Prior to its announcement today, we had the opportunity to use Panasonic's new high-end Lumix DMC-GX7 mirrorless interchangeable lens camera. As well as a redesigned 16MP Live MOS sensor, the GX7 features a tilting camcorder-style EVF, a tiltable rear LCD screen and a silent mode designed to capture full-resolution still images without the mechanical shutter. Click through for our hands-on first impressions review. 

Panasonic has announced the Lumix DMC-GX7 - the follow-up to the DMC-GX1 - which is its first mirrorless interchangeable lens camera to include in-body image stabilization. This 16MP, rangefinder-style camera also includes a high-resolution, widescreen EVF that can be tilted upwards 90 degrees. Panasonic claims that their newly designed Live MOS sensor improves both detail and color saturation by 10%. Other features of note include a tilting LCD, a 'silent shooting' mode, focus peaking, 1080/60p videos, and Wi-Fi with NFC capability. 

Alongside the enthusiast-oriented DMC-GX7, Panasonic has announced the Leica DG Nocticron 42.5mm F1.2 - the fastest autofocus lens ever created for the Micro Four Thirds system. If you're getting a sense of deja vu that's because Panasonic actually announced this lens already (sort of) at last year's Photokina tradeshow in Cologne, Germany. But what was then a dummy lens behind glass now appears to be a real product, albeit one without any firm availability date or pricing information. 

Sigma has announced a 'Mount Conversion Service' for any of its recent 'Global Vision' lenses - a paid-for service designed to reduce the uncertainty of changing camera systems. The company says it will charge between $80 and $250, plus shipping costs, depending on the specific lens. The Global Vision range currently includes seven lenses - from the huge 120-300mm F2.8 DG OS Sport for full-frame DSLRs, down to the 19mm F2.8 DN Art for Micro Four Thirds. The company has also extended the warranties on all new products to four years.

The Japanese imaging manufacturers association, CIPA, has just released its global shipments report for the first half of the year, and there's not a lot of good news in it. Between January and June 2013 Japanese manufacturers shipped just short of 30 million digital cameras - that's a 45% drop in a single year. And it's not just point and shoots in decline: SLR and mirrorless sales are down too. More after the link...

Compact cameras, smartphones and mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras are getting seriously good these days, and for a lot of photographers, they're supplementing or even replacing older, bulkier DSLR kit. After he finished our recently-published review of the Fujifilm X100S, dpreview editor Barnaby Britton realized that he hadn't picked up his DSLR for months. In this short feature, he explains why.

Looking more like a projector than a camera, the Canon Vixia Mini made its debut today, its aim to serve bloggers, youtubers and apparently guitarists. Its 16.8mm equivalent fisheye lens is designed to capture video and stills with a unique perspective, and users can switch from wide to close-up mode while recording for an interesting live 'cut' effect, while maintaining Full HD video recording. Its built-in touch-sensitive LCD flips to face forward or backward, and a tripod mount can hold the device firmly in place. Click through for more information, and images.

Back in 2008 the Impossible Project took on the task of reproducing Polaroid instant film. Since then, their product line has expanded to include the Impossible Instant Lab. Similar to the analogue Daylab that Polaroid (and Fuji instant film) fans use(d) to create instant prints from 35mm and 120 film, transparencies, snapshot prints and 3D objects, the Instant Lab operates in much the same way using onscreen images from your iPhone as the source. Click through for more details. 

Adobe has announced the latest 'release candidates' of Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop Lightroom, adding support for ten cameras - including preliminary support for the Canon EOS 70D and Sony RX100 II. The release candidates of Adobe Camera Raw v8.2 and Lightroom 5.2 also fix some bugs introduced in the previous versions. ACR v8.2 acts only as a camera and lens profile update for users of Photoshop CS6. Both are available to download from the Adobe Labs site, with the usual reliability caveats about release candidates. A release candidate of DNG converter 8.2 is also available.

The finalists in the annual Red Bull Illume photo contest have been revealed, and action and extreme sports never looked so good. A total of 250 finalists have been announced with entries in 10 different categories. Come August 29th, a winner will be crowned from 50 finalists invited to the reveal in Hong Kong. Click through and take a look at some of these incredible contenders for the grand prize.

Godalfoss - Waterfall of the Gods - is one of the most striking natural features of Iceland, a country famed for, well... striking natural features. My Modern Metropolis has published a gallery of 12 stunning images of Godalfoss, including a shot taken by dpreview contributor Erez Marom. Click through to feast your eyes, but be warned - it will make you want to take a trip to Iceland. 

Photo sharing site SmugMug has rolled out a totally redesigned website, which was 'rebuilt from the ground up'. The look-and-feel of the site is radically different, and somewhat resembles the recently redesigned Flickr. Some of the new features on SmugMug include a large selection of default templates for the consumer, plus the ability for pros to create their own custom designs. Organizing photos has been much improved as well, with a new drag-and-drop interface.  Follow the link to see what the new SmugMug looks like.

