New iPad photo magazine: Photographer's I

The front cover. It even has my name on it. Score.

If you've ever held an iPad playing full-resolution video, or showing a slide show, you would be forgiven for thinking "Screw magazines, this is the future". I'm not sure if I completely agree - for one thing, that would do bad things to my fun-to-write column for Photography Monthly, but there's also something tactile and wonderful about magazines in general - but there can be no doubt that an iPad is fantastic in many ways.

So, if you were to design a photography 'magazine' for the iPad, what would you do? I would ensure that it contains top photography writers and contributors (like Abbas, Paul Harcourt Davies, Natalie Dybisz, Michael Freeman, Bob Krist, Steve Simon, my good self, and many other talented 'togs). I would include a load of video content, I would make sure that the iPad's screen gets a proper work-out with glorious high-resolution images.

And once all of that is done, I'd call it Photographer's I. Ladies and gentlemen, fire up your iPads, turn to the App store, and get your copy of Photographer's I today. It's funny, you'll definitely learn something, and it's easily the best thing since some dude sliced a loaf of bread with the sharp edge of his MacBook Air.

Get it here. Go on.

Video: A camera thief in action

This is the horrible moment where thousands of dollars worth of photo equipment goes walkies

So, you've had a long day of doing a photo shoot. What do you do next? If you're a typical photographer, the next step would be to head to the nearest pub for a couple of after-shoot bevvies.

So, apart from swearing like a trooper and crying like a little girl, what would you do if your bag, containing a Canon 5D Mk II, a  24-70 f/2.8, a 50mm f/1.2, and a 16-35 f/2.8 were stolen? Because that's what happened to my friend Andy's friend.

They even have footage of the actual theft:

The actual theft happens at 1:14 in this video. It's worth pointing out that this thief is not actually very good (although it does look like he got away with it): He's spending time scouting around and looking shifty. I've seen CCTV footage of real professionals at work: They'll send in one person to scout for potential loot, and then another person will swoop in, someone will cause a brief distraction ("Sorry, mate, can I just get to the bar?" or "Excuse me, do you know what time it is" - or simply drop a pint of beer somewhere else in the pub), whilst their accomplice walks up, grabs the bag, and walks off. It's over within seconds, and usually it happens so quickly that even a trained CCTV operator will be struggling to see exactly what happened.

It's easy to say 'don't take your equipment into a pub, then', but the truth is that in London, most of us don't have offices or cars to store our stuff in. So: If you do carry your equipment around, keep an extra-close eye on it; it's too easy for someone to just casually walk up, grab it, and saunter off with your photography gear.

Oh, and another tip: Protect your lenses, because thieves have been known to nick them straight off your camera...

Canon, this is completely ridiculous

$900 for this dastardly pair? You've GOT to be kidding

No doubt about it, for serious photographers, the brand new Canon 1D X has a metric tonne of reasons for why it deserves its place at the top rungs as the Canon flagship. It's nothing short of an incredible piece of kit; one that will have many a photographer drooling, and many a bank manager rubbing their hands in glee. It is, rather obviously, the most epic dSLR camera ever.

Which is, my dear reader, why I'm so bloody furious with Canon. Carrying a hefty £5300 / $6800 price tag, this piece of kit costs more than a snazzy-looking second-hand Porsche, so it had better be bloody awesome. Most signs point to 'yes'. I'm not angry about the things Canon have included in this lovely package of photographic nirvana. I'm pissy about the things they've decided to make optional extras.

Where's my GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth?

Specifically, the pieces of kit that are at the receiving end of my rage is the Canon GP-E1 GPS receiver and the Canon WTF-E6 wireless transmitter. Canon claims that they "designed the GP-E1 to share the same rugged and durable exterior construction as the EOS-1D X without adding additional bulk", which is outrageously ridiculous in itself. The very definition of "adding additional bulk" is having to attach an external thing to your camera in order to add extra functionality.

So, why didn't Canon just build it into the camera? I have heard a few potential explanations, but they're all absolute hogwash...

There isn't enough space in the 1D X camera body - Pick up the smartphone that's closest to you. Let's say, for the sake of this argument, that it's an iPhone 4S, which was launched at roughly the same time as the 1D X. The Jesus-phone contains Bluetooth, a GPS receiver, the radios needed for telephony and data traffic, WiFi, a digital compass, a 3.5-inch 960x640-pixel screen, a load of megapixels to boot, and enough processing power to edit photos on the go.

