Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

Olympus launches the E-M5 EVIL camera

Olympus has announced the release of the OM-D E-M5 EVIL camera. Drawing on a retro style similar to the company’s OM series film cameras, the new camera features a built-in electronic viewfinder. This has a refresh rate of 120 frames per second and is HD. In addition, the E-M5 has a 16.1 megapixel sensor with a TruePic VI image processing engine, a 5-axis image stabilization system, ISO settings from 100 to 25,600 and what is claimed as the world’s fastest AF system.

The E-M5 will be available from April and prices start at $999.99 for a body only.

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

Final call for entries: DEEP 2012

DEEP Indonesia 2012 is now making its final call for entries. There are seven themed categories with over $40,000 in prizes, including underwater photo equipment and premium dive travel packages to some of the top photo destinations in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. The contest includes specific categories for images that focus on conservation and the marine environment, for entries taken by compact digital cameras, and for Indonesian entrants.

Full details are on the UnderwaterCompetition.com website and the deadline for entries is 10 February. Last minute entries for the Our World Underwater contest this year made the servers crash, so please don’t leave it too late for DEEP 2012.

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

Canon releases three lenses

Canon has announced the release of three new lenses. The first, the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM is unlikely to be of interest for underwater use, however the other two lenses may have underwater applications. They are the EF 24mm f/2.8 IS USM and EF 28mm f/2.8 IS USM prime rectilinear wide-angle lenses. Both are equipped with image stabilization technology and ultrasonic motor-powered auto focus. The 24mm has a minimum focus distance of 0.2m and the 28mm of 0.23m, so both will probably require the use of a diopter.

The 24-70mm will be available in April at $2,299.00, and both wide-angle lenses will be available in June at $849.99 for the 24mm and $799.99 for the 28mm.

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

Call for entries: British Wildlife Photography Awards

The British Wildlife Photography Awards is calling for entries for its 2012 competition. It has twelve categories, including animal behavior, animal portrait, coast and marine, and wildlife in HD video with prizes that include a cash prize of £5,000.

Full details are on the contest’s website, and the deadline for entries is 12 May.

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

Nikon D800 timelapse from Alex Mustard

Wetpixel Associate Editor Alex Mustard has already had the opportunity to shoot (on land) with the new Nikon D800 SLR. One of the features of the new camera is in-camera processing of time-lapse projects. The HD video published on Vimeo by Alex is straight out of the camera. The camera ne was using was a pre-production model; production cameras’ output may vary from it somewhat and please bear in mind that Vimeo applies compression to any video uploaded to it.

The images and footage were shot during Alex’s underwater photography workshop in the Cayman Islands in January 2012.

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

Nikon announces the D800 and D800E

Nikon today announced its second new full-frame dSLR of the year, the Nikon D800, and it’s companion, the D800E, which will sit below the D4 at the high end of Nikon’s DSLR line, offering more than twice the pixel density of the top-of-the-line D4. The D800’s FX-format full-frame sensor captures 7360-by-4912-resolution images (36.15 megapixels). The Nikon D800 looks as though it will be a popular dSLR for videographers, thanks to manual exposure controls in video mode; 1080p recording at 30, 25, and 24 fps (as well as 720p video at 60 fps); and the ability to feed uncompressed video to a monitor or recording device via HDMI as it’s being captured.

The Nikon D800 should start appearing in stores in March at $2995 for the body only. The Nikon D800E will arrive in April. The D800E has the same sensor as the D800, but will eliminate the D800’s integrated low-pass filter; Nikon says the filter-less D800E will provide a further boost to detail and image resolution at the expense of a visible moire effect in some images. The Nikon D800E will be priced at $3300 for the body only.

Monday, February 6th, 2012

Expedition White Shark app on iTunes

Marine Conservation Science Institute (MCSI) has released an iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad app that tracks adult white sharks in real-time. The team at MCSI has been tagging sharks which can the be tracked via the app although positions for the tagged sharks can only be calculated when a shark is at the surface with its dorsal fin out of the water for several minutes. The app also includes video of sharks being tagged, detailed histories of tagged sharks, a game and information about shark attacks and the prevention of them.

The app is available for $3.99 on iTunes.

Monday, February 6th, 2012

Adobe posts sneak previews of Creative Suite 6

Adobe has posted two videos showing sneak previews of features incorporated into the new Creative Suite 6 onto the Photoshop YouTube channel. Adobe Senior Product Manager, Bryan O’Neil Hughes, shows the power of the new camera RAW engine (which is the same as that incorporated into the Lightroom 4 beta), the ability to change the user interface in Photoshop and the new interactivity within the brush tools. Photoshop Product Manager, Zorana Gee previews the effects of being able to run processes on the GPU. This allows for background saving to occur, and for a cleaner response to user inputs. She uses the liquify feature to demonstrate this.

Release dates and prices for Creative Suite 6 are still to be announced.

Sunday, February 5th, 2012

Canon updates EOS Utility and adds Lion compatibility

Canon has released an update for its EOS Utility which adds compatibility for Apple OS X Lion. EOS Utility allows Canon camera users to edit picture styles, adds functions for downloading and displaying images, remote shooting, and camera control of each setting when an EOS DIGITAL camera is connected to a computer have been integrated. EOS Utility 2.10.4 Updater for Mac OS X is software that will install EOS Utility 2.10.4 on a computer or update a previously installed version of EOS Utility to EOS Utility 2.10.4. It is necessary that a previous version of the software has been installed prior to deploying this updater and this update is only for Lion.

Canon EOS Utility 2.10.4 is available via the Canon website.

Sunday, February 5th, 2012

Tont Wu publishes trip report of PNG Eastern Field trip

Trip leader of the recent Wetpixel PNG Eastern Fields Expedition, Tony Wu, has published an account of his selected highlights of the trip on his blog. Tony led both legs of the expedition this year and he notes that:

“This remote atoll and associated reefs have some of the best dive sites in the world, including one site that is the most action-packed reef dive I’ve ever experienced. And despite the fact that Captain Craig has been visiting the area every year since 1992, there are still many parts of the Eastern Fields he’s never dived. In fact, we explored and named four new sites over the past few weeks.”

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