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It hasn't been that long since Canon ran its spring cashback promotion, with rebates on purchases of its higher-end cameras and lenses luring you to part with your hard-earned pennies. Now the summer cashback scheme is in full swing, with money back available on purchases of 700D, 600D, 100D, and EOS M cameras. As well being able to claim between £30 and £50 back on interchangeable lens cameras, there are also eight lenses with a maximum rebate of £55 available, Speedlites with £20 back, and some compact cameras, camcorders, and printers thrown into the mix. If you were to buy two promoted products within in the same transaction, you're eligible to claim a further £30. The focus for Canon seems to be on unit sales, with the constant stream of promotions. Once you've got someone hooked into a system, they do tend to stay there, I suppose. The promotion runs until 31 July. All of the details are accessible on Canon's website . show less

Article and images - © John Neel Continued from Part 2 The image above, shows the approximate area covered by the Sony NEX APS size sensor in comparison to the final image capture. The RhinoCam is designed to approximate a 645 medium format digital capture. The secret is that the lens is in a fixed position. The lens itself does not move during the capture. Instead, the digital camera body moves relative to the image circle projected by the lens. To shoot the image, eight image frames are shot in the following order. The exposures are set at overlapping intervals, which once stitched, become a full scale, high-resolution image file. The image below is intentionally shown upside down to illustrate how the image is actually projected by the lens used on the RhinoCam. Frame 1 records the lower right side of the scene. In the sequence, frames 1, 2, 3 and 4 record the lower half of the image scene while frames 5, 6, 7 and 8 record the top. Frame 8 records the upper right side. Using this sequence makes it easy for the software to stitch the images together. Focusing is easily accomplished using the Electronic Viewfinder (EVF) on the Sony NEX while focusing the medium format lens. Here is a video produced by Fotodiox, which describes how to use the RhinoCam.     To find out more about how this kind of image is created please continue to Part 4. Coming soon! Learn how to play with different adaptors, lenses and other imaging techniques from my book.   Buy my book here:  Rethinking Digital Photography    AND FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER. PLEASE NOTE: THIS WORK IS PART OF MY PERSONAL PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTFOLIO. IT IS HOPED THAT YOU WILL RESPECT WHAT I HAVE DONE AND HONOR MY COPYRIGHT. I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON THIS AND ALL OF MY PROJECTS FOR SOME TIME. THE IMAGES ARE A PART OF A MUCH LARGER BODY OF MY WORK. I SHOW IT HERE AS A WAY TO INSPIRE YOU TO DO YOUR OWN PROJECTS, USING YOUR OWN IDEAS. PHOTOGRAPHY IS NOT ABOUT COPYING OR STEALING CONCEPTS OR TECHNIQUES. IT IS ABOUT UTILIZING YOUR TALENTS FOR CREATING YOUR OWN UNIQUE IMAGERY AND ABOUT YOUR OWN WAY OF SEEING THE WORLD. RESPECT THE WORKS OF ALL ARTISTS. DO NOT PLAGIARIZE ANYONE'S ART. NOTICE:  UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED, THIS POSTING AS WELL AS ANY AND ALL PHOTOGRAPHS, GALLERY IMAGES, AND ILLUSTRATIONS ARE THE LEGAL COPYRIGHTED © WORKS OF - JOHN NEEL AND ARE NOT TO BE USED ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, FOR ANY PURPOSE WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT FROM THE WRITER, THE PHOTOGRAPHER AND/OR PIXIQ. THE IDEAS EXPRESSED ARE THE PROPERTY OF THE PHOTOGRAPHER AND THE AUTHOR. PLEASE NOTE: MANY OF THE PRODUCTS DISCUSSED HEREIN HAVE BEEN REQUESTED FROM THEIR MANUFACTURERS FOR THE PURPOSE OF REVIEW AND/OR TO BE USED ARTISTICALLY AND PROFESSIONALLY BY THE AUTHOR AS A MEANS TO ILLUSTRATE THEIR USAGE AS TOOLS FOR THE PRODUCTION OF ARTISTIC PHOTOGRAPHIC WORKS.   "IMAGINATION IS WHAT MAKES IMAGES UNIQUE"       show less

