News

Adorama is pleased to announce recently added workshops to their lineup, all designed to give photographers at all levels, insights from some of the world's most prominent photographers and photo educators.

Monica Cipnic, Adorama's program director, has added new and exciting seminars by leaders in the field, including ones on the newest models from Nikon (D90 and D700) and Canon (EOS 5D Mark II).  Both seminars charge a $25 fee but each registered participant will receive a $25 coupon good for 30 days on any purchase in the retail store or at www.adorama.com.  Among others that are sure to attract interest include classes in the latest technology including Adobe Photoshop and mastering the world of digital SLR.

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DxO Labs has unveiled www.dxomark.com, a new website delivering key objective metrics of sensor performance for a variety of cameras measured directly on the RAW image. Available as a free online resource, dxomark.com makes it possible for the first time to assess the intrinsic quality of a camera before the impact of any RAW conversion.

“There are many valuable resources reviewing the image quality of digital cameras, but none of them consider the actual RAW signal straight from the camera sensor,” explains Nicolas Touchard, Vice President of Marketing, DxO Labs Image Quality Evaluation business. “Demanding photographers who shoot in RAW should only care about the genuine quality of the RAW image, yet until now they have had to rely on measures based on converted RAW images, obviously biased by the processing applied to them, whether embedded or performed offline with a software RAW converter. Furthermore, as RAW converters evolve and improve, the latent potential of RAW images can only be gauged by analyzing the RAW images themselves, projecting the potential quality achievable with the ultimate RAW converter. This is why we believe that our approach will dramatically change the way photographers evaluate digital cameras.”

dxomark.com provides in-depth measurements of all the relevant characteristics of a sensor: actual ISO sensitivity (which generally differs from the value reported by the camera), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), dynamic range, tonal range, color depth and sensitivity, metamerism, etc. dxomark.com already covers 50 popular cameras, including Digital Single-Lens Reflex (DSLRs) and high-end bridge cameras offering RAW image format. The site will be updated on a regular basis with new cameras.
dxomark.com RAW image quality database relies on DxO Analyzer, the world’s leading turn-key laboratory solution for image quality evaluation. Thanks to its accuracy, completeness, and reliability, DxO Analyzer has become the reference tool for numerous leading imaging industry players, photography magazines and websites.

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onOne Software, Inc. announced the availability of holiday-themed frames, textures, layouts, backgrounds, and adornments for their award-winning Photoshop® plug-ins, PhotoFrame 3 and PhotoFrame 4. The new content adds the perfect finishing touch to holiday cards, portraits or albums and is immediately available as free downloads from the onOne Exchange www.ononeexchange.com. These free elements are in addition to the 1000+ frames, backgrounds, textures, and adornments included with PhotoFrame 4 and are compatible with Essentials 2 for Apple iPhotoand Essentials 2 for AdobePhotoshopElements
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“In the spirit of the holidays, we wanted to give our PhotoFrame users free content to add to their frame, texture and adornment library,” said Craig Keudell, president of onOne Software. “This is just the first of many free frame packs that we intend to provide to PhotoFrame users so they continue to get extra value out of their software.”

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Brooks Institute is proud to announce that four students and a graduate from its Visual Journalism program are the recipients of eight top awards from the 2008 College Photographer of the Year (CPoY) competition.  The copy event is held annually at the Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia.

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Alas Media is pleased to announce a new DVD that guides digital photographers on the use of light to improve the quality of their photographs. Using both available light and flash, photographers learn while looking over the shoulder of professional photographer and writer, Ibarionex Perello, who has over 15 years in the photographic industry including work with Nikon Inc. and Better Photo and whose articles have appeared in Shutterbug magazine. 

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Leica Camera Inc. presents an exclusive special edition of the LEICA D-LUX 4 in titanium, another premium quality special edition camera from Leica. The LEICA D-LUX 4 Titanium is the first Leica digital camera with the satin finish of anodized titanium. This special finish of the LEICA D-LUX 4 Titanium is limited to only 10,000 cameras worldwide. From January 2009, the camera will be available in a set together with a premium quality, titanium-colored leather case. Price of the set is $995.

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Hamrick Software, the developer of VueScan, the world's
most widely used scanning software, has released it's latest version 8.5 -
with more than 600 improvements since the release of VueScan 8.4 two years
ago. "We've been working on VueScan for 10 years and have made thousands

of improvements in this time.  We'd like to thank everyone who has

purchased VueScan in the past by giving them a free upgrade to

VueScan 8.5" says Ed Hamrick, President of Hamrick Software.

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