Curious what the photography scene is going to look like in 2012, well here are a few cameras that we think will give a glimpse of what's to come this year!

Nikon's new flagship full frame D4 DSLR is taking the Canon EOS-1D X head on, and it might just win. Nikons first full frame HD video with auto focus, an ISO range of 100 - 12,800, a 16.2MP full-frame CMOS sensor, 51 point focusing system with 15 cross type sensors and a 91,000 3D colour matrix metering system. Just to name a few! Expected to be avaliable Feburary you'll have to pay for the quality with a $6000 price tag!

Fujifilm has officially unwrapped its first CSC, the X-Pro 1, it is an open attempt to capture a piece of the DSLR market and appeal to users of system cameras such as Leica's M9. With a range of lenses, flash unit, 1080,1920pixels, HD video, top ISO of 25,600 and a processor that it claims will beat the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and the Nikon D7000. Expected to be released in March it is a camera that Fujifilm is hoping might change a few minds.

Of course you can't mention game changers without a nod to the Lytro Light Field Camera, a completely new shooting technology that will allow you to tweak the focus of an image after you have taken it. Although the details are still a little fuzzy, we know it houses a 8x optical zoom with a maximum aperture of f/2. Expected to be released in early 2012 starting at $400 it's definetely a technology that could change photography in the future.

So perhaps we were premature with our previous article about the Lytro release! Yesterday company founder and inventor Ren Ng showed the world the new camera for the first time and announced how you can get your own!

As you can see the design is unlike any other camera on the market, an anodized aluminum and silicone skin case holds the seven element, 8x zoom lens with an f/2 aperture and LCD touch screen, the battery is said to capture 400 images on one charge. Other features, including a facebook sharing app and free hosting of images on the Lytro site were also announced.

The price is a relatively affordable US$399 for a 8GB version and US$499 for a 16GB which promise to hold 350 and 750 images respectively, avaliable for pre-order in the US only with shipping to take place in early 2012.

The software is also only supported by a Mac OS X and there has been some questions raised about the image resolution, the quality of the LCD screen and the need to hold the camera completely steady to avoid blur. So we might wait for the version 2 to splash our money on it but it is a very exciting concept that we still believe has the potential to shatter the world of photography as we know it.

 www.lytro.com

The Australian Centre for photography and the Australian Council for the Arts have joined forces to present an exhibition that hopes to give you deja-vu.

Bronek Kozka: Memory, Myth and the ¼ Acre Block is a new exhibition that opened last Friday

"Memory can play tricks on the mind. When flipping through family albums do you find yourself remembering the actual event or is the captured image so fixed in your mind that it is the photograph you remember rather than the event itself?

Melbourne photographer Bronek Kozka plays with the ambiguity of memory through carefully staged tableaux of recreated memories that may be his, or not.

Echoing the early period of his childhood, his images inhabit the liminal space between conscious recollection and subconscious impression. Often set in the unbiquious Australian suburbia and using references from films, commercials and advertising, the scenes are simultaneously familiar and eerie. The viewer is drawn into a narrative and left pondering what happened before, and what followed."

Bronek Kozka: Memory, Myth and the ¼ Acre Block is open until the 25th of September.

http://tmp.acp.org.au/current/

NSW

Stills Gallery
Closes 3rd September 2011

Precarious - Merilyn Fairskye
The film Precarious is concerned with the fragility of nature and with ordinary people's capacity to endure, in the face of technological failure and state secrecy on a grand scale.

Twenty-five years ago Reactor No.4 at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded. In the aftermath, people, and radiation, were dispersed across the Soviet Union. Over 600,000 "liquidators" participated in the cleanup. 8,000 people still work there to contain the contamination. Stills Gallery is proud to present Merilyn Fairskye’s photographic series Plant Life and her film Precarious, haunting evocations of the aftermath of the explosion at Chernobyl, 25 years on. These reflections are particularly potent given the recent events in Japan.

 http://www.stillsgallery.com.au/exhibitions/

ACT

National Portrait Gallery
Closes 6th November 2011

Beyond the Self
This exhibition examines the representation of the self in current South and Southeast Asian art practice through the work of artists from India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines and Thailand. Exploring the possibilities of portraiture, Beyond the Self includes painting, photography, sculpture, drawing and media works created from the early 2000s to the present.

http://www.portrait.gov.au/site/exhibition_subsite_beyondtheself.php

SA

Centre for Creative Photography

"Refect"
Reflect is a SALA exhibition representing recent photographic work from the lecturing staff from the school. It covers a broad range of subject matter and mediums; both film-based and digital. It’s diversity reflects the wide-ranging professional interests from the artists who are currently teaching at the Centre.

