LaCie has announced three new lines of mobile and desktop hard drive bags – LaCie Cover, LaCie Coat (pictured) and LaCie Cozy, all designed by Sam Hecht. The LaCie Cover provides a soft, thin, and comfortable second skin for your hard drive. The LaCie Coat offers a padded bubble pattern, adding style and protection for mobile and desktop hard drives. The innovative design allows users to reverse the Coat, revealing the inner suede fabric, for two bags in one. The LaCie Cozy offers a sturdy outer layer for the ultimate hard drive protection. Made of EVA, LaCie Cozy has a rigid exterior to withstand everyday bumps and bruises of the outside world. The LaCie Cover, Coat, and Cozy come in various colours and sizes including: 2.5” bags, which can hold mobile hard drives; and 3.5” bags that are ideal for desktop hard drives and their accessories. Customers can choose from a variety of colours including: black, gray, red, orange (for the Coat) and red, black, and gray (for the Cozy). The hard drive bags will be available through the LaCie Online Store, LaCie Reseller+ or LaCie Corner starting at the suggested retail price of £9.90 VAT included.

ACDSee Pro 3 is now available for public beta testing. ACD Systems International expects several thousand professionals to participate in the beta period and lend feedback in the development process, much like the 2,500 testers who helped shape the Pro 2 version. Anticipated for full release in the fall, ACDSee Pro 3 retains the same fast and flexible features photographers rely upon for their creative work and incorporates an enhanced user experience built around the key steps of managing, viewing and processing images.

Website: ACDSee Pro 3 Beta Downloads

Avanquest has released Avanquest SendPhotos, a new free application that enables Apple iPhone users to take a photo, back it up online and share the image with friends instantly all through one click of a button. The new iPhone application automates instantaneous photo uploads to the SendPhotos personal portal for organising an entire photo collection online, making images easily accessible to friends, families and business associates. Moreover, the iPhone application’s built-in photo editor allows colour and contrast adjustments to images and provides the ability to annotate, crop and ‘smudge’ out parts of a photo. Also unveiled today is the SendPhotos iPhoto Plug-in for the popular Mac Photo Gallery application, which gives users of the popular iLife ’09 iPhoto Macintosh application a simple one-step method for publishing of photos to the SendPhotos service.

ExpoImaging and One Model Place, the world’s largest online portfolio and talent community have announced the winners of their contest to find the best photos shot using ExpoImaging’s Ray Flash Ring Light Adapter. Photographer Hector Perez was awarded first place for his close-up glamour portrait. Second place winner, JD Millazo, was selected for his outdoor fashion shot. The Ray Flash is a lightweight adapter that converts your hot shoe flash into a ring light. Weighing less than a pound, the Ray Flash attaches in seconds by sliding onto the head of the flash. Once installed, you can shoot manually, or use your camera’s TTL functions. The versatility of the Ray Flash makes it ideally suited for use in fashion, portrait and macro photography as either a main, or fill light.

Today LaCie announced two design USB Hubs for mobility and desktop convenience – LaCie Core4 (pictured) and LaCie Core7. The LaCie Core4 includes four USB ports, three external USB and a built-in mini-USB cable. The LaCie Core7 has six USB ports, as well as the built-in extractible mini-USB cable for mobile device connectivity and charging. The LaCie Core4 is available in 3 different colours, Warm Gray, Blue and Orange, and the LaCie Core7 is available in Warm Gray, and can be purchased through the LaCie Online Store, LaCie Reseller+ or LaCie Corner starting at the suggested retail price of £9.90 for the Core4 and £19.90 for the Core7 including VAT.

JVC have just released the JVC Xiview LT-42WX70, an ultra-slim, wide-gamut flat-panel LCD monitor targeted at DSLR users. The 42”, 120Hz 1080p LCD TV monitor features expanded colour space capacity encompassing 100 percent of HDTV broadcasting’s sRGB.904 colour space and a coverage rate of 96 percent for Adobe RGB.  Digital photos taken using the Adobe RGB colour space and displayed on the LT-42WX70 in the Adobe RGB mode will allegedly be reproduced with colours faithful to the original. Moreover,  the LT-42WX70 also features 52 picture-quality adjustment properties for tweaking both still and video images to the exact colours and tones the user prefers. For example, individual colour management settings of red, yellow, green, cyan tints and colours, as well as skin tone tint can be adjusted on-screen using the supplied remote controller. The JVC LT-42WX70 is available now and is priced at $2,399.95.

Pentax Japan has posted a selection of official sample images taken with the recently announced Pentax K-7 DSLR. You can download four full-resolution sample photographs taken with three different lenses, the smc PENTAX-DA?55mmF1.4 SDM (pictured), the smc PENTAX-DA?50-135mmF2.8ED[IF]SDM and the smc PENTAX-DA 12-24mmF4ED AL[IF]. All of the photos were captured at ISO 100.

