Sony today announced their first DSLR offering and an impressive suite of lenses and accessories.  This camera features the Minolta lens mount and uses a 10 megapixel 1.5x cropped sensor, similar, but probably not identical to what is used in the Nikon D200.  Along with the camera, Sony announced a number of impressive lenses - of special interest for underwater shooters are: 100mm f2.8 macro, 11-18mm wide zoom, 16mm fisheye, and an 18-70mm standard zoom.

The 5th annual Kona Classic was great fun this year, with over 30 participants competing the photo competition during the week of diving in Kona.  Sport Diver’s Ty Sawyer and photo pros David Fleetham, Eric Cheng, and Marty Snyderman were the judges of this year’s contest, with Dan Baldocchi representing video and Fred Dion on hand to fix gear problems. 

In an incredible upset, this year’s Best of Show image was shot by Kate Mitchell with a Canon point & shoot camera!  Photo contest winners and photos from the event follow…

Stephen Wong and Takako Uno, husband and wife marine photojournalist team, are showing their images in an exhibition entitled, Form & Dance, which will be held in Hong Kong from 6 to 23 June at 1/F Devon House, Taikoo Place, Island East, from 08:00 to 21:00 each day.  Instead of a documentary approach to marine photography, the couple present a more lyrical and artistic style, symbolized in the title of the exhibition. Stephen and Takako use light and colour to create a surreal mood highlighting marine animals and their environment, which they hope will help increase people’s concern toward protecting our marine world.

Stephen and Takako’s work has appeared in numerous international marine and wildlife books, journals, photo agencies, exhibitions, and websites, and the couple’s images have won dozens of international photographic competitions. Their marine photo books include An Ocean Odyssey, Gorontalo — Hidden Treasure, and Celebrate the Sea.

For more information, contact: +852-2844-5094. (via FiNS Blog)

Our friends over at X-Ray Magazine have released issue #11, which is now available for download.  X-Ray is one of the highest-quality underwater magazines we’ve seen, and it’s free!  Issue summary:

Patagonia, Argentina. El Hierro, the Canary Islands, Coral Bleaching and Global Warming. Crossing the Atlantic on a research vessel. The Conveyor Belt, the oceans global circulation. Building reefs on the Maldives. Cosmetics for Divers. Leigh Cunningham: The Wake-up call. Travelling with Camera Equipment. Japanese wrecks off Palau. Portfolio: Patrick Chevalier.

Nikon announced the D2Xs digital SLR today, which has subtle improvements over the original D2X.  Improvements include a larger, 2.5” LCD monitor, electronic masking of the viewfinder screen when in high-speed crop mode, modified metering in high-speed crop mode, a longer-lasting battery, black & white mode, Adobe RGB color space in all color modes, custom tone curves, 1/3 ISO boost, in-camera trim, image authentication compatibility (requires additional equipment), the ability to save and load settings between cameras, and more.