Over $15,000 worth in prizes were handed out including manufacturers like Epson, Gentec, Sandisk, Nikon, Lastolite and many more.

Congratulations to all the contest winners!  For more details click here.

Canon’s smallest professional camcorders, the new XF105 and XF100 utilize the same Canon XF Codec featured in the Canon XF305 and XF300, introduced earlier this year.  The Canon XF Codec is an MPEG-2 4:2:2 50Mbps codec used for exceptional high-definition image quality, full non-linear editing (NLE) systems
compatibility and efficient, robust workflow.

These camcorders include in-camera features enabling the easy set-up and capture of high-definition 3-D video when two XF105 or XF100 camcorders are paired, as well as Canon’s built-in infrared low-light feature enabling the capture of HD video in complete darkness. Both models record to Compact Flash (CF) cards and feature hot-swappable card slots for maximum performance.

Differentiating the two models are industry-standard HD-SDI output and genlock in/SMPTE time code (in/out) terminals available on the Canon XF105. The XF105 and XF100 camcorders are ideal for Electronic News Gathering, documentary and independent filmmaking and event videography.

“Whether used as a companion to the XF305 or XF300, or as a stand-alone camcorder, the XF105 and XF100 are geared for a wide range of applications where high image quality, extreme portability and efficient workflow are of the utmost importance. And with true stereoscopic 3-D production and infrared recording capabilities, they allow users to expand into new markets,” stated Ian Macfarlane, Vice President of the Consumer Imaging Group at Canon Canada Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Canon U.S.A., Inc. “This week we will be exhibiting both the Canon XF105 and XF100 at Canon EXPO 2010 in New York and demonstrate the versatile low-cost capabilities.”

The Canon XF105 and XF100 Professional Camcorders feature a Genuine Canon 10x HD Zoom lens which provides the mobility and optical performance required by the most demanding professionals. Each model includes a Canon developed and designed native Full HD 1920 x 1080 CMOS image sensor and the new Canon XF Codec for extreme colour detail required for accurate chroma-keying, colour-grading and compositingfor digital filmmaking.

For finer transitions in tone and colour, 4:2:2 colour sampling offers twice the colour resolution of HDV and other 4:2:0 formats.  And to maximize compatibility with existing industry infrastructure,
video, audio and metadata are combined in an MXF (Material eXchange Format) File Wrapper, a widely supported open-source format.

The Canon XF Codec is currently compatible with leading software programs widely used within the video production and broadcast industries including those available from Adobe, Apple, Avid, and Grass Valley.

For more information, download the offical Canon press release below!

Canon XF-Series Professional Camcorder XF105 and XF100 PDF

For more information and details about the courses and workshops visit the SPAO website, pick up a calendar at community centers, galleries, and retail locations around the city, or give them a call at 613-562-3824.

High-quality digital capture and skillful post-processing go hand-in-hand for superior end results, and more control over in-camera image processing means less time editing and more time shooting. At the same time, the overwhelming popularity of Full HD video recording with other current EOS Digital SLRs has led to customer requests for more advanced features such as manual audio level control and flexible LCD screens. Canon Canada Inc., a leader in digital imaging, delivers all of these features and more with the new EOS 60D Digital SLR Camera. For the first time on an EOS camera, the EOS 60D DSLR boasts a three-inch Vari-Angle Clear View LCD screen, EOS Full HD video recording with manual overrides including audio level control, and in-camera functionality for RAW image processing plus Creative Filters to manipulate images after taking them. Designed primarily for advanced amateurs, the EOS 60D replaces the EOS 50D and boasts a broad array of new features that make it easier for photographers to add personal creativity to their images. Whether it’s capturing an overhead shot on the Vari-Angle screen at a graduation ceremony, or converting a colour image to black and white for a nostalgic look, Canon is delivering in-camera features and functions that empower advanced photographers to capture, display and print the images they want.

“The EOS 60D has been designed to offer the image-capture and the Full HD video features customers are looking for as they continue to expand their photographic skills. The exciting new features of the EOS 60D make using a DSLR camera more attractive and easier than ever before. We want everyone to experience the great image quality a Canon DSLR can offer with features and functions that they will appreciate and use,” stated Ian Macfarlane, Vice President of the Consumer Imaging Group at Canon Canada Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Canon U.S.A., Inc.

To find out more, click on Canon’s official Press Release here.

With a 14 megapixel sensor, up to ISO 12800 sensitivity and a new 1080p/24 H.264 AVCHD movie mode with continuous contrast-detect autofocus, complete with face detection and subject tracking, the D3100 is quite a find with it’s price tag of only $569.95.