An Apple iPhone 4S is 63 cm³ and weighs 140g. The camera is 2,150 cm³ or so. That means that the camera is roughly 34 times larger than the phone, and weighs approximately 10 times more*. Saying that there isn't space to include three measly extra radios and a bit of extra electronics is just daft. If anyone tells you otherwise, hold up any modern smart-phone and tell them to shut their pie-holes.

*) Canon haven't released an official weight figure for the Canon EOS 1Dx yet, but its predecessors all weighed in at about 1,550g or so, and after handling a 1D X, I wouldn't say that this thing is going to come out any lighter, exactly...

The technology isn't there - We can't say that there's no precedent for including this sort of tech into cameras either. Say what you will about the Fujifilm FinePix XP30 (for example that it's one of the most hideous cameras ever made), but it comes with a $150 price-tag, and has GPS built-in. As for WiFi, take the Samsung SH100. Acquiring one lightens your wallet by a featherweight $130, and it packs all sorts of gadgets - including WiFi - into a package that's only 94 cm³. And it weighs less than the aforementioned iPhone 4S.

Oh, and on the issue of WiFi, a lot of us have been relying on Eye-Fi memory cards. That's right - a flippin' SD card that packs up to 8GB of storage and full WiFi functionality. I would, at this time, invite you to reach for your nearest camera, and grab the SD card out of it. Now marvel. An Eye-Fi card is the size of a postage stamp and about as thick as a coin. They can be had from about £40, too, which isn't that much more expensive than a non-WiFi-enabled high-end SD card. Tech like this is nothing short of actual magic. But it exists, and has done so for about half a decade.

So, dearest Canon, the tech is out there. I suspect you are aware of this, since most of the SD-card cameras you've sold in the last few years are Eye-Fi compatible. Oh, and do you remember the lovely Canon PowerShot SX230 you announced in February? It's a tiny, tiny camera that has GPS built-in...

Rubbing salt in the wound

If we for a moment ignore the slap in the face of not just including these features in the cameras in the first place, let's take a look at the knockout punch: The price tag of the add-ons.

Once you've plonked down a small family saloon worth of cash, do you really want to pay another (rumored) $300 for GPS functionality and $600 for the WiFi/Bluetooth features? I don't want to sound ungrateful to the Gods of Photography, but $300 for a GPS chip? You have got to be shitting me - you can build your own GPS logger shield for Arduino for under $20, and ready-built USB GPS receivers retail at just over $30.

The WiFi/Bluetooth thingiemajig is even more insulting. Its rumoured $600 price-tag is enough to buy a whole additional Canon SLR camera body. Repeating the same exercise as above, if you were to add Bluetooth to your own homebrew project, you're looking at a $40 pricetag. WiFi is a bit pricier, at $90 for the kit. Nonetheless, that still means that you, as a random average joe, can spend $130 to buy the components needed to build the gadget Canon are selling to you for $600.

Keep in mind that these prices are retail price, too - There's no way Canon doesn't have some pretty serious buying power, both when it comes to twisting suppliers' arms and that little concept of economics known as economy of scale. The components to build the GPS unit won't cost Canon more than $10 or so, and the WiFi/Bluetooth unit might cost them $40. At the most.

So, what it all boils to is that you can buy a weather-proof camera that has WiFi built in for $150 (that's 25% the price of the WiFi attachment for the Canon 1D X), or you could buy a GPS-enabled camera for $130 (less than half the GPS-attachment for Canon's flagship).

My dear Canon, do you really hate your professional photographers that much?

So why wasn't this stuff included?

On their website, Canon state that "The GPS Receiver GP-E1 has not been authorized as required by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission", which might explain in part why they decided to hold off on shipping them out. Presumably, choosing to include GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth would have to include a round of testing that might have delayed their project... But I'm sure people would have merrily waited a couple of months to have this stuff built in.

Another potential (if moderately far-fetched) reason for choosing to keep the GPS / WiFi / Bluetooth stuff external, is that these items are all transmitters/receivers. Not too long ago, for example, I had the opportunity to take photos in a military research facility, and one of the things I had to sign (in addition to the Official Secrets Act), was a declaration that I brought absolutely no electronics into the facility that could transmit or receive data. That included having to re-format my memory cards before entering the facility, in front of the security guys, and handing over my mobile phone and Kindle(!) for safe-keeping before I was allowed into the facility.

