HP today announced the HP Photosmart A646 Compact Printer as part of its new range of HP Photosmart TouchSmart printers. The HP Photosmart A646 Compact Printer makes it simple to view, edit, create and personalise photos – without having to connect to a PC – by combining an easy-to-navigate menu on the printer’s HP TouchSmart control panel with an extra-large TouchSmart screen. Users can print images in whatever size they want up to 13 x18 cm, with or without borders. In addition, 30 editing and enhancing options from the HP Design Gallery, such as ‘pet-eye’ fix, ‘slimming’ feature, blemish removal and sepia tones, enable users to edit photos so friends and family look their best. Also, the HP Photosmart A646 Compact Printer allows photos to be printed direct from Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones. The estimated retail price for the HP Photosmart A646 Compact Printer is €149 and it is expected to be available for purchase across Europe, the Middle East and Africa from October 2009.

HP today introduced a range of new HP Photosmart printers with unique HP TouchSmart touch-sensitive technology. The HP Photosmart C4680, HP Photosmart and HP Photosmart with Wireless, HP Photosmart Plus and the HP Photosmart Premium (pictured) are the latest products to complement the HP Photosmart series and come with a number of new features. The HP Photo Print Gadget allows users easily drag and drop photos to a desktop icon from virtually anywhere – folders, applications, e-mail and websites. Many of the printers in the new HP Photosmart series, including the HP Photosmart with Wireless, HP Photosmart Plus and the HP Photosmart Premium, have built-in wireless features. Apple iPhone or iPod touch users can enjoy wireless printing photos using the HP iPrint Photo application, the first of its kind available for free on the Apple App Store. The new HP Photosmart printers will become available in September/October 2009 with prices starting at €79/£79.99 depending on model.

Bogen Imaging has announced two new retro styled tripods made by Gitzo. The Gitzo GK1380VQR and the Gitzo GK2380VQR both have a classic look, but both are high-tech pieces of equipment. The legs are made up of four segments, while there is a two-segment telescopic centre column that allows seamless height adjustment. The new Ground Level Set feature lets you remove the centre column to get the camera closer to the ground. The G-Lock leg locking system provides fast operation and safe locking. A new Power Disc, made of machined solid aluminium, features two locking screws - one to lock the head, the other to safely lock the disc onto the column. The GK1380VQR and GK2380VQR tripods differ from each other chiefly in their weight (1.9kg and 2.5kg, respectively), payload (4kg and 6kg) and price (€770 and €889).

Via photoscala

The Eizo ColorEdge CG243W is a new LCD monitor for pre-press, digital photography, video editing and post-production. This 24.1-inch widescreen monitor features an in-plane switching LCD panel with a native resolution of 1920x1200 pixels, and an aspect ratio of 8:5. The Eizo ColorEdge CG243W has a maximum brightness of 270 cd/m² and a contrast ratio of 850:1. With a DisplayPort connection, the monitor accepts 10-bit PC video signals and can display 1.07 billion colours, 64 times more than the typical 16.7 million colours most screens are capable of displaying. The Eizo ColorEdge CG243W offers hardware calibration, so the monitor itself is calibrated rather than the computer’s graphics card. The monitor is now shipping and available for €2079.

Via photoscala

Update: we have added Eizo’s official, English-language press release issued on 24 September 2009.

DxO Labs have announced the immediate availability of version 5.3.5 of its DxO Optics Pro software, which adds support to the new Sony A850. Another feature is better noise control for images taken at high ISO with the Sony Alpha 900. Plus, there are 85 new DxO Optics Modules that cover fisheye lenses, wide-angles, and prime lenses as well as many zooms such as the 15x Tamron AF18-270mm F/3.5-6.3 Di-II VC LD Aspherical (IF) Macro - a lens type for which DxO Optic Pro’s optical corrections are particularly efficient along its entire focal range, the company says. DxO Optics Pro v5.3.5 and upgrades are available immediately for Mac and Windows platforms from the DxO Labs e store (www.dxo.com) and from quality resellers. All customers who purchased DxO Optics Pro since August 1, 2007 are entitled to a free upgrade to version 5.3.5.