Most of these works have never been exhibited before and represent an intriguing window into the artists’ thoughts and experimentations with different processes. So please make the time to see this fascinating insight to a group of artists who work innovatively with what is a ubiquitous medium, photography – it’s an exhibition not to be missed!

http://ccp.sa.edu.au/

WA

Perth Institute of Art
Closes 31st October 2011

PICA will be transformed into a sporting arena, complete with bleachers, suspended ropes and cheerleaders for an exhibition and performance work by celebrated Western Australian collaborative duo Taryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont.

Central to the show is the idea of the exhibition as a stadium: a large structure for events, games or contests of strength with tiered seating for spectators. STADIUM, curated by Leigh Robb, is an exhibition which brings together performance, photographs and video works that the artists have produced over the past decade, some of which have not before been presented in Perth.

 http://www.pica.org.au/

VIC

National Gallery of Victoria
OPens 30th September 2011

Looking at Looking - The Photographic Gaze
From people observed in a crowd, to surveillance photographs from war zones, and images that ‘split’ our gaze, the exhibition will present the work of a range of photographers who have explored ideas of looking.  It includes international and Australian photographs drawn from the NGV Collection, and features works by Brook Andrew, Chi Peng, Anne Ferran, Ashley Gilbertson, Charles Green and Lyndell Brown, Bill Henson, John Immig, Thomas Struth, and David Thomas.

http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/exhibitions/looking-at-looking

QLD

Queensland Art Gallery
Closes 16th October 2011

Artist's Choice

For this, the second in the Gallery’s regular series of Artist’s Choice exhibitions, respected Queensland photographer Marian Drew has curated a display from the Gallery’s Collection relating to that most precious resource, water.

In ‘Buoyancy’, Marian Drew explores the mythical and psychological associations we have with water, and in the process, seeks to engage with ‘notions of transcendence, suspension and submergence’.

http://qag.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/current/artists_choice_marian_drew_buoyancy

Buttons is a brand new media capturing device, that instead of recording a scene with optics, records a moment.

"Buttons takes on this notion of the camera as a networked object. It is a camera that will capture a moment at the press of a button. However, unlike a conventional analog or digital camera, this one doesn't have any optical parts. It allows you to capture your moment but in doing so, it effectively seperates it from the subject. Instead, as you will memorize the moment, the camera memorizes only the time and starts to continuously search on the net for other photos that have been taken in the very same moment."

The idea is that you create an emotional attachment to that image and associate it with the moment using your memory.

"After a few minutes or hours, depending on how soon someone else shares their photo on the web, an image will appear on the screen. In a way, it belongs half to the person who had pressed the button and still remembers that moment. Because of that connection, the photos are never dismissed as random, no matter how enigmatic they may be."

Mac's new operating system 'Lion' has been so popular that it recieved over a million downloads in it's first day. However the system has had some issues, especially for photographers.

Some photographic software is having issues working with Macs new OS, Nikon and Adobe have already issued statements about troubles their software is having.

Of special interest to photographers are issues with Capture, PictureProject,  NX 2, Illustrator CS5, Illustrator CS5.1, InDesign CS5.5, the entire Acrobat family, Adobe Drive, Lightroom 3, Lightroom 2.x, and Photoshop CS3, CS4, and CS5.

Photography Bay has a list so far of software that is having issues you can check out.

Some of the Photo Art team visited the Australian Centre of Photography this weekend and had to give a shout out to a particular exhibition by photographer Ducle Pinzon.

Dulce's latest work covers the struggles of the Latino immigrant working in the US with the suggestion that the Mexican and other South American immigrant workers have become unsung heroes. "The Mexican economy has quietly become dependent on the money sent by these workers in the US, while, conversely, the US economy depends on the labour of these hard-working immigrants."

Each portrait captures an Latino immigrant at work dresses in the costume of a popular comic superhero. To put the image into context each is accompanied by a quick Bio, including how much they send home to their families each week.

http://tmp.acp.org.au/current/

My work is about space and the light that inhabits it. It is about how you confront that space and plumb it with vision. It is about your seeing, like the wordless thought that comes from looking into fire. — James Turrell

With or without is one of the most complex art installations your ever likely to come across and one that will likely stay in your memory for a long time. It best viewed in the morning and evening, and you are required to arrive 20 prior to start the light cycle to ensure you eyes are adjusted.

