Photokina 2012: Carl Zeiss will show prototypes of a 55mm F1.4 Distagon prime lens for DSLRs and the first lenses for mirrorless system cameras. The lenses for mirrorless cameras will be autofocus designs and will become available in mid 2013. The prototypes on show will include a wide-angle prime, a standard prime and a macro lens. No details are given for which systems will be supported. The manual focus Distagon* 1.4/55 will be available in the second half of 2013 for Canon and Nikon mounts.

Carl Zeiss has announced the Apo Sonnar T* 2/135 telephoto lens, which it will be showing at the Photokina trade show in Cologne later this month. This premium manual focus optic uses a floating focus system to maintain high image quality at all distances down to 0.8m. It uses anomalous partial dispersion glass elements to minimize chromatic aberrations, resulting in an apochromatic design. It will be available in mounts for Canon and Nikon SLRs from December 2012, at a recommended retail price of approximately €1600 / $2000 (excluding VAT).

Samyang has announced it will be presenting a perspective control 24mm F3.5 lens at Photokina 2012. The Samyang T-S 24mm 1:3.5 ED AS UMC is a wide-angle, full-frame lens that offers tilt and shift movements, allowing control of subject geometry and depth of field. It offers up to 12mm of shift and 8.5° of tilt; the shift movement can be rotated +/- 90° relative to the lens mount, and the tilt movement 90° relative to the shift axis, allowing lots of flexibility over adjustments. The lens will be available in Canon EF, Nikon F, Pentax K and Sony Alpha mounts.

Just Posted: Resolution and dynamic range test samples and analysis of the Pentax K-30. Our full review of Pentax's K-30 mid-level DSLR is well underway and we will be posting content as it becomes available. This time we are adding our standard resolution and dynamic range test pages with analysis. As usual this means the dynamic range samples are accessible from other reviews and can be used for comparison our dynamic range widget.

Just Posted: Our hands-on Fujifilm X-E1 preview. We've had a chance to get to grips with Fujifilm's latest X-mount mirrorless interchangeable lens camera and have prepared a preview looking at its key features and technologies. The X-E1 is Fujifilm's second mirrorless interchangeable lens camera and the first to rely solely on an electronic viewfinder for operation - we look at how the camera handles this, while we get a handle on how it sits alongside its peers.

Photokina 2012: Fujifilm has announced the X-E1 - its second mirrorless interchangeable lens camera - along with two additional XF-mount lenses. The X-E1 uses the same 16MP 'X-Trans' APS-C sensor as the more expensive X-Pro 1 model. It offers a high-resolution 2.4m dot OLED electronic viewfinder in the place of the Pro1's opto-electronic hybrid finder and gains a pop-up flash in a smaller body. Alongside the X-E1 come a 18-55mm F2.8-4 stabilized kit zoom that promises AF times as fast as 0.1 seconds when the two are used together. The kit will sell for a recommended price of around $1,399.95, or $999.95 without a lens.

Photokina 2012: Fujifilm has also announced firmware v2.00 for the X-Pro1 high-end mirrorless camera, promising performance improvements. Firmware 2.00 addresses many of the criticisms that have been levelled at the camera by many reviews. This includes improved autofocus speed, better manual focus behaviour and less waiting for processing and card-writing. We've been using a beta version of the firmware and have prepared some notes on its effects. The final version of the firmware will be available for download from September 18th 2012.

Photokina 2012: Alongside the X-E1, Fujifilm has announced two additional lenses for its XF-mount - the promised 18-55mm F2.8-4 standard zoom and a 21mm-equivalent 14mm F2.8 prime lens. The 18-55mm will be offered on its own or as a kit lens with the X-E1 and adds a semi-fast image-stabilized standard zoom with a linear motor for fast focusing. Meanwhile, the 14mm offers an optically-corrected 21mm equivalent field-of-view and a push-pull focus ring to engage manual focus, revealing a distance scale.

Nokia has announced the Lumia 920, the next generation of its phones to wear the 'PureView' branding but, despite the name, the camera technology isn't up to the standard of the 808 PureView. Rather than the 808's 41MP, 1/1.2" sensor, the 920 has a slightly oversized 8.7MP CMOS. Nokia is still making big claims about the 920's camera capabilities, it has a Carl Zeiss-branded lens featuring ‘floating lens technology’ image stabilization, prompting claims of better low-light performance than other smartphones. The Lumia 920 and the co-announced Lumia 820 both run on Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 operating system – an improvement over the Symbian model on the Nokia 808, which we gave our Gold Award to in our July review. 

Corel has announced PaintShop Pro X5, the latest version of its photo management and editing software. This latest update includes more extensive image tagging and management tools, including improved geotagging and face recognition, allowing the creation of geographically-related slideshows and tagged uploads to Facebook. Pro X5 also gains a series of 'Instant Effects' presets allowing different 'looks' to be achieved simply. The software's HDR features have also been improved, including better handling of changes between the images being combined. The software will cost $79.99, or $99.99 for the 'Ultimate' edition which includes ColorEfex Pro 3.0.

DxO Labs has created DxO ViewPoint - a piece of software to remove geometric distortion from images. As the name implies, ViewPoint is designed to remove the distortion introduced by the position of the shooter, whether that be the distorting effect seen at the edge of wide-angle images shot close-up, or the correction of converging verticals caused by perspective.ViewPoint is available either as a stand-alone tool or as a plugin for Adobe PhotoShop (CS3 or newer) or Lightroom (version 3 or newer). It is available for both Mac and PC.

A wireless flash trigger enables you to fire one or more flashguns remotely, without being encumbered by wires. There are plenty of wireless TTL flash triggers on the market, making it difficult to find the ideal setup to meet your needs. The Phottix Odin (available for Canon and Nikon) is a wireless radio controller which offers a user-friendly control interface and a compelling feature set. Can the Odin system live up to the hype? Click through for our review. 

The British Journal of Photography has published an interesting article on its website entitled 'The New Economics of Photojournalism: The rise of Instagram'. In the article, author Olivier Laurent addresses the significance of services like Instagram for photojournalists, and investigates how these photographers are adapting to a platform where interactivity and immediacy are paramount.  Click through for more details and a link to the full article.

The discontinuation of Polaroid film in 2008 led to much despair among its fans. The Impossible Project, founded in the same year, set out to recreate the out-of-production films that Polaroid users had come to depend on. In advance of a new 8x10 monochrome emulsion becoming available to the wider public, The Impossible Project shared it with some of their test users - photographers they call their 'Pioneers', and has created an exhibition in New York City, from the resulting images. Adam Koplan takes a look. 

Sigma Corportation of North America has announced that the DP1 Merrill will be available from mid September at a price of around $1000. The DP1M is the version of the company's fixed lens, APS-C compact camera with a 28mm equivalent, F2.8. It uses the same Foveon X3 sensor as the company's flagship SD1 DSLR, which captures three colors at each of its 14.6 million pixel sites. The quoted price is the camera's 'street price' reflecting what Sigma thinks the camera will actually sell for, rather than a more speculative recommended selling price.

Just Posted: Our review of the Pixel Vertax D12 third-party battery grip for the Nikon D800. Third-party manufacturers offer a broad range of accessories for popular cameras, providing more options or lower prices. Vertical grips can aid the handling of DSLRs for portrait-format shooting and when working with long, heavy lenses. In this short review, we look at the Pixel Vertax D12 battery grip. At $99 it's considerably cheaper