Speculatio in Vis, a photographic exhibition by Jason Pietra, is an investigation into the beauty, diversity and fragility of the natural world. “Pietra changes what would normally be seen as a grotesque subject matter of organs and insects, transforming them into beautiful objects. The viewer becomes lost in the beauty of the final image and begins to become blind to the subject. The juxtaposition of such beautiful depiction versus ugly object, encourages comparisons and parallels, creating and endlessly and transforming dialogue about our value system of nature, history and man,” says Nadia Vellam, photo editor of W Magazine. The exhibition runs from 18 September until 5 October 2009 in theprintspace gallery, London.

The lucky winners of our fantastic July 2009 Newsletter contest have been randomly selected from the PhotographyBLOG Newsletter subscriber list.

Kathryn McGrath wins a Unibind PhotoBook Creator, kindly provided by Unibind.

julie earnshaw, shihyen lo, Neal Humphris, peter marvelley and stacey treloar each win a GigaTribe.com 1 year Ultimate Version, kindly provided by GigaTribe.

James crampton, IA Brown and vind Mler each win a Unibind MyBook Collection, kindly provided by Unibind.

The winners of the August 2009 Photography Blog Competition have been selected by a panel of judges. The theme for August was “Curves” - you can view all of the entries in this gallery. Here are the 5 winners:

1st Place
Light spiral by blinds

Prize: i1Display 2
Kindly donated by X-Rite
http://www.xrite.com/

Professional Photographers of America (PPA) has announced its Super Monday photo event, featuring educational classes around the U.S.A., hosted by professional photographers for photographers. These classes are designed to be hands-on and deliver practical knowledge that students can put to work immediately. Getting photographers face-to-face in a small group, lab-like setting allows them to better learn techniques and practice with professional photographers who have successfully used the skills being taught. PPA members who teach classes earn merits toward photographic craftsman degrees. The Super Monday classes will be held on 26 October 2009.

Blurb, the creative publishing platform that allows anyone to design, publish, market and sell bookstore-quality books, and Twestival, a global series of events organised by volunteers, will publish the first-ever Twestival Global Event book, featuring the stories of the 150 participating cities and their event organisers. Each event will have a two-page spread in the book to tell their story and showcase their official Twestival charity. The book will be available for purchase in the Blurb Bookstore at http://www.blurb.com/twestival, and Blurb will donate $1 per book sold to a Twestival-approved non-profit organisation.

The final lecture in the PhotoVoice Lecture Series will be delivered by photojournalist Tom Stoddart. During a long and varied career he has witnessed such international events as the war in Lebanon, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the election of President Nelson Mandela, the bloody siege of Sarajevo and the wars against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Stoddart is represented by, and works closely with Getty Images, to produce powerful photo-essays on the serious world issues of our time. His lecture will be held at 7.30pm on Tuesday, 6 October 2009, in Conway Hall, South Place Ethical Society, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. Tickets are available for £10 in advance or £12 on the door.

Hahnemühle’s new Fine Art paper, Baryta FB, is a bright white inkjet photo paper with an extra smooth surface and glossy coating. The Baryta FB paper has allegedly been created at the request of traditionalist photographers who wanted something reminiscent of the traditional fiber based Baryta paper. This new Hahnemühle paper will be officially introduced at Photo Plus Expo in New York in late October. Meanwhile, Photo Rag® 460 gsm will be replaced by a Photo Rag® product with a base weight of 500 gsm, which will be available soon in the following formats: 24 x 30” and 35 x 46.75”, both as 25 sheet packages.

NewTech Infosystems (NTI) announced Media Maker 8, an all-in-one digital creativity suite that simplifies and complements today’s digital lifestyles by providing a single, low-cost solution for recording data, Blu-ray data, audio, photos and video on CD and DVD discs. For added value, NTI Media Maker includes a Video Converter to convert videos for playback on an iPod, PSP, Zune and other portable video players. With Video_TS split, the software can be used to create DVDs from the video collection stored on the user’s hard drive on one or more DVDs without losing any image quality. Media Maker also includes NTI Photo Maker which enables users to quickly import, edit and share their digital photos and slideshows. NTI Media Maker 8 can be used with Windows 2000/XP/Vista systems. Available at leading authorised NTI retailers worldwide as well as major online retailers and NTI’s online store at www.NTIus.com, Media Maker 8 has a suggested retail price of US$79.99.