A campaign launched by Oxford University's Bodleian Libraries to acquire a valuable archive of images by photography pioneer Fox Talbot has been thrown a £200,000 lifeline. Campaigners want to 'save' the archive of images, which has been transferred to a New York dealer with an eye to selling it on the open market. If the campaign is successful, the historic collection will remain in the UK. The massive £200,000 (~$300K) donation takes the campaign to within £375,000 of its target of £2.25 million. Click through for more details. 

After our hands-on look at the Nokia Lumia 1020 last week, we were excited to spend a few days really shooting with the device. We've now had time to test out the Lumia 1020 in a wide array of lighting conditions and on an assortment of different subjects, and been able to more thoroughly explore the many settings available through the new Nokia Pro Cam capture app. Click through for the full gallery on connect.dpreview.com.

British company OMG Life has announced that its Autographer camera is now on general sale. Billed as the 'world's first intelligent, wearable camera', it uses an array of built-in sensors to take pictures automatically triggered by changes in its environment. It has an ultra-wideangle lens with a 136° view, a 5MP sensor, and 8GB of internal memory for up to 28,000 images. Images can be shared with smartphones using a Bluetooth connection, and assembled into stop-motion movies. It's available from the company's website for £399, shipping initially to the UK and most European countries.

We've just posted our long-awaited review of the Fujifilm X100S - Fujifilm's flagship fixed-lens compact. The 16MP X100S offers a fixed 35mm equivalent F2 lens, and builds on the appeal of the popular but quirky X100 by adding improved automatic and manual focus, an overhauled interface and a 16MP X-Trans sensor. Do the on-paper refinements add up to better real-world performance? Click through for a link to the full review, and a note from the editor.

Think ants are only interested in crashing your summer picnic? When they're not after our stray watermelon slices, it seems they're busy in engaging in ant-to-ant combat. Alex Wild's macro photography reveals the warring nature (and surprisingly frightening jaws) of these seemingly unassuming insects. His photos reveal fights over territory, conflicts between colonies and brutal take-downs that rival UFC brawls - all going on otherwise unnoticed at our feet.

The cautious photographer is always conscious of what's happening to their images when they're being shared online - whether they're being resized, re-compressed or otherwise modified from the original. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter all treat images differently, but a new cheat sheet can help you keep your pictures sharp by detailing the pixel dimensions of just about every component on the major social networking sites. Click through for more details on connect.dpreview.com

Peter Stackpole was just 21 when he brought his Leica A to the top of the still-under-construction San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. It was 1934, and Stackpole had no official authorization to capture images that would eventually land in Vanity Fair. Decades later, photographer Joseph Blum captured yet another bridge project in the bay area. Despite considerably tighter safety restrictions, he made soaring images of the modern construction site. Click through to see samples, then and now.

We just posted our Canon EOS 100D / Rebel SL1 review. Canon's smallest SLR to date was built to take on mirrorless cameras while maintaining the optical viewfinder and compatibility with the company's existing suite of EF and EF-S lenses. We put it through its paces in a busy family environment to see how well it held up in the type of setting it's most likely to encounter. Click through for our review.

We've just posted the sixth and final review in our round-up of compact rugged cameras. This review is of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX30, which offers a much thinner body than its peers. It also has a large 3.3-inch touchscreen OLED display, a host of fun features, and a 1080/60i movie mode. Next week we'll publish an article comparing all of the cameras, but while you're waiting, check out the TX30 review after the link.

Photojournalist Ben Lowy famously brought mobile photography to mass media when his Hipstamatic images from Kabul, Afghanistan were published by the New York Times Magazine in 2011. He's also well known for an image of Hurricane Sandy taken with his iPhone which made the cover of TIME Magazine last year. Today on Connect we look at some of his most recent work using EyeEm's new Clara filter to document life in Sarajevo.

In this article, Seattle-based photographer Thomas Park shows how you can use Photoshop's layer 'blending modes' to remove stains and blemishes from scanned images, sharpen up your photographs and even warm up cold hands! (sort of). Click through for a link to the full article, 'Blending modes: Tools for post-processing'.

We've been fans of Aaron Johnson's comic strip 'What the Duck' for years. 'WTD' is one of the best satirical comic strips in the world, and it's published here every week, as well as being included in our weekly newsletter. Barbed, topical and always amusing, we hope you enjoy WTD as much as we do. 

ACD Systems has extended the Raw support offered by its ACDSee Pro 6 and ACDSee 16 software packages. Version 6.3 of the Pro version and and ACDSee v16.1 gain support for an additional 14 cameras including the Canon EOS 100D and 700D, Nikon D7100 and Coolpix A, Sony NEX-3N and SLT-A58, Olympus XZ-10, and the Panasonic DMC-G6. This update also includes performance improvements. Click through for more information.

