July 2013 news and reviews

Adobe has announced the latest 'release candidates' of Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop Lightroom, adding support for ten cameras - including preliminary support for the Canon EOS 70D and Sony RX100 II. The release candidates of Adobe Camera Raw v8.2 and Lightroom 5.2 also fix some bugs introduced in the previous versions. ACR v8.2 acts only as a camera and lens profile update for users of Photoshop CS6. Both are available to download from the Adobe Labs site, with the usual reliability caveats about release candidates. A release candidate of DNG converter 8.2 is also available.

The finalists in the annual Red Bull Illume photo contest have been revealed, and action and extreme sports never looked so good. A total of 250 finalists have been announced with entries in 10 different categories. Come August 29th, a winner will be crowned from 50 finalists invited to the reveal in Hong Kong. Click through and take a look at some of these incredible contenders for the grand prize.

Compact cameras, smartphones and mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras are getting seriously good these days, and for a lot of photographers, they're supplementing or even replacing older, bulkier DSLR kit. After he finished our recently-published review of the Fujifilm X100S, dpreview editor Barnaby Britton realized that he hadn't picked up his DSLR for months. In this short feature, he explains why.

Photo sharing site SmugMug has rolled out a totally redesigned website, which was 'rebuilt from the ground up'. The look-and-feel of the site is radically different, and somewhat resembles the recently redesigned Flickr. Some of the new features on SmugMug include a large selection of default templates for the consumer, plus the ability for pros to create their own custom designs. Organizing photos has been much improved as well, with a new drag-and-drop interface.  Follow the link to see what the new SmugMug looks like.

A campaign launched by Oxford University's Bodleian Libraries to acquire a valuable archive of images by photography pioneer Fox Talbot has been thrown a £200,000 lifeline. Campaigners want to 'save' the archive of images, which has been transferred to a New York dealer with an eye to selling it on the open market. If the campaign is successful, the historic collection will remain in the UK. The massive £200,000 (~$300K) donation takes the campaign to within £375,000 of its target of £2.25 million. Click through for more details. 

Think ants are only interested in crashing your summer picnic? When they're not after our stray watermelon slices, it seems they're busy in engaging in ant-to-ant combat. Alex Wild's macro photography reveals the warring nature (and surprisingly frightening jaws) of these seemingly unassuming insects. His photos reveal fights over territory, conflicts between colonies and brutal take-downs that rival UFC brawls - all going on otherwise unnoticed at our feet.

In this article, Seattle-based photographer Thomas Park shows how you can use Photoshop's layer 'blending modes' to remove stains and blemishes from scanned images, sharpen up your photographs and even warm up cold hands! (sort of). Click through for a link to the full article, 'Blending modes: Tools for post-processing'.

ACD Systems has extended the Raw support offered by its ACDSee Pro 6 and ACDSee 16 software packages. Version 6.3 of the Pro version and and ACDSee v16.1 gain support for an additional 14 cameras including the Canon EOS 100D and 700D, Nikon D7100 and Coolpix A, Sony NEX-3N and SLT-A58, Olympus XZ-10, and the Panasonic DMC-G6. This update also includes performance improvements. Click through for more information.

Fujifilm has posted firmware version 3.01 for the X-Pro1, which resolves a bug in the recently-released v3.00 that caused movies to be recorded incorrectly under some circumstances. It's otherwise the same, meaning that it promises faster AF speed, and adds a 'peaking' display mode to aid manual focus, compared to prevous versions. Click through for the download link.     

Unified Color Technologies has announced HDR Expose 3 and 32 Float 3 - the latest versions of its HDR software. HDR Expose is the company's stand-alone software, which works in the company's 'Beyond RGB' 32-bit color space and attempts to manipulate chroma and luminance data separately, while 32 Float is a Photoshop plugin built on the same principles. The latest versions gain improved tone mapping tools that attempt to retain local contrast while increasing the overall range of tones included in the final image, along with upgraded alignment and de-ghosting.