Kubota Image Tools have announced Kevin Kubota’s 5th ‘Secret Italy’ professional photography workshop. The 2010 Secret Italy professional photography workshop attendees will tour Tuscany, Italy. The trip will begin with everyone meeting at the airport in Florence, Italy where attendees will then head west to Lucca. Highlights include excursions through Tuscany and then North along the Mediterranean Sea to visit Liguria and five coastal villages known as Cinque Terre, then Portofino and Genoa. There will be brief daily classroom time (1-2 hours) to discuss photo projects that will be assigned, talks about creativity followed by creative exercises, and the opportunity for participants to apply fine art Photoshop skills on their images. The cost of the 7-day trip is $2,995 for class attendees and $2,550 for non-class participants. The workshop will take place from 2-8 May 2010.

In the coming weeks, US photographers will have a number of opportunities to get hands-on experience with Phase One equipment. These include a Capture One for DSLR Users Seminar held in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco during the period 9 September - 2 October; an intensive two-day Capture One PRO workshop for intermediate to advanced users, held in New York; and a Phase One Master Class, an intensive location shooting road trip using Phase One digital cameras and Elinchrom lighting gear on a variety of locations in the Paso Robles area in California. Click through / read on for the details.

An advanced prototype of the Samsung NX camera and three lenses is being shown behind glass here at the IFA show in Germany. The NX camera looks more refined than the model that first made an appearance back at the PM show in March. At first glance the Samsung NX seems to be rivalling the likes of the Panasonic G1 / GH1 in terms of its size, despite having a larger APS-C sized sensor inside. Click through for some close-up shots of the high-end camera system that Samsung will be concentrating on for the immediate future.

The Fujifilm Real 3D camera was the centre of attention on the Fujifilm IFA booth. Looking very much like the finished product, the Fujifilm Real 3D is certainly a large device, being just about small enough to be held one-handed. The model name of Fujifilm’s first 3D camera may well be the Fujifilm Finepix W1, as the product box shown behind glass was prominently bearing that moniker.

The Samsung ST45 is a new ultra-slim camera measuring just 16mm thick. The 12 megapixel ST45 features an aluminium body, 2.7 inch LCD screen, ISO 3200 and digital image stabilisation. Samsung’s new “Smart Scene Recognition” technology offers 11 optimized picture pre-settings such as Portrait, Night portrait and Macro, and you can also use these settings when sorting through your photos. Face Detection, blink detection, smile mode and beauty shot are all present and correct, while the new Self Portrait & Frame Guide helps to capture better portraits. The ST45 is available in Red, Black, Blue and Grey from late September 2009.

The Sigma 70-300mm F4-5.6 DG OS is a new image stabilized telephoto zoom lens. Incorporating Sigma’s original OS (Optical Stabilizer), the 70-300mm F4-5.6 DG OS offers the use of shutter speeds approximately 4 stops slower than would otherwise be possible. The lens has an overall length of 126.5mm (5.0”), maximum diameter of 76.5mm (3.0”) and weight of just 610g, making it well-suited to travel photography. The Sigma 70-300mm’s rounded 9 blade diaphragm creates an attractive blur to the out of focus areas of the photograph and it has a minimum focusing distance of 150cm throughout the zoom range. The Sigma 70-300mm F4-5.6 DG OS will cost £399 and be available in late September for Sigma, Canon, Nikon, Pentax, and Sony cameras.

The Plustek OpticFilm 7600Ai, 7600iSE and 7400 are three new negative and transparency scanners. With a maximum resolution of 7200dpi, the Plustek 7400, 7600iSE and 7600Ai feature Multi Sampling to minimize noise, ACRTM (Adaptive Colour Restoration) to improve colour saturation on faded slides/negatives, and SRDTM (Smart Removal of Defects) to reduce and remove dust and scratch marks. For photographers looking for the best quality scans, the 7600 iSE incorporates an infra red scan to assist the infra red Smart Removal of Defects facility, whilst the 7600Ai version also incorporates Silver Fast Ai Studio software. The Plustek OpticFilm 7400, 7600iSE and 7600Ai are available now for £199.99, £269.99 and £379.99 respectively.