Remember the network and Wi-Fi icons in the Canon patent we shared yesterday? Well, they both appeared today in the Canon 1D X announcement, but only one of them is built in. The new DSLR offers a built-in gigabit Ethernet jack for ultra-fast data transfers, but wireless transfers will require an additional add-on: the WFT-E6A Wireless File Transmitter. It’s designed exclusively for the new camera, and supports Bluetooth in addition to Wi-Fi. Priced at $600, it costs as much as an entry level DSLR.

There will also be a Canon GP-E1 GPS Receiver add-on for logging location data and camera direction. It’ll have a retail price of $300 when it’s released alongside the camera in March 2012.

In other news, Canon has passed the 70 million mark for EF lenses produced, while Nikon has just produced its 65 millionth SLR lens.

Since we wrote about CineSkates last week, the tripod-on-wheels project has already raised nearly $200,000 in preorders — not bad considering the goal was only $20,000. Today, Emm over at CheesyCam just announced something similar: the Pico Dolly. It’s a tiny portable dolly system for your video-capable camera that lets you capture smooth tracking shots without the hassle of big and expensive equipment. Unlike CineSkates, they’re already shipping — $65 will buy you the dolly itself, and $90 gets you the dolly and an 11-inch friction arm.

Pico Dolly [Photography and Cinema]

Flickr introduced an innovative location-based privacy feature today called “geofences“. It’s a way of assigning default privacy settings to certain locations for geotagged photographs. For example, you can assign a geofence with a certain radius around your home, and automatically set those photos’ location data to only be visible to your friends and family. Each user can have up to 10 geofences, and existing photographs are automatically updated to new geofence privacy settings.

Olympus unveiled a boatload of Micro Four Thirds gear this morning, including three new PEN cameras, two new prime lenses, and a flash. All three cameras pack a 12.3 megapixel sensor with ISO that goes up to 12,800, a speedy new autofocus system (the “world’s fastest”), and 1080i HD video recording. The E-P3 (shown above), the flagship camera of the PEN line, features an all-metal body, a pop-up flash, and an OLED touchscreen. It’ll cost you $900 when it’s out in August 2011.
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Turns out that mysterious Leica camera spotted on British singer Seal was in fact a Leica that didn’t officially exist yet, but now it does: Leica has just announced the M9-P digital rangefinder. The new camera is basically the M9 with a few cosmetic changes — all the guts are identical. Like on the non-digital Leica MP, the traditional red dot is missing from the M9-P, which meant to give the camera an “understated appearance”.
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After being accidentally leaked on Nikon’s website a couple weeks ago, Nikon’s new AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8G lens was officially announced today. The lens — compatible with both DX and FX DSLRs — features an unusual aspherical element that typically isn’t found in lenses like this. It will be available starting June 16th for $220, which includes a lens hood.
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Looks like the leaked photos of the Sony A290 we published last month were of the real thing. Sony has just announced the A290 and A390, two entry level DSLR cameras that replace the A230 and A380. The new cameras are nearly identical, with both boasting 14.2 megapixel sensors, but the A390 offers an extra “Quick AF Live View” and tilt-LCD for more flexible shooting. Aside from increasing the megapixel count from 10 to 14, redesigning the grip and button layout, and adding the “Quick AF Live View” to the A390, there does not seem to be too much of a difference between these cameras and their predecessors.

The cameras will be priced at $500 and $600 respectively (which includes a 18-55mm kit lens), and will be available starting in July.

This past week we had a giveaway in which we asked for your favorite photography related websites. The four prizes are memberships of various levels to SmugMug. We received 94 responses through comments on the post and 72 responses through Twitter for a total of 166 entries.

If you’re looking for new photography websites to visit or blogs to follow, you’ll find a lot of good ones in the comments we received.

Here are the four winners, picked randomly using random.org:

Standard Membership Winners ($40)

#4: Yael Talleyrand (@yatalley)

http://photocritic.org/ s more lika a blog … but since i find his stuff veeery cool :)… i guess thats it.

#53: Gil_margey

I like http://beruphoto.com — they pick photos from livejournal

Power Membership Winner ($60)

#32: sneuweger

That is difficult there are so many great sites in my feedreader… so i will choose Scott Kelby’s Photoshop Insider: http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/ not only for his original posts but also for the numerous links to interesting people of “the industry”…

Pro Membership Winner ($150)

#7: Frances Parker (@simplybetrue)

my fave photography-related website? j*’s blog. i heart Jasmine Star http://www.jasminestarblog.com and read her blog everyday.

Congratulations! Please email me at editor@petapixel.com to claim your prize.

Thanks for participating everyone!

Wow… I’m pretty surprised at how popular this past week’s Streetwalker giveaway was. Over this past week we received 510 entries, with 230 comments and 280 tweets. To put that into perspective, the most responses for a giveaway prior to this one was 191 (when we gave away two Photomatix licenses).

To pick a winner, I assign each entry with a number, and use random.org to randomly select one entry. Using this method, we found the winner of a Streetwalker backpack to be:

#144: Kerry (birchblazephotography.com)

I think it would be amazing to photograph the Country of Bhutan, it’s supposed to be one of the happiest in the world, and it’s very beautiful as well!

Congratulations Kerry! I hope you enjoy your new camera backpack.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this week’s giveaway. Be sure to check back again soon, as we have some pretty awesome stuff lined up to be given away…

I also really enjoyed reading all of your responses. Here are some of them:

dahak_z:

Well, not so down to Earth speaking, in the broader sense of the word ‘world’, I’d really go and photograph the Universe, if one could only explore it. Think of all the nebulas, alien planets, and other unseen phenomena. Could result in quite some awesome photos.

On a more down to Earth tone, i’d make a one year (or more years, however long it takes), of all the world’s national parks. That could also result in quite some awesome photographs.

Cheers

Martin (time2shoot.com):

It might sound strange for some, but I wish I could capture the life of the people of North Korea and show the world how life is over there.

4strinbass (@4strinbass):

My dream place to photograph would be the ocean floor of the Atlantic Ocean, want to get nite style shots of glowing fish

simonhucko (@simonhucko):

how about anywhere over the earth? i’d love to go up to the ISS with a camera