This type of thing is already a problem for journalists: It's not illegal to send text messages from a court room, but take a photo, and you could end in deep doo-doo. As such, many journos tape off the cameras on their phones, choose cases for their phones that cover up the camera, or choose phones without cameras - all to avoid being accused of taking photos when they're not supposed to . Employees that work in sensitive industries (such as GCHQ or the Security Services) are running into this problem in a more acute way: For some employees, any phone with a camera is completely banned, no matter if the camera is covered up or not. Have you tried finding a phone that doesn't have a camera on it recently? It's surprisingly tricky.

It isn't unthinkable that there are agencies that need photography but ban all and any use of any GPS, Bluetooth or WiFi. Keeping these units as attachments could solve this problem, meaning that super special scientific spy photographers can continue using Canon's top-of-the-line snapper without running foul with their agency policies. It could also be the case that Canon want to give photographers the option to not have transmitters or receivers on them in case they are taking scientific photos of some sort, that might be disturbed by any electronic interference... But surely there must be a better solution for those edge cases?

So, what would the solution be?

Okay, so I hate the kind of blogger who whines about something without offering up at least some idea towards a solution. Here we go...

If we for a brief moment accept that Canon has a good reason to not want to include radios in their top-end cameras, because a fraction of their user base might be put off by them... It could be solved very differently: Instead of adding expensive and clunky external units they could introduce expansion slots that keep the GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth chips and radios on compact-sized expansion modules, to be inserted into the camera body itself.

Obviously Canon would get big bonus points if these modules come included with the camera, so you can install them and then forget about them, instead of running the risk of forgetting your GPS unit when you really need it. This would keep the potential benefit of being able to update extension modules later. Hell, they could even consider opening up for third-party extension modules that could be inserted into the camera (RadioPopper, I'm looking at you here...), for semi-permanent extensions of functionality.

Just don't insult us by charging us $900 for a set of 'accessories' that really ought to have been part of the original product. It makes your 'flagship' look an awfully lot less flagship-like.

This article was originally written for Gizmodo UK.

A bit of a change at Small Aperture

Daniela

Over the summer, Team Small Aperture has lived through some really exciting changes. Haje and his lovely Other Half have moved to a new continent; Gareth and his lovely Other Half are expecting a baby; and I quit my day job and became a social hermit in order to write a book. (If I’d had an Other Half, lovely or otherwise, he’d have left me and cited abandonment. Thankfully I don’t.) And through all of this, we received an offer from Pixiq asking us very nicely if Small Aperture would like to join forces with them. We thought about the offer carefully; after all, we’ve worked hard here, and we don’t want to relinquish anything that we’ve striven to create and develop, but it did have its advantages. The decision wasn’t at all cut-and-dried.

Eventually, though, after extensive discussions amongst ourselves and with the team at Pixiq, we’ve decided to accept their offer. From our perspective, it gives us the latitude to be able to do what we do best: take photos and write. We don’t need to worry about maintaining servers, about the site collapsing around our ears, or about financing things. We can get on with our very new lives with a bit more certainty.

From your perspective, very little changes. You still get to hear what we have to say about new cameras, about workshops and exhibitions, about books, about anything that’s even vaguely related to photography. The monthly competition will continue. And we’ll continue to be as irreverent, disparaging, excited, cynical, and hyperactive as we’ve always been. You won’t even have to change your RSS feed.

We’re very excited to be joining Pixiq, and admittedly a little bit sad to be leaving behind the black and turquoise Small Aperture design. But we hope that you’ll stay with us the for the ride, because it’s going to be awesome.

Nikon's financial curate's egg

Excellent in parts! That’s probably the best summary of the Q&A that Nikon released today on its financial results for the second quarter of this financial year. Natural disasters and the release of some exciting pieces of new kit have combined to give investors good news and bad news, but overall, the situation’s not looking quite as rosy as it was at the end of September.

Not so many D5100s around at the moment

Until the awful flooding in Thailand submerged Nikon’s dSLR camera and lens production plant and forced it to suspend manufacture, sales for dSLR cameras had been up against like-sales for the same period last year. So instead of a projected 25 million sales of dSLRs and interchangeable lenses for the entire year, the figure’s been revised to 15 million units. The Thai plant is unlikely to resume production at all until January 2012, and it won’t be at capacity until the end of March 2012. Meanwhile, Nikon’s other factories are stepping into the breach, along with some partner organisations.