Have a gander at some of these features:

• DX-format, 14.2 effective megapixel CMOS image sensor
  - Softly defocused backgrounds that only a D-SLR can produce
• EXPEED 2 – Nikon’s new image processing engine
  - Faithful color reproduction and smooth, beautiful gradations
• ISO sensitivity 100-3200 (expandable to ISO 12800 equivalent)
  - Great performance and less blur in dimly lit settings
• Active D-Lighting – Beautiful balancing of light and shade
• Picture Control – Customizing images before the shot
• Guide Mode – The sure way to obtain desired results
• Scene Modes – Your short cut to expected results
• Scene Auto Selector – Letting D3100 decide the best mode to match the scene
• Help function – One-touch access to in-camera assistance
• Info display format – Choose the view that’s right for you
• D-Movie – Breathtaking full HD 1080p movies
• Live View – Live View with new AF modes and large 7.5-cm (3-in.) monitor
• AF Mode for Live View and Movie Shooting – New autofocus (AF) modes help capture moving subjects
• AF-area modes for live view and movies – Four modes to capture subject
• 11-point AF system – Quick, accurate autofocus ready for the decisive moment
• Advanced white balance control – More natural whites
• Built-in pop-up flash – Additional light whenever needed
• Scene Recognition System – Intelligent operation in any setting
• Ample image and movie editing functions – In-camera image and movie editing
• High-performance NIKKOR lenses – The right choice for amazing photos and full HD movies
• Nikon’s original VR system – Less camera-shake blur in images and viewfinder
• Compact and lightweight – Easy operation and take-anywhere portability
• Continuous 3 fps shooting – Catch the decisive moment
• Eye-Fi support – Transfer photos and movies wirelessly
• Easy-to-view finder – New superimposed indicators for a better view
• New shutter mechanism – Quiet shooting, even with Live View
• Rangefinder – Quick and easy focusing
• Nikon Integrated Dust Reduction System – Prevent dust from ruining photos
• Image playback with transitions  – View photos with striking special effects …more
• Convenient playback – Find images instantly by date
• Date imprint – Stamp photos with shooting date
• Long-lasting lithium-ion battery  – Plenty of stamina for plenty of photos
• ViewNX 2 software  – Your imaging toolbox (bundled) – Smart image management with a PC
• my Picturetown – Free image sharing and storage – Share photos and movies on the web

The D3100 body can be purchased alone or with the kit AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR lens.

Plans for ProFusion 2011 are already underway and our sights are set on making this year’s event even bigger and better than 2010!

Of course, as with any expo, our success lies with what YOU want to see. And in that vein, we want you to tell us:

• Who would you like to see give a Keynote Address?
• What sorts of seminars interest you the most?
• Who would you like to see give these seminars?
• What exhibitors/products would you like to see?

Let us know your opinions & ideas. Leave your comments here or email ProFusion’s event co-coordinator and tell us what you’d like to see at ProFusion 2011. Let’s make this year even MORE successful than last year!

The event gets underway at 7pm and will discuss:

• social and documentary photography
• how photography can help to educate people, raise awareness and help bring about social change
• the process of working with charitable organizations towards their benefit (through fundraising and awareness-raising)
• how PhotoSensitive has included an education component in many of its projects, having contributions from students from many higher education colleges and universities as well as school students

Vistek is proud to be sponsoring this event & wishes PhotoSensitive another 20 years!

What: PhotoSensitive Panel Discussion
When: September 14 – 24, 2010
Where: 30 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON

The compact lens simply bolts onto your existing camera, letting you instantly shoot in 3D without any distortion or time lag between the left and right images, even when capturing moving objects. The lens features two optical systems installed within the diameter of the lens mount, creating stereo images from the left and right lenses. These images form a 3D image when processed with a 3D image processing system.

Doug Borbath, Senior Product Manager, Imaging, Panasonic Canada Inc. said:  “While 3D movie and sports content is expanding, many customers want to enjoy their own 3D shooting. This new lens will respond to such demand, allowing users to shoot landscapes, people, and a variety of subjects in high-quality 3D, to be enjoyed later with their 3D Viera televisions at home.”

How images will be played has yet to be announced, but speculation is that it will be via an SD card in the Panasonic Viera 3D TV, or by connecting a compatible camera to the TV via HDMI.