French slideshow maker Aquafadas has announced Mothers Days deals for it's PulpMotion and KidsMotion software at USD$24.50 and USD$12.50 repectively. The easy to use Mac slideshow maker contains hundreds of themes and a simple drag and drop interface. Add photos, video and music to a chosen theme to quickly create an engaging slideshow. Sharing is easy too: PulpMotion’s export menu allows users to share their creations easily with friends and family by simply exporting to their iPhone, YouTube, iDVD, Apple TV and more. KidsMotion is aimed at children creating their own slideshows too, so the fun is not just for adults.  Offer is valid until May14th. show less

Adobe have announced that the next version of Photoshop will be Photoshop CC, not CS7. With the emphasis switched to the Cloud from last year, CS6 marks the end of an era for Adobe. In Future Photoshop will be cloud only with constant updating, rather than a new version every 18-24 months. This means that new features will be available as soon as the work on them is complete, rather than waiting for the cycle to come around again.  To sweeten the deal, owners of CS3, CS4, CS5 and CS6 can get a single app subscription to Photoshop for $9.99. As Lightroom is also part of Creative Cloud, users may be concerned about Lightroom 5 being a CC only product. 'Not so', says Tom Hogarty, Lightroom Product Manager. 'Lightroom 5 will continue to be available as a standalone product, available for purchase as an Electronic Software Download(ESD) or as a boxed product with a traditional perpetual license.' show less

To celebrate the release of my book later this month, Surreal Photography: Creating the Impossible, it seemed entirely appropriate that this month's competition theme should be surreal. We're not picky about the type of surrealism you want to enter: it can be a battle of gods and monsters from a universe undiscovered, painstakngly composited in Photoshop; or you can submit an infrared picture that puts us at five degrees to the world we know. You can use Photoshop manipulation, in-camera cleverness, or just construct a surreal scene from papier-mâché. The method doesn't matter, what we want is a well-executed image with a strong story. Entries (one per person) must be submitted to the May thread of the Small Aperture Flickr pool before Friday 31 May. And the winner will walk away with a copy of my book. The Rules are here for your reference, but if you've any questions, please just ask. Oh, and good luck! The Rules If you decide to enter, you agree to The Rules. You can’t be related to either me, Haje, or Gareth to enter. One entry per person – so choose your best! Entries need to be submitted to the right place, which is the relevant monthly thread within the Small Aperture Flickr group. There’s a closing date for entries, so make sure you’ve submitted before then. You have to own the copyright to your entry and be at liberty to submit it to a competition. Using other people’s photos is most uncool. It probably goes without saying, but entries do need to be photographs. It’d be a bit of strange photo competition otherwise. Don’t do anything icky – you know, be obscene or defame someone or sell your granny to get the photo. We (that being me, Haje, and Gareth) get to choose the winner and we’ll do our best to do so within a week of the competition closing. You get to keep all the rights to your images. We just want to be able to show off the winners (and maybe some honourable mentions) here on Pixiq. Entry is at your own risk. I can’t see us eating you or anything, but we can’t be responsible for anything that happens to you because you submit a photo to our competition. We are allowed to change The Rules, or even suspend or end the competition, if we want or need to. Obviously we’ll try not to, but just so that you know. show less