There’s been less demand for compact cameras across the market as a whole. I’m inclined to suggest that’s a result of improved mobile phone cameras and mirror-less cameras carving up demand betweeen them. Nikon, though, has bucked this trend and hasn’t seen its compact camera sales drop off. It reckons it’ll sell about 100 million of them this year.

Picking up the sales baton - the V1

As for the Nikon 1 – supply cannot keep up with demand. The J1 and V1 seem to be very popular pieces of kit. And Nikon wants to keep it that way. To help defray the losses from the dSLR disaster, they’ll be pushing sales and production of the 1 series. Let’s hope that the Chinese factories can up the supply.

The bottom line? Nikon has adjusted its annual sales and operating income figures downwards. It’s projecting ¥65 billion in annual sales and an operating income of ¥23 billion.

(If you’re so inclined, you can read the full Q&A here.)

The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011: Winners Announced!

We’re back around to that time of year again, where the winners of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize are announced. As a portrait guy myself, I adore this competition and the results it produces, especially when it’s time to take a wander around London’s National Portrait Gallery and see the selected entries in print. You may recall that last year’s winning entry was David Chancellor’s Huntress With Buck – a striking image of a young, red headed girl on horseback, the recently killed buck draped over the horse’s neck. Interestingly, this year’s winner bears some thematic similarities, albeit in a somewhat more humane context.

This years winning entry is entitled “Harriet and Gentleman Jack”, by Jooney Woodward. The portrait is of 13 year old Harriet Power and her guinea pig, Gentleman Jack. It’s interesting to draw parallels between this and Chancellor’s winning image last year. Both are of young, red headed girls, creating a striking contrast in the image. In addition, the animals in both images are also red / auburn in shade, which complements and creates a visual connection between the subject and the animal. What’s really neat about comparing these two images is that they have a major contrasting difference in the story they tell: “Huntress With Buck” portrays a world where animals can sometimes be seen as tools and commodities, whereas “Harriet and Gentleman Jack” portrays a world of the animal as a pet, as a companion.

Harriet and Gentleman Jack, by Jooney Woodward

Personally, I find the winning entry this year to be encouraging and proof that the judges are on the right track with this competition. Whilst I love portrait competitions, sometimes I get the sinking feeling that, with some competitions, there is often too heavy an emphasis on an portrait having to be about the exotic, or the extreme, or the exploitative: images of homeless people or perhaps of someone in shocking living conditions, be it in a third world country or in a down-and-out part of New York.

Whilst I appreciate photography’s unique ability to illuminate ways of life that would otherwise remain hidden to all and the subsequent value and importance of such images, it’s just nice to see that, hey, people without problems have interesting lives and personalities too. A photographer shouldn’t feel they should have to ingest a cocktail of vaccines and travel to the most obscure corners of the Earth in order to create a portrait of worth. I’m also pleased that the actual subject matter of the images that were shortlisted this year feels fresh and original. It inspires me and helps me realise that there are still new ideas to be found out there – we just need to look for them!

If you live in London or you’re planning on visiting, you would be absolutely mad to not give the exhibition a look. It’s on at the National Portrait Gallery for only £2.

More murk at Olympus

The bigwigs at Olympus were probably hoping that the investigation they commissioned into the case of higher-than-expected payments to merger brokers would uncover a sloppy but somehow explicable chain of miserable accounting practices and they’d be able to restore a bit of stability to the company and reclaim some of the millions it has lost in share prices since Michael Woodford was sacked in early October. But oh no. Instead it would seem that piles and piles of bloodied linen are about to be laundered very publicly.

Not only does Olympus have to contend with dodgy dealings with Cayman Islands-based companies, rumours of Yakuza involvement in the business, a revolving door of presidents and chairmen, and plummeting share prices, but it could well face being delisted from the Japanese stock exchange, too.

It looks as if Olympus might’ve been concealing losses it had accrued on securities investments by covering them with funds from previous acquisitions. And it might’ve been going on for over 20 years.

