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Ilford Launches New Disposable Cameras Loaded With Its Black-and-White Film

The camera film industry may be struggling, but there are certain segments that are still profitable. One such niche is the one-time-use disposable film camera market, and Ilford Photo wants a piece of the pie. The company, which makes widely used films, papers, and chemicals, announced two new black & white disposable cameras today.

Adobe Launches Photoshop Elements 11: New Interface, Effects, and Tools

Adobe has announced Photoshop Elements 11, the latest refresh to the company's more-affordable and easier-to-use counterpart to Photoshop, which it claims is the #1 selling consumer photo editing program.

New features in this version include a complete overhaul of the user interface to make it more straightforward, better organization of photos by people/places/events, new guided edits for semi-automatic image adjustments, new filters for giving your pictures funky looks (e.g. comic, graphic novel, pen & ink), new intelligent extraction tools for selecting specific portions of photos, and built in sharing to popular social networks such as Facebook.

Leica Unveils the M and M-E: Beefed Up and Stripped Down Rangefinders

With much fanfare, Leica announced its new M and M-E digital rangefinders at Photokina today. The M breaks new ground by introducing some fancy new features that have never been seen before in an M rangefinder, while the M-E is the company's attempt at offering an entry-level digital rangefinder.

Notice that Leica has done away with its standard naming strategy. Apparently Leica is doing what Apple did with the iPad: leaving out the generation in the name entirely. In future, we'll be saying "Leica M" with "20th generation" in parentheses rather than Leica M20.

Panasonic Lumix GF5 Becomes Official

Panasonic has officially announced the Lumix GF5, conveniently skipping over the GF4 from the GF3. The tiny Micro Four Thirds camera is geared towards beginners and offers some subtle changes from its predecessor. While the 12.1-megapixel sensor hasn't changed, the new camera offers a new max ISO of 12,800, faster autofocus, a new 1080/30p HD view mode, a stereo microphone, a higher-res 3-inch touchscreen, a refined user interface, and an increase to 4fps (up from 3.8).

TrekPak Camera Bag Insert Adjusts with Pins Rather Than Velcro

TrekPak is a new padded camera bag insert that does away with the annoyances of velcro by introducing a new pin system for adjusting dividers:

What makes TrekPak really unique, is that you won’t find any Velcro. When you try to adjust a normal gear bag while out in the field, you know how frustrating it can be. The Velcro sticks where you don’t want it to, is hard to pull apart, and just looks messy and cluttered. Our patent pending system uses anodized aluminum pins and durable padded dividers to offer limitless organizational options. The TrekPak pin system is much easier to adjust, very secure, and straight up, it’s slick.

They're starting with inserts for Pelican camera bags, but are planning to release generic inserts and inserts designed for other bags as well.

Canon 5D Mark III Official, Packs Features From the 5D Mark II and 1D X

Canon has officially taken the wraps off its new 5D Mark III DSLR, a followup to the 5D Mark II that offers a feature set that sits somewhere between its predecessor and the soon-to-arrive 1D X. The camera packs a 22.3MP full-frame sensor, the 61-point AF system found in the 1D X, 63-zone metering, an ISO range of 100-25600 (expandable to 50-102400), 6fps continuous shooting, a 3.2-inch LCD (1.04M dots), and 100% viewfinder coverage (up from 98%).

CineSquid: A Suction Cup Tripod System Fit for Spiderman

Last year MIT grad Justin Jensen raised nearly half a million bucks through Kickstarter to launch CineSkates, a camera slider system that adds wheels to GorillaPod Focus tripods. Now Jensen and his startup Cinetics are back again with a new product called CineSquid, which provides a strong suction cup mount system rather than wheels. This allows cameras to be mounted onto things like cars, boats, and even airplanes.

Introducing the Instant Photo Pendant Necklace!

Say hello to the latest item in the PetaPixel Store: the Instant Photo Pendant Necklace! This beautiful pendant is designed to look exactly like a 1-inch tall Polaroid picture. Insert your favorite 0.8-inch square photos through a slot in the side, and keep it safe and snug with a clear plastic square (included). The copper and iron pendant is coated with white and comes with a silver-colored 18-inch chain. Buy one while supplies last for just $10 from our store (shipping is free for US residents).

Canon Unveils the G1X: A Large Sensor Compact Answer to the Mirrorless Craze

Unlike Nikon, which jumped headfirst into the interchangeable lens mirrorless game last year, Canon appears to be content with simply upping the sensor size in its existing compact cameras. Today the company announces the G1X, a new camera into the G-series line that offers a sensor large enough to compete with existing mirrorless camera systems.