Turrell play and experiments with the intricacy of light in the exhibition through the use of sculptured architecture, landscaping and visual displays.

http://nga.gov.au/turrell/

The Camera

The Olympus PEN E-PL1 is a sleek and sexy new edition the  Olympus micro four thirds family.

It offers 12.3 Megapixel SLR quality on a High Speed Live MOS Sensor coupled with HD Movie capture and brand new live guide technology.

It offers great control with RAW capture and the option to shoot completely manual. It also offers a range of interchangeable lenses which give this camera great versatility. Combining all this high technology with maximum ease of use, giving the photographic novice the ability to explore their photography, as well as offering the more experienced total control over their pictures.

The Boring but Important bits

12.3 million effective pixels

Micro Four Thirds type lenses accepted

SDHC Memory Card. Class 6 is recommended for Movie shooting

17.3mm(H) x 13.0mm(V) high speed Live MOS Sensor

ISO Sensitivity 100-3200

Built in Flash

2.7 inch LCD

BLS-1 Li-ion battery

Weight 296g (body only), 344g(including Battery and Memory card)

For more detail click here


The Goodies

My personal favourite feature of this camera is the amount of stylish accessories you can throw on it to further your creativity.

The M.Zuiko range of lenses designed for digital imaging will fit any Micro four thirds camera. The lenses offer high resolution performance as well as giving your camera a stylish look all its own. My favourite is the flat 17mm f2.8 wide-angle lens, which looks amazing when attached.

The elegantly designed FL-14 System Flash looks magnificent on the hot shoe, throw on a VF-1 External Viewfinder and you have yourself one unique looking camera!

Strap on an old-school body jackets and your camera is one stylin’ piece of gear.

The Prize

Its a great camera, and Photo Art Gallery, together with Olympus Australia are giving you, The Australian Public the chance to be amongst the first in Australia to take if for a test spin! Three lucky folk will get to keep one for their very own!!


Simply click here for an information page for all the details.

IMPORTANT Once you have given your best single image a title you need to add the following information under description:

 *  What camera and model you're using at the moment.

 *  What type of photography interests you.

 *  Why your should be the one to test the new PEN E-PL1

You probably already know their work even if you don’t know their names. You’ve likely seen that suggestive shot of Moulder and Scully in bed together. And you’ve seen them turn Kyle Sandilands into King Kong, and if you are a fan of Tim Tams, remember the chilli flavour and the ad that came with it? The naked women strategically covered by running chocolate surrounded by seductive colours and chilli peppers, clearly this Tim Tam was the hottest there ever was.

Denis Montalbetti and Gay Campbell brought us all of these, a vision into their world of fantasy and sensual sensibilities, where “mere-mortals become mythical creatures of desire”.  Currently their work is a featured exhibition at the Australian Centre for Photography. http://www.acp.org.au/

The exhibition is a totally tricked out and hyper-expressive display of work. Purists beware! The photographs break away from the picture making tradition and swing  between graphic art and photography itself. As viewers we must remember this “swing” and look at the camera as a tool of creation, a mechanism that conveys a vision into the creator’s mind. In Montalbetti and Campbell’s case, the camera is not an instrument of record but a step in an artistic process.

The exhibition is an interesting one to look at; colours are electric and there are some spectacular tricks, coupled with interesting decor and music, it is designed to be a treat for the senses.

However for me, this exhibition misses the mark. The images don’t so much constitute a display of artistic work that runs along a theme, but instead a display of the artists’ ability to magnificently manipulate images in Photoshop. Of course this is a delicate skill these photographers execute to a tee and I commend them for this, but these commercial images just appear out of place as an artistic collection in a gallery,.

There are some powerful portraits, and to be honest I did enjoy looking at them from an aesthetic point of view, but the exhibition disappoints as a display of artistic vision as it delivers more of an assorted commercial portfolio. Nevertheless these photographers are commercial photographers, well respected ones at that... Could one be considered foolish to expect to see something more personal from the artists then this sales pitch hanging on a wall? Perhaps, but perhaps not.

I would recommend to anyone who enjoys commercial photography to take a look at this exhibition, as I enjoy this genre and enjoyed this exhibition, but if you are looking for something with an artistic vision, motive or message, you may be disappointed.

http://tmp.acp.org.au/current/index.php#sensualists


Glen.