Vice President Hisashi Mori has been dismissed following these revelations, and President Shuichi Takayama – who only stepped into the post at the end of October after Tsuyoshi Kikukawa stepped down – has been very quick to place the blame on his predecessor, on Mori, and Hideo Yamada, the firm’s auditor. Well, he has to do something; this doesn’t look good at all for Olympus. Its share prices have taken another dive (so they’re down about 70% since Woodford was kicked out) and the speculation about the future of the company is rife. Not good; not good at all.

(There’s more on the BBC and the Financial Times.)

News in brief: Super-secret iPhone panorama function

So if you’ve an iPhone, and if you’re running iOS 5, and if it’s jailbroken, (which is quite a few ifs, admittedly) there is, apparently, a panoramic camera feature secreted away in the deep, dark depths of its files. According to Conrad Kramer – the guy who stumbled upon it – if you want to take advantage, you need to find the ‘EnableFirebreak’ setting in the iOS preferences file, and flip it to ‘Yes’. And lo! You will have the ability to construct grand and sweeping panoramas with your iPhone, which is of course every iPhone owners every desire.

(Headsup to Engadget)

What is this? - In our NewsFlash section, we share interesting tidbits of news. Think of it as our extended twitter feed: When we find something that get our little hearts racing, we'll share it with you right here! Loving it? Great, we've got lots more News Flash articles - and, of course, we're still on Twitter as well, for even shorter news tidbits.

Not just 3D with Panasonic's 3D1 dual-lens camera

I’m going to try my very hardest to restrain my contempt for 3D whilst I write about Panasonic’s dual lens 3D-enabled camera, the 3D1. As much as I dislike the concept of 3D images and videos, the 3D1 camera itself can do some pretty nifty things, so credit where credit is due. Just be aware that my mouth will probably be a bloody mess as I bite my tongue to check its acerbity.

So it makes 3D photos and videos. It does it by having two 25mm f/3.9-5.7 lenses with 4× optical zoom that function in tandem to produce 8 megapixel stereoscopic images. That bit out of the way, we can flick the dedicated 3D to 2D button the camera, and move on to the other tricks that this camera can peform.

When it’s shooting in common-or-garden 2D mode, the MOS sensors have 12 megapixels of resolution and are powered by a Venus engine. You can use one lens to shoot video and the other to shoot stills simultaneously. Or you can focus on one person in a room with one lens whilst the other lens is taking in the entire scene. And all of this can be controlled via its touchscreen.

Panasonic reckons that the 3D1′s low-light capability is pretty special. It has a multi-process noise-reduction function to ensure ‘dramtically clear’ low-light pictures, even when you’ve bumped up the ISO. There’s also the prospect of tripod-free night shooting. This is achieved by smooshing together consecutively shot images. I think we’ll believe that one when we see it.

As instant gratification and immediate updates to our social networks of choice are primary concerns in this world of ours that never shuts down, you can upload your pictures to Facebook or your videos to YouTube by checking the photos or videos in camera, connecting your camera to your computer, and following the instructions.

I doubt it comes as any kind of shock that the 3D1 will be available from December, around US$500.

A love story in 5 polaroids

1 - Flirtation

As a writer, I'm not really one for letting the pictures do the talking. For this particular post, however, I'll make an exception - check out the photo gallery above for the newest (and most, most exciting) development in my life.

Awesome.

Canon hits Hollywood

The swanky invitations went out, the speculation was speculated on, the announcements have now been made, and the champagne has been quaffed. What, then, is the fall-out on Canon revealing that it’s launching itself headlong into a professional cinematograhy system? There’s the C300 interchangeable lens digital cinema camera, a slew of lenses, and the forthcoming full-frame dSLR that slots into the movies system, that will, eventually, aim to give serious amateur filmmakers a serious movie-making camera.

C300

The C300 comes in two versions, both with a newly developed Super 35mm equivalent 8.29 megapixel CMOS sensor. Version one is the EOS C300 with an EF lens mount; it’ll take any of Canon’s current range of EF lenses that are used on its dSLR cameras. Version two is the EOS C300 PL; that one’s compatible with industry-standard PL lenses. The question that arises here: why not develop something with dual compatibility?

The big disappointment with the C300, though, is that is only captures 1080p. And that disappointment was compounded by Red’s Scarlet revelation, which will capture 4k. Still, the C300 is relatively small and comes with Canon Log Gamma. That allows for flat image quality with subdued contrast and sharpness, and a whole heap of flexibility when comes to post-production editing and processing.

