Co-operative Xest’s talking photo album allows you to record a ten-second message to accompany each picture. The album accommodates up to twenty-four photos of 4x6” size, and lets you put a name to the people, places and events in each of them - a great tool for jogging your memory and preventing arguments in the family over when and where the shots were taken, the company says. When viewing the photos, all you need to do is press the play button to hear the message for the photo you’re viewing. Powered by two AAA sized battteries, the talking photo album is available online for £39.88.

Website: Talking Photo Album at Co-operative Xest

LifePics have announced the option for retailers to offer hundreds of new online photo book options to consumers via LifePics-powered retail photo sites. This means that LifePics’ online photo book offering has increased to a total of 450 possible books, allegedly the largest number available to retailers on the Web. The new additions include several in-house options that retailers can print on a variety of creative printing solutions that LifePics integrates with, including HP’s Photo Center, HP’s Indigo printers, Noritsu’s D701, several Xerox printers, and others. LifePics also added new book options via Proven Direct, a wholesaler that specializes in high-end custom cover wrap-around and lay-flat books.

The Fashion 360, Powered by Nikon is an intricate technical rig of fifty D700 cameras timed at different intervals to capture celebrities on the red carpet from an innovative visual “surround sound” perspective. In collaboration with production company Big Freeze, the Fashion 360, Powered by Nikon will allow viewers at home to experience a 360-degree view of their favourite celebrities. Many of the Fashion 360, Powered by Nikon images will appear throughout the broadcast and online in an exclusive photo gallery on http://movieawards.mtv.com, offering viewers at home an opportunity to check out the latest in Hollywood fashion trends up close.

Website: Watch the making of Fashion 360

According to Dublin-based market research company Research and Markets, product penetration for digital still cameras has reached at least 48% in the USA. Affordable and easy-to-use digital cameras have transformed how U.S. consumers use photography, changing it from something used to document important occasions like weddings and trips to an integral part of everyday life, the company notes in its new report, “Still and Video Cameras in the United States 2009”. The high penetration figure may indicate that the market is becoming increasingly saturated, and makes it challenging to maintain revenue growth.

Santa Fe Photographic Workshops celebrate 20 years of instruction for the photographic community. The growth and success of the Workshops is attributed to attracting some of the world’s most influential photographers as instructors, the steadfast dedication of its talented staff, and developing new programs and partnerships. Starting with 27 workshops and 287 participants in its first season, the Workshops has grown more than 600% to offer over 200 workshops attended by 2,000 participants annually. With campuses in Santa Fe and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, programs extend around the world through photographic journeys in such regions as Tuscany, Bali, Provence, Ireland, Australia, Oaxaca, Tanzania, and Morocco. Week-long workshops are taught by talented, world-renown photographers such as Sam Abell, Joyce Tenneson, Platon, Nevada Wier, Nadav Kander, Julieanne Kost, Joe McNally, and Greg Gorman.

Website: Santa Fe Workshops

Cecil Beaton: Portraits is an exhibition of nearly 50 portraits by one of the most famous photographers of the 20th century. The exhibition, which is going to take place from 26 June - 31 August 2009 in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, reflects the astonishing talents of the photographer who was also a writer, artist, designer, actor, caricaturist, illustrator and diarist. He photographed a dazzling array of superstars and leading personalities ranging from the Queen to Mick Jagger, Marilyn Monroe to Audrey Hepburn and Winston Churchill to Lucian Freud. His long career covered an era of great change from the Roaring Twenties to the dawn of the New Romantics. His early photographs were published in society magazines The Sketch, Tatler and Eve from 1925 onwards. In 1927, 23-year-old Beaton secured a contract with Vogue to provide portraits, caricatures and social commentary. His career – with the exception of two short breaks – continued with Vogue for the rest of his life.

Blurb is hosting a Photography Book Workshop series this June, featuring photographer Dan Milnor, graphic designer Bob Aufuldish, and Lightroom guru Jerry Courvoisier. These 4-hour workshops, preceded by an opportunity to have your work reviewed, will cover the principals of book design, editing your images in Lightroom for optimum results, and how to use Blurb books to promote your work. Each workshop is £30 standalone, or £50 including the portfolio review. The first Blurb workshop will be held on 22 June at Cayley Theatre, University of Westminster.

Website: Blurb Photobook Workshop

The ATP GPS PhotoFinder Pro is a new device that allows you to geotag all of your photos. Designed for use with geotagging sites and software such as iPhoto, Flickr, Picasa3, Locr, SmugMug, Panoramio, Google Earth, and Google Maps and compatible with with more than 450 models of digital cameras, the ATP GPS PhotoFinder Pro provides easy geotagging without a PC or a need to go through complicated software installation processes. To use it, you first need to make sure there is no discrepancy between the time your digital camera is set on and the UTC time used by the Global Positioning System. Then all you need to do is take the PhotoFinder Pro along for the day’s shooting, then insert your memory card into the PhotoFinder Pro to geotag your photos. The MSRP is $119, and availability is slated for mid-July.

Website: ATP PhotoFinder Microsite

Critically acclaimed photojournalist Simon Norfolk is going to deliver a lecture on 11 June in London, as part of the PhotoVoice Lecture Series. The lecture will cover a number of topics ranging from early photojournalism to the “sublime awfulness of modern weapons systems”, from 18th century Romantic paintings to the questions of how to photograph a nuclear missile and how to “yomp 12,000 watts of lighting through the jungles of the Yucatan”. The lecture will be held at Conway Hall, South Place Ethical Society, 25 Red Lion Square, starting at 7:30pm on Thursday, 11 June. Tickets are £10 in advance and £12 on the door.