Website: Official Pentax K-7 Samples

Blue Earth and The Ansel Adams Gallery have teamed up to bring the work of eight fine art landscape photographers to the Mumm Napa Gallery in Rutherford, California, for an exhibition entitled “Changing Earth: Photographers’ Call to Action”. The exhibition opens on 19 September 2009 and will be displayed for six months. The works depict endangered cultures, threatened environments and topics of social concern.  Their subjects include the Amazon, Colorado River Delta, wildlife corridors, the effect of climate change on local people, wildlife rescue, Siberia defrosted, animals in captivity and Earth as inspiration.

The top 100 finalists in the Hasselblad 2009 Masters Awards Competition have been selected and their images are now online for viewing and voting by the public. Photographers from China, Japan, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, India, Canada, the United States, Italy, Australia, Germany, and other countries have captured images that reflect 10 categories: architectural, editorial, fashion/beauty, fine art, general, landscapes/nature, portrait, products, upcoming, and wedding/social. This year, for the first time, judging is open to the public. A special online gallery and voting area allow website visitors to vote for their favorite photographers and images. The public will serve as an additional “jury member,” helping the Masters Jury select semi-finalists and finalists.

Website: Hasselblad Masters 2009 Online Gallery

Hi-Den Vision has introduced the Tiny Hi-Def Photo Player, claimed to be the smallest photo / media player for viewing photos in large HDTVs of up to 1080p resolution. Measuring just 48x101x16mm, the Tiny Hi-Def Photo Player accepts external hard disks and flash drives via its USB 2.0 port and allows photographers on the go to play back their shots on the TV set in their hotel room. The player is available now and costs $42.99 plus shipping.

Panasonic has released a firmware upgrade to the Lumix G Vario 14-45mm f3.5-5.6 ASPH Mega O.I.S. lens. Version 1.1 improves AF performance when taking still photographs in continuous AF mode, and also enhances the performance of the AF and Mega O.I.S. (optical Image Stabiliser) systems while reducing noise of aperture control for taking movies. The latter improvements apply to those cases when the lens is mounted to the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1.

Website: Lens Update Service

Nik Software has announced that Dfine 2.0, its plug-in offering photographers advanced and powerful noise reduction for their digital images, is now available for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 and higher. “Dfine 2.0 now joins Sharpener Pro 3.0, Viveza, Color Efex Pro 3.0 and Silver Efex Pro and completes the Lightroom update for our entire line of software plug-ins for photographers,” said Michael J. Slater president and CEO of Nik Software. This update, like previous Lightroom compatibility releases, is offered to Dfine 2.0 users at no additional cost.

Website: Dfine 2.0

“The Obama Time Capsule”, billed by its producers as the first customisable photo book ever, is now available for purchase. HP and Against All Odds Productions (AAO) have teamed up to produce “The OBAMA Time Capsule”, chronicling Barack Obama’s journey to the White House through the first 100 days in office. HP’s “Print on Demand” technology allows users to upload their personal photos, personalise a dedication page, add themselves as one of the authors of the book and personalise pages with their own thoughts on this time in history. Copies can be ordered starting today exclusively on Amazon.com. The book retails for $65.00 but is $39.95 for the first 10,000 books purchased.

Website: The Obama Time Capsule

The final submission deadline of the DK Travel PhotoBritain competition is getting closer and closer, so enter your photos while you can. The competition spans 4 categories; Iconic, Heritage, Wild, or My Britain and it encourages UK photographers to submit photos that showcase what Britain has to offer. Submissions close on 31st May.

Website: DK Eyewitness Travel PhotoBritain

Panasonic has announced that it will launch new SDHC memory cards with Class 10 speed specification in Europe and other markets from the end of May, 2009. Class 10 is a new speed specification standardised by SD Card Association as part of SD Card Specification Ver.3.0 to meet the requirement for higher resolution consecutive shooting and large-sized high definition video shooting. The Panasonic GOLD line series are set to become the world’s first memory cards to adopt this new speed class. A large volume of AVCHD Full HD video data fully written on a new Gold card can be transferred to a PC approx. 40% faster compared to the current Class 4 card, Panasonic says. The new cards will be available in the UK from June 2009.

Adobe has released its Photoshop Camera Raw 5.4 Release Candidate, available immediately as a free download for existing customers of Photoshop CS4, Photoshop Elements 7, Premiere Elements 7 and Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac. The Camera Raw 5.4 Release Candidate extends raw file support to an additional 26 camera and camera back models including the Canon EOS 500D (EOS Rebel T1i), Epson R-D1x, Kodak EasyShare Z980, Nikon D5000, Olympus E-620, Olympus E-450, Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1, Sigma DP2 and 18 Hasselblad models.

Website: Adobe Camera Labs

Samsung have released the Samsung SPF-87H, an ultra-thin digital photo frame.  The Samsung SPF-87H is only 23mm thick and features an 8-inch wide screen and 1GB of internal memory plus an SD slot for expanded storage. The screen boasts a contrast ratio of 500:1 and a resolution of 800x480 pixels. In addition to running photo slide shows in a variety of formats, the SPF-87H can be linked to a computer and serve as a secondary mini-monitor. With its Power Saving feature, the photo frame runs on minimal power through its USB cable. With an MSRP of US$129, the SPF-87H is now available from Fry’s Electronics and Amazon.com.