In Philip Bloom’s opinion, the C300 will be great for broadcast use, but at $20,000 – or thereabouts, as prices haven’t been confirmed – it’s too expensive. Especially with the Red Scarlet coming in sub $10,000. But, what’s important is how it handles and the images it produces. We’ll just have to wait and see about that.

Cinema EOS dSLR

This camera doesn’t have a name, a potential price, or a vague release date yet. It’s a concept, albeit one that has a physical form, as the pictures of it prove. But it’s a damned exciting concept. A 35mm full frame image sensor that can shoot Motion-JPEG encoded 4K video at 24fps. (Although when it records in 4K it will drop to an APS-H crop.)

This is perhaps more what people would have been expecting from Canon – a stills camera that’s entirely serious about video – that offers a stepping stone between dSLR shooting and the C300. It’ll be very exciting to see what it produces.

All those lovely lenses

Seven, yes 7, new lenses were announced alongside the cameras yesterday: four zooms (two EF and two PL) and three fixed-focal lengths all on the EF mount.

There are the wide-angle CN-E14.5–60mm T2.6 L S (for EF mounts) and CN-E14.5–60mm T2.6 L SP (for PL mounts) and the telephoto CN-E30–300mm T2.95–3.7 L S (for EF mounts) and CN-E30–300mm T2.95–3.7 L SP (for PL mounts). They all support 4K resolution and are compatible with industry-standard Super 35 mm-equivalent cameras as well as APS-C cameras. But, they won’t work with 35mm full-frame or APS-H sensors.

As for the prime lenses, there are the CN-E24mm T1.5 L F, the CN-E50mm T1.3 L F, and the CN-E85mm T1.3 L F. They all deliver 4K performance, and all three are compatible with industry-standard Super 35 mm-equivalent cameras, 35 mm full-frame, APS-H, and APS-C sensor sizes.

That’s a wrap

So yesterday gave us a camera that a few people are suggesting is over-priced, a teaser for a camera that really could be something, and seven lenses. What it definitely suggests is that Canon is entirely serious about making movies. This is just the start, after all.

Analogue films crash into the 21st century with the LomoKino

This has to be about as simple as film-making gets. It’s Lomography’s inspiredly-named LomoKino – a movie camera that works on 35mm film. There’s no sound, no post-production, and no special effects: just somewhere around 40 seconds of footage shot at 3-4 frames per second on a camera that uses a hand crank.

The LomoKino has a 25mm lens with a maximum aperture of f/5.6. Focusing is between one metre and infinity normally, but at the click of a button it can do 60 centimetre close-ups.

If you’re wondering how on earth you can watch your cinematic masterpieces of baby’s first steps in over-saturated cross-processed wonder, Lomo’s already got that covered. In addition to the LomoKino, you can pick up the LomoKinoScope, which’ll let you watch your homemade movie, turned by a hand crank, too. Get them digitised and you can share them on the Lomography website, naturally.

The LomoKino takes any 35mm film, whether that’s slide, colour negative, or black and white. You just have to remember to ask the lab not to cut them when you have it developed.

Normally I look at toy cameras in despair. There’s something about paying money for nasty plastic and even nastier glass that makes me shudder. This, however, this made me smile. I’m not likely to go out and buy myself one anytime soon, but I’d be unlikely to look at someone with thinly veiled horror if it were given to me for my birthday. (But don’t, please, anyone, get any ideas.) It’s £65 (US $79) for the LomoKino by itself, or £89 (US $99) for the LomoKino and LomoKinoScope package.

You can take a closer look over on the Lomography website.

Photo week at Apple

For anyone who was looking for any kind of excuse to saunter over to the Apple Store on Regent Street, they’re laying on a series of photography events over the week 7 to 14 November. And they extend a bit beyond just using the iPhone. Apple’s brought on board NK Guy, the MV collective, and David Ward and Eddie Ephraums, amongst others, to offer a series of workshops, talks, aimed at photographers of varying abilities and backgrounds.

There are beginners’ guides to lenses, portfolio reviews for slightly more experienced photographers who are looking to progress, as well as in depth looks at different types of cameras and which sorts of photographer they suit and a talk from pro Mark Esper. There are plenty of sessions that cover the iPhone camera and the plethora of apps, but there’s an off-camera lighting masterclass and a session that explores the best means to back up your image archive, too.

