News / Other News

Olympus UK is offering a free M. Zuiko Digital 17mm 1:2.8 Pancake lens to anyone who buys a PEN E-PL5 or PEN E-PM2 from an authorised UK stockist. The lens can be claimed though the the company's website, and the promotion runs until 15th September 2013.

Our friends and collaborators over at DxOMark have been looking into how lenses score on specific cameras, and most recently they've been examining Canon's latest SLR, the EOS 700D / Rebel T5i. In an ongoing article they investigate how 130 lenses from Canon, Carl Zeiss, Samyang, Sigma, Tamron and Tokina measure up on the 700D's 18MP sensor. As this is essentially a variant of the sensor used in every Canon APS-C camera since the EOS 7D in 2009, the article could be of interest to a lot of Canon users. Click through for the links.    

The Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 DC HSM has garnered a huge amount of interest from our readers, as the fastest zoom lens ever made for SLRs. UK residents can now win one courtesy of Sigma UK's latest competition, along with a two day landscape photography workshop in Dartmoor with pro photographer Lea Tippett. For a chance of winning, submit your best landscape photo, along with 80 words saying how you'd benefit from the workshop. The closing date for entries is 31st July 2013: click through for full details.  

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.

Fujifilm and Panasonic have announced the joint development of a sensor technology that combines a light-sensitive coating on top of a CMOS chip. The companies claim higher dynamic range and sensitivity than current CMOS sensors, along with the ability to receive light at steeper angles - making it easier to design cameras with wide-angle lenses and allowing lenses to be mounted nearer to the sensor. The announcement extends from the work Fujifilm has been conducting on organic (carbon-based) photo-senstive materials and combines it with CMOS underpinnings developed by Panasonic. The result is a chip that uses CMOS technology only for circuitry - with the organic layer taking over the role of converting light into electrons.

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.

Photographers and star-gazers in the upper United States were treated to a rare display of Aurora Borealis when the 'Earth passed through a region of south-pointing magnetism in the solar wind,' according to spaceweather.com. More aurorae are expected in the late hours of June 8 or early June 9, with NOAA forecasters estimating a 65% chance of geomagnetic storms. Click through for images and more details.

Following the widely-reported layoffs at the Chicago Sun-Times a former Visual Editor at the paper, Robb Montgomery, has written a thoughtful piece for CNN.com about what the decision to move to a freelance work force means for the paper, and the industry as a whole. The same article also includes a video interview with Pulitzer price-winning photographer John H. White, who was among those laid off at the Sun-Times last week. Click through for extracts and a link to the full article at CNN.com.

For nearly forty years, photographer D. James Dee has documented artwork and installations for seminal artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel and prominent New York City galleries. He's now closing up shop and faces the prospect of finding a home for roughly 250,000 color slides and negatives that chronicle the explosive growth of the Soho art scene of the 70s, 80s and 90s. So far he's found no takers. Is this trove of recent art history headed for the dumpster? Click through to read more. (via The New York Times)

If you've ever spent any time as a self-employed photographer, you've no doubt heard countless rationales from clients about why you should work for free, or at least lower your rate. PhotographyTalk.com posted a pitch-perfect list of five classic lines that not only ring true to those of us on staff with freelance backgrounds, but would be perfect punchline setups in an Aaron Johnson 'What The Duck' comic strip. Click to see if any of them sound familiar. (via PhotographyTalk.com)

Scientists at Bell Labs have built a prototype camera that uses no lens and a single-pixel sensor. This idea is based around a grid of small apertures that each direct light rays from different parts of the scene to the sensor, and can be opened and closed independently. The sensor makes a series of measurements with different combinations of open apertures, and uses this data to reconstruct the scene in front of the camera. No lens to focus the resultant image means infinite depth of field and low cost. Click through for more details and a link to the original research. 

Hot on the heels of its cashback offer for its 1 System cameras, Nikon UK has announced similar promotions on its D600 and D5200 SLRs. Buyers will be able to claim back £50 / €60 on the D5200, and £150 / €180 on the D600, when purchased either body only or with a new Nikkor lens. Meanwhile buyers of various Coolpix compacts will have the chance to win one of over 1200 'exhilarating prizes', including an indoor sky diving experience.

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.

Another interesting patent has been discovered by Japanese blogger Egami, which shows a new method devised by Canon to adjust the shape of meniscus lens that seems different from the more straightforward method used by competitors. Canon's method uses the same 'electrowetting' principle as existing designs but does so to create a series of pumps, allowing faster and more precise control over the resultant lens.

Japanese company Amulet is poised to release a 'Wise Duo' CompactFlash card allowing images and video files images to be backed up instantly using RAID-style 'mirroring'. In mirroring mode, the card effectively becomes two storage devices, and records images to both partitions simultaneously. As such, a 64GB card offers 32GB of storage space in mirroring mode. Click through for more details.

The organisers of Europe's largest annual photographic trade show, Focus on Imaging, have declared that this year's show was the last. Mary Walker Exhibitions had organised the show, held in March at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham UK, for the past 24 years. In a statement Mary Walker announced that the rights to the show would not be sold on, but instead it is simply being brought to an end.

According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times has laid off its entire photography staff, and plans to use freelance reporters and photographers in the future to save costs. The layoffs, which are believed to take effect immediately, were announced to the 28-strong photo staff on Thursday morning. In a statement issued by the paper, it suggested that the move was in response to a demand for 'more video content' from its audience. Click through for more details. 

Nikon UK has announced a summer cashback offer on its 1 system cameras. From 30th May to 4th September, buyers can claim back £50 on the S1 and J3 models, and £80 on the V2 (or €60 and €80 respectively for customers in Eire). The offer applies to both body-only purchases and single- and twin-lens kits, and all colours of camera; cashback has to be claimed by 4th October 2013. Click through for full details.  

Michael Markieta, a transportation planner at global engineering and design firm Arup, has created a series of beautiful visualizations of aircraft flight paths as they span the globe. Using different shades for short and long-distant flights, the images map the world in a ghostly spiderweb of connections from airports small and large. Markieta has marked more than 58,000 flightpaths and the results are stunning. Click through for images (via BBC.co.uk)

Leica has announced that it has a 'new family member' coming on June 11th and, as the German manufacturer continues to tease what it's calling the 'Mini M' on its website, a photo has emerged which may reveal more details about the forthcoming camera. A French iPad app has published what seems to be an advertisement for the new Mini M and, if genuine, it reveals that the Mini M will sport a 16MP APS-C sensor and an 28-70mm (equivalent) F3.5-6.4 zoom lens. Click through for more (alleged) details.