I came across two bits of photography news recently which I don’t think have been publicised as much as I think the should have been.

Canon at Focus

Focus on Imaging is no more. After 24 years the annual event at Birmingham NEC will not be taking place again. 2013 was the last show. You can read the press announcement here: http://www.focus-on-imaging.net/news/?p=1781

I have been a regular at the show for the last 5 or 6 years. I always found it a great show, a chance to see what was new and a chance to get some great deals on kit that I needed to buy. I shall certainly miss it. No doubt something else will come along to take its place but till then I think it’s demise is a great loss to the photography community.

The other bit of news… in case you weren’t aware Adobe have released the beta version of Lightroom 5. Unlike some the previous betas they released the changes are not huge. However there are a couple worth mentioning. Firstly perspective correction has been enhanced and there have been some major improvements for ‘offline working’ where you can create temperary images to enable you to take your catalog ‘on the road’ and still get on with the editing without needing all your storage drives with you. Finally the healing brush has been inproved so you can paint over areas that need to be healed.

You can download the beta from here: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom5/ – it will expire once the final version is released and you can’t import catalogs from previous version in to the beta.

Videos from adobe about the new features are available on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/Lightroom