You will have to reserve your spot at some sessions and there’s quite a bit going on, so you’d be best heading over the Regent Street website and taking a look at the full schedule.

October photo competition winner!

When I asked for photos of landmarks and monuments for October’s competition, and gave the Eiffel Tower, the Coliseum, the Brandenburg Gate, the Sydney Opera House as possible examples, I wasn’t quite expecting you guys to take me at my word. We had photos of three of those four ehm… monumental landmarks. But we were also treated to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the Tanjore Big Temple in Tamil Nadu, India, and the Albert Memorial. Amongst others! So thank you. And thank you also to the super team at Fracture who are supplying a 12″ Fracture for the winner. The winner who is…

Sydney Opera House, by Nyami

Yeah, we went with the Sydney Opera House. Well done, Nyami! As Haje said, it was an angle he’s not seen before, and the subject was well-placed. Get in touch and we’ll sort out your prize!

Thanks everyone who entered. Haje and I really enjoy looking at what you submit and talking over our favourites. November’s competition will be announced shortly, just as soon as I’ve sorted a theme!

Our November photo competition

The theme for November’s photo competition is taking a slightly unusual bent. My brother has suddenly become a key player behind a campaign to force his university to reconsider its decision to close its school of music. To try to bring a smidge of publicity to the cause in my own quiet way, and to bolster my brother, too, I thought that I’d make the theme music.

Anything musical will do. You might want to try your hand at concert photography; you might want to submit a photo of an instrument; hell, even an unusual and well-composed shot of your CD collection could swing it for us. We don’t mind, just think notes, scores, sounds, and performers. The best picture wins a 12″ Fracture.

The competition opens today – that’s Wednesday 2 November – and you’ve until Wednesday 30 November to submit your entry to the Small Aperture Flickr pool. Remember, it’s just one entry per person, please.

The Rules are the same as last month and all the months before, but they’re here all the same in case you need them. If you need me, you know where to find me. Otherwise, good luck!

The Rules

• If you decide to enter, you agree to The Rules.
• You can’t have written for Small Aperture or be related to either me or Haje to enter.
• One entry per person – so choose your best!
• Entries need to be submitted to the right place, which is the Small Aperture Flickr group.
• There’s a closing date for entries, so make sure you’ve submitted before then.
• You have to own the copyright to your entry and be at liberty to submit it to a competition. Using other people’s photos is most uncool.
• It probably goes without saying, but entries do need to be photographs. It’d be a bit of strange photo competition otherwise.
• Don’t do anything icky – you know, be obscene or defame someone or sell your granny to get the photo.
• We (that being me and Haje) get to choose the winner and we’ll do our best to do so within a week of the competition closing.
• You get to keep all the rights to your images. We just want to be able to show off the winners (and maybe some honourable mentions) here on Small Aperture.
• Entry is at your own risk. I can’t see us eating you or anything, but we can’t be responsible for anything that happens to you because you submit a photo to our competition.
• We are allowed to change The Rules, or even suspend or end the competition, if we want or need to. Obviously we’ll try not to, but just so that you know.

Fuji V3: glasses-free 3D viewing

I’m not sure if Fuji’s new glasses-free 3D digital photoframe is indicative of consumers jumping on the 3D bandwagon and wanting to be able to display their multi-dimensional masterpieces in their living rooms and Fuji meeting that need, or if it’s Fuji trying to convince us that we do really want to take 3D photos and here’s an easy way to display them and not look like a prat in those ridiculous glasses at the same time. Maybe a bit of both. Still, it’s the FinePix REAL 3D V3, and you don’t need glasses in order to look at photos where balls fly out of the screen or birds swoop towards you. (Bother! No Joe90 glasses to protect your eyes anymore!)

The V3 uses a lenticular viewing system. It has lenses aligned at left and right angles on a sheet, which means that your left and right eyes will view different images, with the parallax difference between the two eyes creating the 3D effect. The images should be ‘crystal clear’ without any irritating flicker.

Obviously a digital photoframe that only displays 3D images would be a touch on the niche side right now, so you can look at regular 2D snaps on it. The viewing angle is pretty impressive, at up to 160° horizontally and 140° vertically. And to ensure that it really gets a foothold in the market, the V3 has an HDMI port so that you can watch things direct from your FinePix REAL 3D W3 digital camera or any other HDMI-enabled device; as well as displaying 3D videos in 720p high-def, with sound.