Stay tuned… Panasonic will be announcing more details SOON.

source

Showcasing the best photos from 17 projects, this exhibit will highlight the best works from the group’s 20-year history.  Photographers who have been involved with the PhotoSensitive exhibitions over the years will be at the opening on the evening of September 14, as well as representatives from the many charitable organizations with which we have partnered.

Vistek is proud to be support, not only PhotoSensitive, but the charities with whom they’ve partnered over the years (The Daily Bread Food Bank, Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, The United Way of Greater Toronto, Canadian National Institute for the Blind,  Community Living, Canadian Cancer Society, World Vision, The Rwanda Initiative, Campaign 2000, CARE Canada. Save the Children Canada, Foster Parents Plan Canada, Special Olympics, Ontario Trillium Foundation, Toronto District School Board & The Harmony Movement.)

Be sure to check it out!

What: PhotoSensitive 20th Anniversary Retrospective
When: September 14 – 24, 2010
Where: 181 Bay Street, Suite 220, Toronto, ON

What does Canada mean to you? Can you freeze-frame it one shot? We challenge you to try. And, with the entire country to work with, the possibilities are endless!

Capture Canada’s distinct personality in an awe-inspiring photo and you could walk away a winner!

One Grand Prize will be awarded to the best overall photograph, and that talented photographer will take home:

• Epson Stylus Pro 3880 Printer
• Nikon D90 Dual Kit with AF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 G VR DX and AF-S 55-200mm f/4.0-5. 6G VR DX IF-ED Telephoto Lens
• Nikon SB-900 Speedlight
• Elinchrom Ranger Quadra To Go Speed “A” Case Set
• Canson 13″x19″ Baryta Photographique 310gsm – 25 Sheets
• Canson 13″x19″ your choice
• UltraChrome Print 16″x24″

Category Prizes (First, Second & Third) will also be awarded to the most outstanding photographs submitted in the fields of Photojournalism, Fine Art, People, Sports & Black and White.

In addition to the sweet prize packages up for grabs, winners will have their work showcased in Vistek’s in-store galleries in January 2011 (bragging rights, anyone?!)

Photos are being accepted now and will be until December 10. Judging will start almost immediately after.

So don’t rest on your laurel, folks… there are a LOT of prizes up for grabs.  Don’t you want to claim a few for yourself?

Get all the details and enter TODAY!

Why Capture? Create with the Samsung NX10

Touted as the next generation of compact cameras, Samsung’s NX10 is packed to the brim with features. The NX series of cameras offers the performance and image quality of a DSLR and the portability and convenience of a compact point-and-shoot. The camera is quite similar to Micro Four Thirds, only it uses the same APS-C sized sensor as most DSLR cameras.

This first of the NX series is small enough to take anywhere, the perfectly compacted NX10 is reduced in size to maximise portability and convenience, and is combined with a 18-55 mm interchangeable zoom lens for maximum versatility. With advanced features such as Fast and Precise AF (Auto Focus) to capture your moments instantly; and 3.0″ AMOLED display for outstanding colour reproduction, your moments can be captured and images can be created just as you imagine them.

Key features include:

• 15.1 Megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor (presumed to be close relation to Pentax K7 sensor)
• 14.6 million effective pixels
• New Samsung NX mount (25.5mm flange-back distance)
• 720P movie capture (H.264, 30 fps)
• Contrast-detect autofocus
• 3.0″ AMOLED screen (614,000 dots, PenTile RGB array)
• 921k dot Electronic Viewfinder

This bad boy is available on its own (with a standard NX 18-55mm  lens), or in three different Kit variations:  with NX 18-55 and NX 50-200mm lenses; with NX 18-55 and NX 30mm lenses; and with NX 18-55, NX 50-200mm and NX 30mm lenses.

Check one out!

The show will feature 25 images from  Beautiful Destruction – Alberta Tar Sands Aerial Photographs,  including five select images displayed as 40×60 prints.

Louis Helbig’s aerial images teeter between documentary and abstract. The tension between their beauty and what they represent — the man-made alteration and destruction of a landscape — stimulates both thought and imagination. The Alberta Tar Sands are a place of superlatives where exaggeration of scale and proportion seems almost impossible. This exhibition is one outcome of a 2008 aerial cross-country journey the photographer and his partner Kristin Reimer embarked on in their antique aircraft, a 1946 Luscombe.

Exhibition runs July 23 to September 26.

The time has come for the third annual contest and exhibition of selected images from SPAO’s continuing education community. If you have taken a part time course or workshop at SPAO, you are eligible to enter your work for a chance to have it shown in the Red Wall Gallery as well as displayed on the SPAO website.