Today at its Adobe Max creative conference event, the company announced that when its new software hits—well, not shelves—this June, they will be available as cloud based subscriptions only. Along with the cloud-based subscription model, Creative Suite is also being rebranded Creative Cloud.  For the subscription fee, users will be given full access to the entire set of Adobe's creative tools, with updates; as well as cloud storage services and collaboration tools.  What does this mean for photographers, illustrators, web designers and others in the creative field? If you normally purchase and use up to date versions, the only way you will be able to do so going forward is by subscribing to Adobe's Creative Cloud.  There have been a great deal of rumblings (which will likely grow louder as more and more people hear the news) in the creative community since this announcement by Adobe, and the company has put a FAQ on their website regarding the many questions that everyone's got.  Here's the low down: For a monthly subscription fee to the entire Creative Cloud, you'll have access to all of the Adobe applications that were part of the Creative Suite (Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, InDesign CC, Dreamweaver CC, After Effects CC, Premier Pro CC, Muse CC, as well as Acrobat XI Pro, Audition CC, Bridge CC, Encore, Fireworks, Flash Builder Premium, Flash Professional CC, InCopy CC, Lightroom, Media Encoder CC, Prelude CC and SpeedGrade CC), Edge tools and services (Edge Animate CC, Edge Inspect CC, Edge Web Fonts, PhoneGap Build, Edge Code CC, Edge Reflow CC, and Typekit); other services (including Creative Cloud storage, Story CC Plus, Kuler, Business Catalyst, Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition, Behance and ProSite); Lightroom and Acrobat will continue to be available outside of the cloud; As downloadable software that runs on your computer, not from a web browser or living in the cloud only, however, you will only have access to this desktop Creative Cloud (CC) software so long as your subscription is current. Canceling your subscription does not do anything to your files, you can still access them, and if you own an older version of the Creative Suite software, you can open and work on your files with those programs. Individual, team and enterprise subscriptions are available.  You can purchase single app subscriptions; Creative Cloud subscribers will get 20 Gigs of storage for their files. If you cancel your subscription, the capacity will drop to the 2 Gig free level of storage; There is a free trial membership available that will give you 2 Gigs of cloud storage for files, and access to 30 days of trial use of the CC apps, as well as Lightroom and Acrobat. Adobe is still selling Creative Suite 6 but the company says it won't be updating the CS versions in the future. Pricing: $49.99 a month for new CC members; $29.99 a month for people who are existing CS3 or later users; student and teacher pricing is $19.99 a month; full version of one of the desktop apps such as Photoshop is also $19.99 a month; team pricing is $69.99 and $39.99 a month for new CC subscriptions and businesses using CS3 or later respectively (and teams get more cloud file storage). For more information, read the FAQ at http://www.adobe.com/products/creativecloud/faq.html or follow Adobe's Creative Cloud blog at http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/.   Most likely, if you're reading this article, you use some version of Adobe software, perhaps the current Creative Suite 6 or an older version, even Photoshop Lightroom. What do you think of Adobe's permanent move to selling cloud based software subscriptions? Comments...   show less

The editor's note of this issue gives us David duChemin talking about his recent experience in Kenya, a trip from which you'll see some photographs in this very issue. A trip he started with a set of fears regarding what to expect but that ended with him, again, discovering the power a camera has to change the way we look at the world. "The camera encourages us to look harder, past the things we take for granted, and in so doing we learn to see things differently.When we peer through the lens, and make our decisions about what to leave in, or exclude, and where to place our subject, we look at them with different criteria. Shape. Colour. Texture. Gesture. Emotion." writes duChemin, to continue stating that "We see things normally overlooked. Having a camera in the hand and a desire to make something new of it, we’ll look around corners we’d not normally explore, giving our curiosity greater reign. And we see the unexpected." Unexpected is also what we will find opening this third issue. Starting with the black & white portfolio of Hengki Koentjoro, one of the three Featured Portfolios in this edition. the others are Dave Delnea’s work from Tunisia, and the stunning food photography of commercial photographer Kevin Clark. Three visions that will be food for thought to multiple photographers. Follow this link to find more about PHOTOGRAPH, A Digital Quarterly Magazine for Creative Photographers show less

Mmm... strawberries. The theme for April's competition was 'sweet' and we were irredeemably tempted by Becca Gulliver's punnet of strawberries. You can almost smell their delicious fragrance through the screen. Many congratulations to Becca; she's won herself a 12" Fracture, and thank you to all of the other entrants. May's competition is coming up soon... keep a look out!     show less