It’s SD/SDHC card compatible and has an 512MB internal memory; has a remote control; and there are the usual bits pieces like a calendar and a clock.

Fuji hasn’t announced a price or date, but I’m betting it’ll be available before Christmas.

News in brief: Christmas cashback pressies from Pentax

More cunning than a cunning fox, Pentax has just announced some cashback offers to tempt you into buying its wares when you might, possibly, maybe, be thinking about presents for Chrisnukah. There’s £90 back on a K-5 – body-only or with a lens – or £100 back on a Q with a single or twin lens kit. I’m not sure that a £100 reduction is enough to win me over to the Q from the recent reviews, but if your heart is set on this itty-bitty 12 megapixel snapper, it can’t be bad at all.

The offer’s valid from 1 November to 31 December 2011. All the information that you need, including a downloadable claim form can be found here for the K-5 or here for the Q.

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Help Portrait 2011

Seeing someone’s reaction when they look at a potrait of her or himself is always so cool, especially if she or he isn’t that confident being photographed. There’s this kind of rush you get from making them feel good about themselves. I reckon that doing that for someone who could really do with that sort of confidence boost, or someone showing an interest in them, or spending time with them, would be pretty fantastic, which makes me think that Help Portrait is one awesome idea.

People with cameras, whether they’re pros or not and wherever they are, spend a day taking photos of people who are in some way in need. This year that day is 10 December. Reckon you could help?

Help Portrait is now in its third year. It was founded by Jeremy Cowart and it’s probably best if you hear what he has to say about it in his own words.

If you want to find out even more, like how to get involved, wander over to the Help Portrait website and see what you can do.

Cheap Magnum seminar places thanks to IdeasTap

Aged between 16 and 25? Photographer? Fancy getting some awesome career guidance from some of the best in the business? The guys at IdeasTap are offering 10 subsidised places at Magnum’s Professional Practice seminar in Birmingham over the first weekend in December.

The line-up includes Tony Bell, the Picture Editor of the Observer; Client Engagement Manager of 24 Productions, Rhiannon Reid; Head of Photographs of Birmingham Central Library, Peter James; Dewi Lewis of Dewi Lewis Publishing; Cultural and Education Manager of Magnum Photos, Fiona Rogers; and Head of International Picture Desk of ActionAid, Laurence Watts.

Places on these seminars usually cost £250+ VAT and are normally heavily over-subscribed. If you’re an IdeasTap member, however, you can apply to skip the queue and pay just £50 (+ VAT), instead. You’ll need to submit five photos to your IdeasTap portfolio and 100 words or fewer stating your case for a place. You’ve until 17:00 on 17 November to do so.

The seminar is taking place at the Photography Department of Birmingham City University, Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 December 2011. Both days’ sessions begin at 09:30 and end at 17:00.

Full details and the application process are over on the IdeasTap website.

Curioser and curioser at Olympus

Here’s the latest instalment in the saga of Olympus and the mysterious take-over fees: chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa has resigned. He’s going to become a director without executive rights and Shuichi Takayama will replace him. The plan is that these changes can bring some stability to a company that hasn’t been out of the news for over two weeks, and whose share price has plummeted by 56% since 13 October this year.

As for the story so far, here’s a quick recap because it’s far too good to ignore. First, Michael Woodford was sacked as CEO two weeks after assuming the post and commissioning a report that asked why Olympus had paid a 36% fee to a Cayman Islands-based middleman when Olympus took over Gyrus around 2007. Next, Olympus denied that they’d paid the fee. Woodford, meanwhile, took his dossier to the Serious Fraud Office in London.

Then, Olympus recanted and said that, yes, actually, really, it had paid about $687 million to the middleman, but didn’t actually consider it excessive. The Japanese government doesn’t seem too sure about that, though. Tsutomu Okubo, deputy policy chief of the Democratic Party of Japan has come out and said ‘At least the fees were outlandish. The company must explain the whole circumstances behind the incident.’

Oh, and don’t forget that Woodford has sought police protection and there have even been allegations of some kind of underworld involvement.

This one has all the makings of a blockbusting thriller, let alone a soap opera.

(More information from the BBC, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal.)