Fujifilm has posted firmware version 3.01 for the X-Pro1, which resolves a bug in the recently-released v3.00 that caused movies to be recorded incorrectly under some circumstances. It's otherwise the same, meaning that it promises faster AF speed, and adds a 'peaking' display mode to aid manual focus, compared to prevous versions. Click through for the download link.     

Google debuted the second iteration of its popular Nexus 7 tablet yesterday at a San Francisco press conference, inciting excitement amongst fans of the Android device and plenty of comparisons to Apple's iPad mini. Of course we're most interested in how this second-gen device might fit into a photographer's workflow. Click through for our opinion on connect.dpreview.com.

The people at Lomography have built a business around promoting and selling lo-fi cameras and accessories. What's (really) old is new again in their latest Kickstarter campaign, an effort to bring the centuries-old Petzval lens back into production. The 'New Petzval' lenses look and function much like the originals with a brass exterior, and would be produced in both Canon EF- and Nikon F- mounts. Click through and read more about the project.

Manfrotto UK has announced a 'Top Lock' quick release system for its tripod heads that's compatible with standard Arca Swiss-type plates. It uses a clamp design that allows the camera to dropped in from above rather than slid in from the side, and three bubble levels to help keep the camera straight. The Top Lock release is available as an add-on adapter, or pre-installed on the company's top-end 054, 055, 056 and 468MG ball heads.

We've just added several more photographs to our gallery of real-world samples from the new Sony Cyber-shot RX1R. The RX1R shares the same feature set as its forebear the RX1, but its 24MP full-frame CMOS sensor lacks an AA filter for additional sharpness. We've been impressed by the RX1R's image quality as we work through our usual studio and real-world testing, and we've added more samples (both JPEG and converted Raw) to our gallery for you to take a look at. Click through for a link. 

Nokia's Lumia 1020 is the company's second attempt at a 41-megapixel camera phone, and it's been generating a lot of hype. As the follow-up to last year's 808 PureView phone, Nokia's latest has much to prove. The 808 remains one of the best smartphones we've ever looked at in terms of its photographic capabilities, so we've been keen to get our hands on the 1020 which melds Nokia's innovative 'oversampling' technology with a more modern Windows operating system. We offer our first look at the Lumia 1020 on connect.dpreview.com.

Canon has introduced two Pixma printers, the  MG2420 All-in-One and MG3520 Wireless Photo. The Pixma MG3520 supports printing via WiFi networks as well as Apple's AirPrint feature, allowing direct printing from many iOS devices. It also offers auto duplexing and Canon's FastFront ink and paper loading. Both models provide Full HD Movie Print with compatible Canon cameras and ship with My Image Garden photo organization and sharing software. Click through for the full press release and pricing.

Unified Color Technologies has announced HDR Expose 3 and 32 Float 3 - the latest versions of its HDR software. HDR Expose is the company's stand-alone software, which works in the company's 'Beyond RGB' 32-bit color space and attempts to manipulate chroma and luminance data separately, while 32 Float is a Photoshop plugin built on the same principles. The latest versions gain improved tone mapping tools that attempt to retain local contrast while increasing the overall range of tones included in the final image, along with upgraded alignment and de-ghosting.

Eric Kim is one of the most prolific street photographers around, but he's also a keen blogger. In this article, originally posted on his site back in spring, he offers some advice on how to buy a new camera for street photography. Rather than a simple buyers' guide, though, Kim delves into the psychology of purchase decisions, citing research by psychologist Barry Schwartz which divides us into two categories - 'maximizers' and 'satisficers'. Click through for a link to the full article. 

Last Friday, while orbiting Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft turned its camera lens on earth from almost a billion miles away. NASA has released the images, which show not only Saturn and its rings, but also the Earth in the (very far) distance. The original 'raw' images taken by the spacecraft are grayscale, but astronomy enthusiast Valerie Klavans has converted some of them and added color. The results look pretty spectacular. Check them out after the link.

As Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge celebrate the birth of a baby son (OMG! #shinynewprince), official Royal photographer for The Sun (that's the British tabloid newspaper) has shared some tips for photographing babies. Arthur Edwards knows what he's talking about, having photographed the proud father, William, when he was an infant. Click through for some of Edwards' top tips for photographing babies - assuming of course that you're not utterly bored of the whole thing by now. 

Fujifilm has updated its X-mount lens roadmap to include a 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens as part of its more affordable 'XC' series. The 75-350mm equivalent tele-zoom joins the 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 XC and the ten existing or announced high-end XF series lenses in Fujifilm's lineup. The company also highlights the three Touit lenses available or planned by Zeiss for the X-mount system. The Fujinon XC50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS appears in the fourth quarter of 2013 on the roadmap.

