In a surprising move, one of the leading optical glass makers Hoya are to buy out Camera manufacturer Pentax - or at least have them under their name. The merger has been going on for some time behind the scenes with twists and turns in negotiations resulting in a feud within Pentax. The two companies had reached a basic agreement on the merger in December, but Pentax made a change of presidency and cancelled the plan to merge with Hoya citing reasons why the company could survive on its own. Hoya then prepared a takeover bid for Pentax in an effort to bring about the merger. After much debat

Thanks to developers at the South Korea Electronic Technology Institute we may soon wave goodbye to those awful bright white flashes that not only turn you into the devil with those red eyes and blast the exposure out the window, but also annoy anyone in the vicinity! Those clever bods have just announced a handy technology breakthrough with a new type of sensor to replace the traditional CCD seen in most digital cameras of today. It reportedly can take a bright, clear picture in just one lux of light, the equivalent to the light output of one candle from one meter away! The sensor is claim

I recently came across a website by photographer Simon Kitchin who specialises in mountain and coastline photography in the UK, and especially North Wales. Simon's website landscapephotographyuk provides a nice set of galleries with some great landscape shots of areas such as the Isle of Anglesey coast, North Wales Coastal, and the Mountains and Lakes of the UK which include photographs of Buttermere Lake in the Lake District. The feedback Simon receives in his guestbook just goes to show how well his photography and knowledge of the areas he walks is appreciated. With comments like "When I

Yesterday we had a useful update to the Fotoviva Art Prints store which will make browsing the site a lot more user friendly whilst making the site look nicer too! We have removed the popup windows that opened when you wanted to view a larger image - the picture now opens in the main page itself. Have a closer look at Don Tiffney's 'At Anchor' image to see how it works. There is also a new 3 column structure to the category pages which had to be implemented due to the increased number of images we now have in our print collection. we have a backlog of new pictures to upload and some new photo

We found a useful independent website called Photoshop Tutorials which has a range of resources available if you are looking to improve your post processing technique. They have interesting tutorials on working with Photoshop to improve your pictures and create special effects for backgrounds, as well as showing how to create those professional looking shots that the real pros seem to make. There is also a section on Photography skills which provides handy ideas for generating great photography before you throw it into Photoshop. In fact there is a whole wealth of information for the photograp

We would like to welcome Eyal Zarrad, our newest contributor to the Fotoviva team. He is a landscape photographer based in Israel and started shooting film many years ago but now, like many of us, shoots only digital. Having been to the British Isles several times, he feels very fond with the views it has to offer and thus has a large collection of photos taken here. He currently uses a Canon 350D camera, Canon 17-40 & 70-200 L-series lenses complemented by a set of professional Lee Filters. Eyal's work is displayed mainly in web galleries which receive a lot of positive feedback, and has