Article and images - © John Neel Continued from Part 1 As previously stated, working with a RhinoCam is a lot like using a large format camera. You need to think through the entire process. Focusing and aperture settings are done manually. There is a sequence to follow in order to insure a good outcome. When it all comes together, it can be very rewarding. The results of your efforts are rewarded with digital resolution that can be nothing short of stunning! When seen in the context of output resolution the results can be absolutely amazing. Any attempt to replicate the results in a post like this, fail to illustrate the actual resolution and details that are possible. A computer monitor is no match for the real-world resolution that these images are capable of producing. Due to the limitations of computer screens the images discussed in this article can only suggest the possibility. The web is not the place to comprehend the finer qualities of camera resolution. Only in print form can you fully appreciate the results of nearly 14,000 pixel wide images. A 30" X 40" (plus) image is the norm for this format when using a NEX 6 APS size sensor and a device such as a RhinoCam. Even larger images can be produced with a NEX 7 due to its higher pixel count. One thing to consider however is the cost of printing larger images. For me, for now, the NEX 6 provides plenty of detail and a size that is less likely to break my wallet or tax my computer.  Here is a screen capture showing details of the area framed in red in the first image. To find out more about how this kind of image is created please continue to Part 3. Coming soon! Learn how to play with different adaptors, lenses and other imaging techniques from my book.   Buy my book here:  Rethinking Digital Photography    AND FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER. PLEASE NOTE: THIS WORK IS PART OF MY PERSONAL PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTFOLIO. IT IS HOPED THAT YOU WILL RESPECT WHAT I HAVE DONE AND HONOR MY COPYRIGHT. I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON THIS AND ALL OF MY PROJECTS FOR SOME TIME. THE IMAGES ARE A PART OF A MUCH LARGER BODY OF MY WORK. I SHOW IT HERE AS A WAY TO INSPIRE YOU TO DO YOUR OWN PROJECTS, USING YOUR OWN IDEAS. PHOTOGRAPHY IS NOT ABOUT COPYING OR STEALING CONCEPTS OR TECHNIQUES. IT IS ABOUT UTILIZING YOUR TALENTS FOR CREATING YOUR OWN UNIQUE IMAGERY AND ABOUT YOUR OWN WAY OF SEEING THE WORLD. RESPECT THE WORKS OF ALL ARTISTS. DO NOT PLAGIARIZE ANYONE'S ART. NOTICE:  UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED, THIS POSTING AS WELL AS ANY AND ALL PHOTOGRAPHS, GALLERY IMAGES, AND ILLUSTRATIONS ARE THE LEGAL COPYRIGHTED © WORKS OF - JOHN NEEL AND ARE NOT TO BE USED ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, FOR ANY PURPOSE WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT FROM THE WRITER, THE PHOTOGRAPHER AND/OR PIXIQ. THE IDEAS EXPRESSED ARE THE PROPERTY OF THE PHOTOGRAPHER AND THE AUTHOR. PLEASE NOTE: MANY OF THE PRODUCTS DISCUSSED HEREIN HAVE BEEN REQUESTED FROM THEIR MANUFACTURERS FOR THE PURPOSE OF REVIEW AND/OR TO BE USED ARTISTICALLY AND PROFESSIONALLY BY THE AUTHOR AS A MEANS TO ILLUSTRATE THEIR USAGE AS TOOLS FOR THE PRODUCTION OF ARTISTIC PHOTOGRAPHIC WORKS.   "IMAGINATION IS WHAT MAKES IMAGES UNIQUE" show less