Entries for Ottawa’s A+3 Show are being accepted in two categories:

• Silver Gelatin/Alternative Processes
• Digital Imagery

Submission Deadline: 5pm Friday, Aug. 6, 2010
Exhibition Dates: Sept. 10 – 18
Opening & Awards Ceremony: 6 – 9pm | Sept. 10, 2010
Get full submission details HERE.

Other features include:

• 5 bubble levels, fully graduated scales
• Built-in variable direction Arca-Swiss style QR clamp
• Handles that fold in, for portability

The PHQ3 really has the best features of both a pan head and a ball head. And why adjust 3 ways when you can adjust FIVE? Seriously… 5 directions. That’s some serious precision and control for your tripod. But don’t just take our word – check out this video and see for yourself.

Who needs ‘em? GoPro has launched a wicked line of HD wearable and gear-mountable cameras and accessories. Even better? They’re incredibly affordable. Developed for professional use, but at a consumer price, the HD HERO line of wearable cameras capture full HD video rivaling cameras costing 10x the price.

Not only do these cameras shoot pro quality 1080p / 960p / 720p HD resolutions & record at 30 and 60 frames per second (60 fps in 720p), they also automatically shoot 5MP photos at varying intervals – so you really won’t miss a thing!

So, whether your game is surfing, skiing, cycling, skydiving or just getting crazy, GoPro can kit you out so you can capture all the action.

Check out the full line at Vistek!

The weather in the Greater Toronto Area on the last weekend of spring was gorgeous, but that didn’t keep local videographers from heading indoors to take in the ProFusion 2010 Pro Video Expo. The two-day event was held at the Toronto Congress Centre on June 18 and 19, and produced by Toronto-based Vistek Ltd. After the show, Vistek President Ron Silverstein told Marketnews that over 2,000 people attended the event.

Sliverstein said the idea for a pro video show had been germinating at Vistek over the past couple of years, after VP Kevin Parker and other members of the management team attended NAB conventions in the U.S. “We thought it would be good for these manufacturers to talk to our customers,” Sliverstein said, “but there is no venue for this.” Six months ago, Vistek began early preparatory work on the project, and intensive work began about four months ago.

Read the rest of the story…

New ‘Rotolight Stand’ Mount gives HD-DSLR users a HD ringlight that provides the ideal solution for both HD-Cinematography and Photography. Profusion also sees launch of world’s most portable, self-contained 2-light ‘Rotolight Interview Lighting Kit’ with Color FX Filters.

Toronto, June 2010: Profusion 2010 saw Rotolight’s Canadian launch of the upgraded RL48-A LED Ringlight and Rotolight stand. Featuring soft, natural and ‘shadowless’ continuous light output, as well as an expanded operating range of studio accurate colour temperatures, Rotolight has proved to be a huge hit with cinematographers using the next generation of HD-DLSRs. The RL48-A was described by the British Journal of Photography in its ‘Ultimate Guide to HD-DSLR Accessories’ (June 2010) as “an ideal solution” for HD-DSLR Photography, being “surprisingly low cost… and good colour quality” . Having perfect colour & ease of use in a lightweight, highly portable package is a huge advantage. Being able to mount the ringlight below a matte box, over a shotgun mic or an accessory shoe, on a spare tripod or via an articulated arm gives the DSLR user a superb lighting solution for any shoot.

Read the full press release>>

Secret Garden

This exhibition reveals how McCormick’s practice has evolved over time. The formal elements of her photographs have changed with each collection; passing through several film formats, camera types and production approaches to the most recent iconic 8” X 10” shot, large, clean images.

More significantly, the expressive content of her work has also evolved. Each successive grouping, although always of either real or artificial flora, conveys a different aspect of the artist’s search for self.

Early work tackles aging, sickness and also death as transformation. Images of this ultimate of changes from life to death are made by someone who describes herself as “ruined and living in both worlds”, and pose important questions about our perceptions of both states of being. McCormick’s Holga series is playful and made with deliberate misdirection. These photos of fake flowers cloak gallows humour in a seductive surface of candy colours and soft edges. The most recent works become larger and more iconic. Crisp and bright, they induce awe sometimes at odds with their unpretentious look at human relationships, personalities and archetypes.

Artist: Angelina McCormick
On View: June 18 – August 28, 2010 | Mon – Fri 10am – 6pm, Sat 10am – 3pm
Where: The Red Wall Gallery @ SPAO, 168 Dalhousie (at the corner of Bruyère, in the Byward Market)

For more info contact: 613.562.3824 or info@spao.ca