Website: Online Booking

Kate Labs have released Frame 1.0, a piece of software developed for testing digital cameras and lenses. The application is available for Mac OS X and Windows, and offers a graphical user interface as well as a command line prompt. Frame 1.0 can be used to conduct tests of exposure, signal-to-noise ratio, dynamic range, tonal range, colour sensitivity, resolution and vignetting. All results can be exported to standard ASCII, XML, HTML, and CSV documents, which enables compatibility with third-party applications. The price is €99 and a 14-day trial version is also available.

Website: Kate Labs

Online photo site snapizzi, the one-stop shop for portrait and event photographers, today announced that it has added an array of new web tools and print products. The photo site recently added a suite of high-quality print products that includes a variety of formats (matte, gloss, lustre) as well as a wide choice of print sizes (from wallet to 20”x30”).  snapizzi also added an FTP uploader that allows high-volume photographers to upload hundreds of photos at a time – up to 4 GBs worth, since most photographers allegedly use 4-GB memory cards.

The winners and finalists of the second International Garden Photographer of the Year competition are featured in a new exhibition, which is now open at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The exhibition displays over 100 images from the second International Garden Photographer of the Year competition, specially printed and created for viewing outside in the delights of the Kew Gardens situated between the Pavilion Restaurant and the Pagoda. The exhibition will be on display at Kew Gardens until 3 September 2009.

ViewSonic has announced a new line of digital photo frames called TrueView. The new product family includes the 10.4” VFD1020, 8” VFD820 and 7” VFD720 digital frames, which all feature an aspect ratio of 4:3. The two smaller frames have an 800x600 high-resolution LCD panel, which is particularly unique for the 7” frame class since most frames this size on the market today do not offer such high resolution, ViewSonic claims. The 10.4” model coming in June will offer 1024x768 resolution. The frames are compatible with CompactFlash, MMC and MemoryStick cards and come with 2GB of internal memory as well as a USB 2.0 port. ViewSonic’s new digital photo frame line will be available in the second half of 2009, at $129.99 for the 10.4”, $89.99 for the 8” and $79.99 for the 7” models.

Adobe Systems, Apple, Hewlett Packard, Nikon, Nik Software, Wacom and X-Rite have joined forces for a unique, nine-city Creative Alliance Tour across Europe. The tour has been set up to provide creative professionals with a comprehensive insight into a complete digital workflow. A full-day seminar will take place at each city stop, hosted by renowned photo professionals and “evangelists” - Robin Preston, Boudewijn Krijger and Guy Gowan, among others. The seminars will consist of inspirational presentations and in-depth technical workshops, with the opportunity to share questions and experiences with the experts. The Creative Alliance Tour will begin in autumn 2009, with stops in the Netherlands, UK, Spain, France, Germany and Italy.

Website: Creative Alliance Tour

Sigma have released a firmware update for the Sigma DP2 digital compact camera. Version 1.01 promises improved AF accuracy and addresses the issue of intermittent camera freeze under certain conditions. The Sigma DP2 is a compact camera with a fixed 41mm equivalent f/2.8 lens and a nearly APS-C sized Foveon sensor, boasting a resolution of 3 x 4.7 million pixels.

Website: Firmware Download | Sigma DP2

Sony have announced two new, slim and stylish digital compact cameras, the Cyber-shot W180 and the Cyber-shot W190. These easy-to-use snappers feature a 3x zoom lens, a 2.7” LCD screen, Face Detection, Smile Shutter and SteadyShot image stabilisation, and come in silver, black and red colours. The Sony Cyber-shot W180 is a 10-megapixel model, while the W190 boasts 12.1 million pixels. Both models will become available from July.

Starting June, Digital Camera Buyer magazine will be sold under the title Digital Camera Essentials. The renamed magazine features the same in-depth reviews, hands-on group tests and 25-page buyers’ guide it has become famous for, but also now incorporates a large photo techniques section and editing tutorial. Along with the new name and a new look for the magazine, June will also see the launch of a new subscriptions offer for Digital Camera Essentials.

Canon have announced a new firmware update for the EOS 5D Mark II DSLR camera that will enable manual exposure control when shooting video. Available for download from 2nd June 2009, the 5D Mark II firmware update will include the following manual controls when shooting video:

- Full aperture selection
- ISO speed: Auto, 100 – 6400 and H1
- Shutter speed: 1/30th – 1/4000th second

Manual exposure control while shooting video on the EOS 5D Mark II is expected to make a big impact with cinematographers and videographers using the 5D Mark II for high-end HD video production.

Other World Computing has announced the OWC Mercury On-The-Go Pro, claimed to be the largest capacity, fastest bus powered portable storage solution on the market. The Mercury On-The-Go Pro is a new line of 500GB 7200RPM pocket-sized portable storage devices for Mac or PC users featuring FireWire 800, FireWire 400, and/or USB 2.0 interfaces for data transfer speeds up to 100MB/s. The line features three models, including a “Triple Interface” model for FireWire 800/400 and USB 2.0 ($239.99); a “Combo Interface” model for FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 ($219.99); and a USB 2.0 model (starting at $189.99).