Canon has introduced two Pixma printers, the  MG2420 All-in-One and MG3520 Wireless Photo. The Pixma MG3520 supports printing via WiFi networks as well as Apple's AirPrint feature, allowing direct printing from many iOS devices. It also offers auto duplexing and Canon's FastFront ink and paper loading. Both models provide Full HD Movie Print with compatible Canon cameras and ship with My Image Garden photo organization and sharing software. Click through for the full press release and pricing.

Last Friday, while orbiting Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft turned its camera lens on earth from almost a billion miles away. NASA has released the images, which show not only Saturn and its rings, but also the Earth in the (very far) distance. The original 'raw' images taken by the spacecraft are grayscale, but astronomy enthusiast Valerie Klavans has converted some of them and added color. The results look pretty spectacular. Check them out after the link.

As Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge celebrate the birth of a baby son (OMG! #shinynewprince), official Royal photographer for The Sun (that's the British tabloid newspaper) has shared some tips for photographing babies. Arthur Edwards knows what he's talking about, having photographed the proud father, William, when he was an infant. Click through for some of Edwards' top tips for photographing babies - assuming of course that you're not utterly bored of the whole thing by now. 

A prototype for a new DSLR add-on is poised to bring plenoptic capabilities to consumer cameras. The KaleidoCamera is designed to sit between a standard DSLR's sensor and lens. A diffuser splits light passing through the lens into nine different beams, each passing through a filter before it reaches the camera's sensor. Click through to read on about this prototype's capabilities and potential applications.

Photography has been around for almost two hundred years, but amazingly, it's only in the past couple of decades that it has gained widespread acceptance as an artform. These days, images by significant photographers command very high prices. But just how high is 'very high'? Internet community FreeYork.org has published a list of the ten most expensive photos ever sold. Click through for the list.

We've been fans of Aaron Johnson's comic strip 'What the Duck' for years. 'WTD' is one of the best satirical comic strips in the world, and it's published here every week, as well as being included in our weekly newsletter. Barbed, topical and always amusing, we hope you enjoy WTD as much as we do. Click through for one from Aaron's archive. Appropriate this week, we think...

Nikon has released distortion correction data v1.009, adding support for additional lenses for the D4, D90, D600, D800, D800E, D3100, D3200, D5000, D5100, D5200, D7000 and D7100. The latest update means these cameras can now correct distortion in 107 Nikkor lenses. The latest update includes recent launches such as the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 18-35mm f/3.5-4.5G ED and can be downloaded from Nikon's global website.

With newspapers laying off photographers and picture editors, and the rise of 'citizen journalism', can traditional photojournalism survive? Nonprofit news organization Mother Jones has published an interesting interview with photographer Fred Richin, whose new book 'Bending the Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary and the Citizen' aims to explore the current state of the profession, and answer some of the questions about its future. Click through for extracts from the interview, and a link to the full article. 

The 2013 UK Picture Editors Guild Awards are now open for entries. Amateur photographers can show off their skills by entering the 'BT Citizen Photographer of the Year' category; images must have been taken between July 17th, 2012 and July 16, 2013, and the final date for submission of entries is September 1, 2013. Meanwhile professionals can enter images into a range of categories, for a £20 fee. Click through for full details and entry links. 

Florida-based photographer and blogger Olivier Duong has concluded his examination of so-called 'gear acquisition syndrome' with an article that explains how he broke free from his addiction. Starting with the mantra 'there is more to photography than gear', Duong describes how he make a conscious effort to appreciate the equipment he already owns, and to concentrate on using it to improve his photography. Click through for more details.

Sensor maker Aptina has given more details of its Clarity+ technology that it claims will offer a 1EV improvement in sensitivity over conventional sensors. The company believes it has found a way to use clear pixels to capture more light while retaining the image quality of a standard Bayer sensor. Although initially intended for smartphone sized sensors, the company says it could have applications in larger formats. Find out more over at connect.dpreview.com

Online product reviews are a huge part of our lives these days, and often, they're the nearest thing we get to a 'hands on experience' before we buy something. But how do we know they're honest? Dishonest reviews are a serious problem for retailers (and indeed for content websites like dpreview.com) and a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been investigating why people are driven to leave reviews of products that they haven't actually used. Their findings might just surprise you. Click through to read more. 