Sandisk has announced its new Connect line of wireless flash memory storage devices, including the SanDisk Connect Wireless Flash Drive and SanDisk Connect Wireless Media Drive. SanDisk says its Wireless Flash Drive allows for wireless connectivity from a smartphone, tablet or computer without an Internet connection. It's available in 16GB or 32GB capacities, priced at $49.99 and $59.99 respectively. Click through for more details on our sister site, connect.dpreview.com.

A prototype for a new DSLR add-on is poised to bring plenoptic capabilities to consumer cameras. The KaleidoCamera is designed to sit between a standard DSLR's sensor and lens. A diffuser splits light passing through the lens into nine different beams, each passing through a filter before it reaches the camera's sensor. Click through to read on about this prototype's capabilities and potential applications.

Photography has been around for almost two hundred years, but amazingly, it's only in the past couple of decades that it has gained widespread acceptance as an artform. These days, images by significant photographers command very high prices. But just how high is 'very high'? Internet community FreeYork.org has published a list of the ten most expensive photos ever sold. Click through for the list.

Hasselblad has unveiled a rather familiar-looking compact camera - the Stellar. The very RX100-esque compact offers the same 28-100mm equivalent Zeiss-branded zoom and 20MP 1"-type sensor as the Sony, but comes with a substantial hand-grip made from a choice of exotic materials and, we suspect, a significantly higher price tag.

It's not uncommon for photographers to feel much more at ease behind the camera rather than in front of it. Duo, a concept from Chin-Wei Liao, a Korean design school graduate, aims to transform the person behind the lens into photographer and subject simultaneously. Each half of the Duo is an individual camera. Assembled as one unit, pressing the shutter will record an image while capturing a picture of the person using the camera. Click through to read more about this modular camera system.

We've just posted our review of the Pentax WG-3 GPS. This uniquely shaped camera can handle whatever nature throws at you, and the fast lens (at wide-angle) doesn't hurt, either. There's one more review left in our waterproof camera series, followed by a wrap-up article that will help you pick the best one. In the meantime, you can read more about the WG-3 GPS after the link.

We've been fans of Aaron Johnson's comic strip 'What the Duck' for years. 'WTD' is one of the best satirical comic strips in the world, and it's published here every week, as well as being included in our weekly newsletter. Barbed, topical and always amusing, we hope you enjoy WTD as much as we do. Click through for one from Aaron's archive. Appropriate this week, we think...

With newspapers laying off photographers and picture editors, and the rise of 'citizen journalism', can traditional photojournalism survive? Nonprofit news organization Mother Jones has published an interesting interview with photographer Fred Richin, whose new book 'Bending the Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary and the Citizen' aims to explore the current state of the profession, and answer some of the questions about its future. Click through for extracts from the interview, and a link to the full article. 

Rumor and tech sites have been buzzing about Sony's upcoming smartphone, code-named Honami. Recent rumors have shifted to the possibility that the new phone will be capable of working with an interchangeable lens that may have its own sensor and some sort of storage built in, with the ability to communicate with smart-devices wirelessly and via NFC. Click through for more details about the rumors at our sister site, connect.dpreview.com.

Our friends and collaborators over at DxOMark have been investigating lenses for the Canon EOS 6D, and have tested no fewer than 95 lenses from Canon, Samyang, Sigma, Tamron, Tokina and Zeiss to see which score highest. The results are presented in a multipart article, that also compares the EOS 6D results to those from the EOS 5D Mark III and the Nikon D600. Meanwhile for APS-C SLR users, this week DxOMark also reviewed two fast lenses from Sigma, the 30mm F1.4 DC HSM and (in case you missed it earlier this week) the 18-35mm F1.8 DC HSM. Click through for the links.  

Nikon has released distortion correction data v1.009, adding support for additional lenses for the D4, D90, D600, D800, D800E, D3100, D3200, D5000, D5100, D5200, D7000 and D7100. The latest update means these cameras can now correct distortion in 107 Nikkor lenses. The latest update includes recent launches such as the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 18-35mm f/3.5-4.5G ED and can be downloaded from Nikon's global website.

We love this 50 Things I've Learned About Mobile Photography List (and iPhone Photography) by Misho Baranovic, an accomplished mobile photographer and Connect contributor. You'll find some universal truths in there and maybe a few things you disagree with, but Baranovic's list is guaranteed to get you thinking, and laughing, too. Click through for some extracts and a link to the full article. 

A good summer photo project doesn't necessarily require a lot of expensive equipment, just a camera, an idea and the persistence to see it through. Chances are you've already got everything you need to kick off a photo series of your own. At DPReview we're always looking for new and interesting photos on the web and lately we've noticed a lot of inspired projects. Some are fairly laborious, while others take a simple idea and run with it. Check out these projects and why not get started on your own?