News & Notes

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Nikon Kicks Off The “D50 Digital Experience” Multi-City Road Tour
Nikon has embarked on a national multi-city road tour to put its newest digital SLR camera, the D50, directly into the hands of consumers. Nikon’s “D50 Digital Experience” tour kicked off in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 2nd, and will continue on to stops in 11 major cities across the country through November 5th, helping people experience firsthand how easy taking photos can be using the D50. Within each city, Nikon will also give away a brand-new D50 with an 18-55mm Zoom-Nikkor lens, valued at $799.95. For more information, visit www.nikondigital.com/D50experience. 

Photoflex Turns 20
Photoflex Inc. is celebrating its 20th anniversary as a leading manufacturer of lighting equipment for the photography, digital-imaging, video, and film industries. Based in Watsonville, California, Photoflex (www.photoflex.com) has also become a valuable resource for online learning. Photoflex’s Lighting School (www.photoflexlightingschool.com) offers free photography and digital-imaging lessons for all levels of photographers. In addition, its Web Photo School (www.webphotoschool.com) is the largest resource on the web for paid lessons.

PLUS Coalition Creates Universal Language For Image Licensing
The PLUS Coalition, a non-profit organization on a mission to simplify and facilitate the licensing of images, has just completed an international, industry-wide review of the PLUS Glossary, the first component of the Picture Licensing Universal System (PLUS). Due for release in the fourth quarter of 2005, the PLUS Glossary will provide standardized terms and definitions for use in image licensing transactions. The PLUS Coalition is the first international cooperative assembled to improve the image licensing process. In the Coalition, photographers, illustrators, stock agencies, ad agencies, designers, publishers, and artist’s representatives are working together to create an integrated system of licensing standards. For more information about PLUS, visit their website at: www.useplus.org.

Shutterbug on the Web
Judging from reaction to our recent article on panoramic photography there’s lots of interest in getting the wide view. So, for this month’s special Shutterbug on the web features we thought we’d gather up some of the highlights of our panoramic coverage from our web archives. To locate these stories just go to our homepage at www.shutterbug.com and type in the suffixes associated with each story below after the shutterbug.com address in your URL window.

The Hasselblad xPan remains one of the most popular cameras for one-shot panoramic film images. Tony Sweet’s original Test Report on this camera can be found at:
/test_reports/0403sb_hasselblad/index.html

The Roundshot 220 can give you a circular view of the world but takes some practice to get right. Dave Howard reveals all in his Test Report of this unique camera at:
/test_reports/0503sb_roundshot/index.html

How about using your own camera for getting a panoramic view? Tom Fuller shows you how to build your own at:
/columns/0102sb_doit/index.html

Even Monte Zucker has gotten into the panoramic act, as witnessed by this vintage article on panoramic adventures at:
/features/1299sb_panoramic/index.html

Want to find even more on panoramic power? Just visit our homepage and type “panorama” into our search engine.