Panasonic Unveils the Lumix GX1 for Serious Shooters and GF1 Lovers

After photos of the camera were leaked a week ago, Panasonic has officially announced the Lumix GX1. The camera should satisfy GF1 shooters who loved the camera but were unhappy about the consumer-oriented GF2 and GF3 followup cameras. The 16MP Micro Four Thirds camera features a max ISO of 12,800, a solid build, .09 second autofocus (with iPhone-esque touch to focus), a 3-inch touchscreen, RAW mode, and 1080/60i HD video. The camera ships for $700 (body-only) starting in December 2011.

LomoKino: The First Hand-Cranked Movie Camera that Uses Ordinary 35mm Film

Lomography has launched the LomoKino, the world's first consumer 35mm movie camera. It's an old-school hand-cranked camera that uses standard rolls of 35mm film (yeah, the kind you use in film cameras). The camera captures 144 individual frames onto each roll of film, producing a video that lasts 50-60 seconds. Once you have your film developed, you can watch it using a separate LomoKinoScope: a hand-cranked movie viewer!

Sony Hits a Grand Slam, Launches New Mirrorless and SLT Cameras

Sony is serious about this whole "catching up to Canon and Nikon" thing -- the company has announced four new large sensor cameras, and each one is a doozy. The cameras, which hit store shelves in a couple of months, include the NEX-7 and NEX-5N mirrorless cameras and the A77 and A65 SLT (AKA translucent mirror) cameras.

Twitter Launches User Photo Galleries

Twitter, Google+, and Facebook are one step closer to becoming clones of each other (at least when it comes to photo sharing) -- Twitter has rolled out photo galleries that display the 100 most recent images Tweeted by users in chronological order.

Pentax Q is the World’s First “Point-and-Shoot” with Interchangeable Lenses

Pentax has just announced the Q, the world's smallest interchangeable lens camera (ILC). Unlike existing ILC cameras, which have large sensors despite their tiny bodies, the Q has a tiny 1/2.3-inch sensor that's more comparable to the sensors in point-and-shoot cameras. Thus, the Pentax Q can be considered the world's first interchangeable lens point-and-shoot camera, though it is packed with the features and manual controls found on ILCs and DSLRs.

The camera shoots 12.4MP JPEG or raw stills at up to 5fps, records 1080p video at 30fps, and offers the traditional shooting modes found on DSLRs (i.e. P, Av, Tv, M). ISO goes up to 6400, there's a 3-inch LCD on the back, and a funky onboard flash pops up in a strange way to help illuminate your photos.

Inconspicuous Camera Bag Designed to Look like a Quiver for Arrows

If Legolas from Lord of the Rings ever decided to trade his bow for a camera, the new Urban Quiver by the newly formed Blackstone Bags is a camera bag he might use. The quiver shape keeps it from attracting too much attention from would-be thieves, while the compactness allows it to be stored in small spaces like the overhead bins on airplanes.

Casio TRYX Brings Swiveling Screens to a New Dimension

Yesterday we got a sneak peek at a strange multi-dimensionally swiveling Casio TRYX camera, and today it was officially unveiled at CES 2011. The TRYX is a 12.1 megapixel camera that shoots 1080p HD video at 30fps or 240fps slow-motion video at 432 x 320. The unique thing about the camera is that the 3-inch touchscreen LCD can both bust out of its "frame" and also swivel, allowing the frame to be used as a stand and for the screen to point in all kinds of random directions.

Sprocket Rocket Helps You Include Those Sprockets in Your Shots

The Sprocket Rocket is a new analog camera by Lomography that the company claims is the first camera dedicated to sprocket hole photography. The sprocket holes of 35mm film are included in each panoramic exposure, giving the resulting images a unique look. Two knobs on the camera wind the film in both directions, allowing you to create multiple exposures images as well.

Sony Takes on the Flip with its New Bloggie Touch

Sony just announced a new video camera that's quite a worthy challenger to the Flip Video. The Bloggie Touch replaces the original Bloggie video camera and boasts a much sleeker design (dropping the swiveling LCD), a 3-inch touchscreen, 4 to 8 GB of internal memory, 1080p HD video recording, and 12.8 megapixel photographs. Like the Flip, it's designed for quick and easy photos and videos on the go, and can connect to computers via a built-in USB connector.

Canon Unveils the 60D: HD Video Recording and a Swivel Screen

Turns out the leaked photos of the Canon 60D we posted a couple weeks ago were of the real thing. Canon just announced this camera this morning, and the rumored specs were spot on as well: an 18-megapixel camera with an articulating LCD screen and heavy emphasis on video recording.