As expected Adobe has today announced that a Beta version of Photoshop CS3 will be available for download tomorrow (15th December). To use CS3 you will need a valid CS2, Creative Suite 2, Creative Suite Production Studio, Design Bundle, Web Bundle or Video Bundle serial number. Without a serial number this Beta of CS3 will expire in just two days. As well as a range of improvements and user interface changes the biggest news with CS3 is Universal Binary support for Mac OS X, providing much performance relief to Mac Intel owners.

At Photokina earlier this year Leica made a surprise announcement that they had purchased the controlling share (51%) in Sinar from Jenoptik. In a rather strange twist to this story Jenoptik has today announced that it is now rescinding the sale of the shares to Leica and that they will maintain the controlling share of the company. The press release issued states that this will not affect the working relationship between Leica and Jenoptik, the later of whom were responsible for some of the image processing for the new M8 digital rangefinder.

Just Posted! Our Concise Review of the Canon PowerShot A710 IS, successor to the A700. Aside from a design facelift and a few feature tweaks the biggest - and most welcome - change is that the new model adds optical image stabilization, something we bemoaned the lack of on the A700. There's also an extra million pixels and the usual A series mix of manual and automatic features. Find out what we thought after the link...

SanDisk and Sony have today announced the development of the new 'Pro-HG' Memory Stick format which is designed to deliver faster continuous write speeds (up to 60 MB/sec) and larger capacities. This new format appears to be aimed more at future flash based video recorders. It would appear as though this new format will only be available in the 'Duo' size.

Sigma has today announced the postponement of the SD14 digital SLR which was initially due to ship in November, this was later put back to December. The new date of availability for the SD14 is March 2007, this due to "one issue that occurred occasionally and only under certain circumstances." Sigma go on to say that, "Initially, we felt that this could be solved with a programming or processing solution. However, after careful investigation and many attempts at a solution, we have come to the conclusion that we need to make a hardware change to fix this issue completely."

Fujifilm has released a new specification sheet for the S5 PRO - officially announced at Photokina back in September - that firms up on a few key areas (such as buffer capacity for continuous shooting) and adds a few new details.

Just Posted! Our Review of the Fujifilm FinePix S6000fd (also known as the S6500fd). The S6000fd has several key features of interest; top of the list being the 6.3MP, 1/1.7" Super CCD sensor used to wide acclaim in the F30 and F31fd and offering 'full resolution' shooting at up to ISO 3200. It also has a new hardware based face detection system and a useful 28-300mm zoom range. But is it any good? Find out after the link...

Just posted! Our in-depth review of the Pentax K100D (and K110D if you ignore the Shake Reduction test). The K100D is the latest in line of Pentax compact digital SLR's which started with the *ist DS (the *ist D being larger and more semi-pro targeted). The K100D comes to the table with in-camera Shake Reduction, a six megapixel CCD, improved image processing, a Penta-mirror viewfinder and a wide range of manual controls. See how the K100D performed and how it shapes up to the competition.

Ricoh has produced a special edition of its GR Digital commemorating the 1st year of the camera and the 10th anniversary of the GR series. Designed by renowned Japanese illustrator Katsuya Terada, this special edition is limited to only 1000 units.

CIPA, the Japanese Camera & Imaging Products Association is made up of all major Japanese camera manufacturers including Canon, Casio, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax, Ricoh, Sigma and Sony. Every month they publish statistics on the production an export of digital cameras, film cameras and photo printers. As we head towards the end of the year we thought it would be interesting to look at the Shipment figures for the first three quarters of this year and how they compare to the same period last year.

The introduction of Leica's first digital M series hasn't gone quite as smoothly as they will have hoped, before the camera even reached owners some reviewers spotted some issues with the imaging side of the camera (Banding, Mirror/Ghost effect and IR sensitivity). Leica issued a statement two weeks ago that they were aware and were working on a solution. Today they have announced the 'action plan', firstly that the Banding and Mirror/Ghost images issue can be rectified by returning your camera to LEICA for repair (and that all new M8's leaving Solms will not suffer from this problem). Secondly the solution for 'above average' IR sensitivity are IR filters which attach to the front of the lens, Leica will be offering two free filters to all M8 owners.

Sony Corp has today announced that it has discovered a defect in eight of its Cyber-shot models. The cameras affected were sold between September 2003 and January 2005, they are the DSC-F88, DSC-M1, DSC-T1, DSC-T11, DSC-T3, DSC-T33, DSC-U40 and DSC-U50. The problem is said to be related to the use of these cameras in hot and/or humid environments and can lead to a loss of image on the LCD (we assume this vague description to mean that live view fails due to overheating of the CCD). Sony has said it will repair any camera (of the above) which show signs of this problem.

Toshiba has announced the introduction of the first 8GB SDHC Memory Card which it says will be available early in the new year. The new cards will be capable of a write speed in excess of 4MB per second up to 6MB per second and useable with all devices compatible with the SDHC specification. With some compact cameras now topping 10 Megapixels and entry-level DSLRs increasingly using SD format, the arrival of higher capacity cards is sure to be welcomed by many.

Ricoh has released an updated V2.20 firmware for it's GR Digital camera, bringing changes to the file storage and exposure bracketing options available. There is now a choice of JPEG sizes when recording RAW and JPEG simultaneously, the 3:2 image size can now be combined with a 'Normal' compression ratio and exposure bracketing may be performed in 0.3 EV steps as well as the 0.5 EV available previously.

Just posted! Our Review of the Canon PowerShot G7. The G7 came as something of a surprise to many who had written off the G series of high end PowerShots. The G series has a long and distinguished history at the top of Canon's PowerShot range, and the G7 continues the tradition, adding all Canon's latest gizmos (including the new Digic III processor, face detection and image stabilization). Since its announcement there has been heated discussion about some of Canon's decisions - particularly the loss of raw mode and the slower lens. Find out what we thought in the review after the link...