Our friends and collaborators over at DxOMark have been investigating Samsung's NX system, and have recently published reviews of the NX210 and NX300 cameras, alongside an article covering how the company's lenses measure up in comparison to those from the Sony NEX system. Other reviews on the site this week include lens tests on Nikon super-telephoto primes, an assessment of the Sony RX100 II's new back-illuminated CMOS sensor, and the first installment of a multi-part article looking into which lenses score best on the Canon EOS 6D. Click through for the links.

Ever since Harold Edgerton photographed a bullet tearing through an apple, it seems the urge to document these split seconds of destruction has not flagged. In photographer Jon Smith’s case, his victims are lightbulbs filled with colorful objects. He creates the images using a DSLR, a pellet gun and a relatively inexpensive lighting setup all in his garage. Click through for more details. 

Florida-based photographer Olivier Duong has expanded his ongoing examination of so-called 'Gear Acquisition Syndrome' with a description of how he overcame his own personal addiction to buying photographic equipment. Categorizing G.A.S. as a 'habit', Duong identifies three components - trigger, routine, and reward, and describes how he went about overcoming his addition by 'changing the routine [but] keeping the trigger, and the reward'. Click through for more details. 

DxO Labs has updated its distortion-correction software Viewpoint to version 1.2.1, meaning it's now compatible with Adobe Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5. Viewpoint works both as standalone software and as a plug-in, and is designed to correct for perspective distortions such as converging verticals, and to restore more natural proportions to objects at the edge of the frame when shooting with wideangle lenses. The company has also announced that all of its software is on sale at reduced prices until 31st July. Click through for more info and download links.

In the aftermath of Andy Murray's historic victory at Wimbledon 2013, Nikon UK has been explaining how its cameras were used in a robotics setup to capture images from unique angles during the championship. The system was developed in partnership with Mark Roberts Motion Control, and operated by photographer Bob Martin. It used a Nikon D4 mounted on the roof above Centre Court, with 200-400mm and 80-400mm lenses. Click through to see some of the resultant images.

We've been fans of Aaron Johnson's comic strip 'What the Duck' for years. 'WTD' is one of the best satirical comic strips in the world, and it's published here every week, as well as being included in our weekly newsletter. Barbed, topical and always amusing, we hope you enjoy WTD as much as we do. Click through for this week's strip.

Pentax has announced firmware updates to two of its tiny Q-series interchangeable lens cameras, the original Q and last year's Q10. Firmware version 1.13 for the Q and 1.02 for the Q10 add support for the PENTAX-07 Mount Shield Lens, and bring 'improved stability for general performance'. Click through for links to download the new firmware. 

Sigma has posted an informative article on its blog by photographer Jack Howard, sharing tips on how to photograph fireworks. The article comes just in time for the 4th of July celebrations in the USA, but is equally relevant to various festivals, year-wide, all over the world. Tips include obvious pointers like making sure you have a good, sturdy tripod, but also more detailed advice about how to set up your camera's exposure and focus modes, as well as how to trigger exposures. Click through for a link to the article at blog.sigmaphoto.com.

Our friends and collaborators over at DxOMark have been looking into how lenses score on specific cameras, and their latest round-up takes a look at Sony's 24MP full frame flagship, the SLT-A99. The article covers 22 lenses, including both current models from the likes of Sony, Sigma and Zeiss, and some older Konica Minolta optics. They've published a number of reviews of new Sony-mount lenses alongside, including the 300mm F2.8 G II SSM telephoto and the Tamron SP 24-70mm F2.8 Di USD, plus the ZEISS Touits for NEX cameras. Click through for the links.    

Hot on the heels of Carl Zeiss's decision to become simply Zeiss, Pentax Ricoh has decided that from August 1st it will be known simply as Ricoh. It's not all bad news for Pentax fans though - the brand name will continue to be used on the company's SLRs and interchangeable lens cameras. Meanwhile the Ricoh name will be used for compact cameras and, cryptically, 'new technological innovations'.