The biggest news this week, at least for Haje and me, is that we shall be leaving Pixiq and relaunching Photocritic on 15 May. We're incredibly excited about our new direction and hope to see you over at photocritic.org! That doesn't change the fact that the UK government is seeing fit to screw over photographers and illustrators by making the threshhold for using 'orphan images' ludicrously low. If you're based in the UK, please take a moment to do some reading and sign the online petition if you see fit. And it's time to wave farewell to Hasselblad's V system cameras: the last 503CW has rolled off of the production line. However excited we might be, we found some other things of interest, too. Panoramas & other impressive pictures Lovely sunset over London, photo taken from a helicopter: link (2013-05-05 by @Photocritic) Silicon roundabout. Not as glamorous as it sounds ;) link (2013-05-04 by @Photocritic) A 360-degree view of the Bernabau | link (2013-05-02 by @SmallAperture) The rolling shutter used on camera phones and dSLRs does fun things to moving objects: link (2013-05-01 by @Photocritic) Great breakdancing shots from around the globe link (via @frozenevent, who you should totally follow in any case) (2013-05-01 by @Photocritic) Hold on to your lunch! Great pictures of parkour stunts | link (2013-04-30 by @Photocritic) This animation is made from 242 frames, is 60 seconds long, with each frame measuring 1/20,000th the width of a hair link (2013-05-03 by @Photocritic) Intriguing projects How's this for ambitious: Using a lightning strike as a flashgun for your outdoor night photographs: link #Photog (2013-05-04 by @Photocritic) Black and white portrait project 'Created Equal' that focuses on the contrasts between people. #Awesome: link (2013-05-02 by @Photocritic) Going mobile "Lightroom App Soon Coming To An iPad Near You" link (2013-05-03 by @SmallAperture) Toshiba Canvio Connect makes it easy to back up your mobile data to a hard drive | link (2013-04-30 by @SmallAperture) The @Triggertrap Mobile App for iOS has been given a spring clean. Here's what's new: link (2013-04-30 by @SmallAperture) 5 apps that every photographer should have (and they're not the usual suspects) | link (2013-04-30 by @SmallAperture) Cameras, lenses, and gossip That's a pretty daft thing to say, @ResourceMag. It's a lovely camera, but a DSLR replacement?! Nope. (2013-05-04 by @Photocritic) RT @ResourceMag: Zack Arias Claims That The DSLR Is Dead As A Result Of The Fuji X100S link #photography (2013-05-04 by @Photocritic) It takes three people to unbox the Nikon 800mm f/5.6E FL ED VR lens | link (2013-05-02 by @SmallAperture) Firmware Update For Canon EOS 5D MkIII | link (2013-05-01 by @SmallAperture) Corporate shenanigans Nokia to invest in 'array' mobile cameras: small lenses to capture big images | link (2013-05-01 by @Photocritic) Kodak offloads its film and scanner businesses to its UK pension group | link (2013-04-30 by @SmallAperture) Useful knowledge How to recreate three popular filters in Photoshop | link (2013-05-06 by @SmallAperture) How to Use a Light Meter to Improve Your Photography link (2013-05-01 by @Photocritic) Perspective is an awesome tool in photography - check out this absolutely rockin' example: link (2013-05-03 by @Photocritic) Whoa! Trippy! A 25 pinholes camera | link (2013-05-02 by @SmallAperture) More leaked images of the Olympus PEN E-P5 camera link (2013-05-01 by @SmallAperture) Photojournalism A Photo Editor speaks about what it's like to sift through thousands of gory photos, post-Boston. link (2013-05-03 by @Photocritic) Inside Bangladesh's garment factories: life and work in a dangerous industry | link (2013-04-29 by @SmallAperture) Out of this world Too hot to handle - Herschel space telescope finishes mission | link (2013-04-30 by @SmallAperture) Into the jaws of hell? Cassini's close-up of a hurricane on Saturn | link (2013-05-02 by @SmallAperture) Ethics, morals & legal stuff Altering Photographs Deemed Fair Use In Landmark Case | link (2013-04-29 by @SmallAperture) Instagram reverses ban on @thatlookslikeadick after reviewing photos for penises | link (2013-05-01 by @SmallAperture) I'm not sure how I feel about photographers and videographers hanging out at an accident blackspot: link (2013-05-04 by @Photocritic) Finally Jeff Bridges, not just a mighty fine actor, but a photographer, too | link (2013-05-01 by @SmallAperture) show less