and looks to delve into the realm of visual communication through the exploration of eyes”, the organisers say. Sony Ericsson are searching for people from all over the United Kingdom and all walks of life to be part of Eyes Wide Open. Simply upload your details, an image of your eyes and tell the organisers why you would like to be involved. Jillian will be personally selecting the 61 participants from all applicants and inviting them to an invitation-only Satio studio photoshoot. You can find out more and win the chance to be involved by visiting the website below.

Website: Eyes Wide Open

Eye-Fi users can now choose which photos or videos to wirelessly upload to sharing sites - like Facebook, Flickr, Snapfish or Picasa - before it leaves their camera. The new feature is aptly named Selective Share. If you already own an Eye-Fi card offering the online sharing feature, all you need to do is log in to your E-ye-Fi account at manager.eye.fi, click “Upload Settings” under “Settings”, plug your card in and enable Selective Share. With Selective Share enabled, all your photos and videos will be automatically and wirelessly backed up on your home computer, plus you can select which images and clips you would like to share online by marking them using your camera’s Protect or Lock feature.

Website: Eye-Fi Manager

Pentax has announced a Windows-only update to the PENTAX Digital Camera Utility 4 program. Version 4.11 adds support for the Pentax K-x digital SLR camera, corrects a few bugs, adds [Cross Processing], [Picture: Blue Sky] and [Picture: Sunset] to the Image data display, adds lens data for the smc Pentax DA L55-300mmF4-5.8 ED telezoom, and improves overall stability. The update can be downloaded by visiting the website below.

Website: Pentax Digital Camera Utility 4 Update for Windows

Nikon UK has announced a promotion: buy a new Nikon D300s until 17 January 2010, and get an SB-900 flash for free. The offer is limited to currently registered Nikon users, and is valid only on new Nikon D300s purchases. Also, the promotion strictly only applies to products which have been supplied and distributed by Nikon UK Ltd within the UK and Republic of Ireland. For more details, please refer to the Nikon Flashback terms and conditions.

Chronicle Books has just released a new rock and roll photograph book - Taking Aim: Unforgettable Rock & Roll Photographs Selected by Graham Nash. Spanning more than fifty years of music-making as seen through the eyes of 40 photographers, Taking Aim is Graham’s personal take, through photography, on the evolution of rock ‘n’ roll music. Some personalities, like Bob Marley and Emmylou Harris, are represented in a single, iconic image. Others, like Johnny Cash and The Beatles, are documented by multiple photographers and throughout various stages in their lives and careers. Accompanying the book is an audio CD with Nash’s insights and reflections on each photograph. The 128-page book, which has 80 duotone and full-colour photos, is priced at $50. The exhibition of Taking Aim, organized by Experience Music Project | Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (EMP | SFM) in Seattle, Washington, opens there in 2010 and will tour thereafter.

Website: Chronicle Books

We’ve just launched an exciting new addition to Photography Blog - you can now sort our camera reviews by manufacturer, rating and date.

Previously we’ve just had a big long list of all our reviews, with the newest at the top, but you can now alternatively choose to browse them by a particular manufacturer, either by date or by rating. Want to quickly find out which are the best Canon cameras? It’s now just a couple of clicks away.

This great new feature works with every camera review that we’ve published since we re-designed the site back in March - that’s a massive 77 of the latest cameras to choose from!

And remember, you can also check out the Best Cameras list to find out which products come with the official Photography Blog seal of approval.

The Sigma Corporation of America Scholarship will award a cash gift of $5,000 and $1,000 in Sigma products to one talented American high school senior to advance his or her education and goals toward obtaining a career in the photography industry. Applications will be accepted until February 15, 2010. Online voting will occur Feb. 16, 2010 to April 23, 2010, and the winner will be announced May 3, 2010. Applicants are required to submit an application, brief essay and three to five images that have a connecting theme in order to be considered for the Sigma Corporation of America Scholarship. The entire package will be judged based on creativity of subject selection, overall technique and, most importantly, image quality. Students are not required to use Sigma equipment to shoot the photo As always, make sure to read the rules before entering your work.

Website: Sigma Corporation of America Scholarship Application Form

Passers-by at London Waterloo station were greeted by a rather unusual sight: a 3.6m x 2m mock-up of the new Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZX1 digital compact camera. The giant snapper, which has appeared at London Waterloo station yesterday morning, is part of Panasonic’s unconventional marketing campaign that had earlier seen a giant pigeon “land” on the grass beside London’s City Hall. The heavily-promoted Lumix ZX1 is a new ultra-compact digital camera with an 8x optically-stabilised zoom lens that provides a 35mm equivalent focal range of 25-200mm in a body measuring just 2.6cm thick.

Review: Read our in-depth review of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZX1

Adobe has posted documentation for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Beta. Help topics include a What’s New section, importing photos into a catalogue, exporting using Publish Services, creating a copyright watermark, simulating film grain, updating the process version, applying a post-crop vignette, exporting a video slide show and Custom print packages. To access the documentation, choose Help > Lightroom Help (F1) in Lightroom 3 Beta or go to Using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Beta. Adobe warns that “just like the software, this documentation is prerelease”.