Reuters has put together 135 images taken by its photographers worldwide. You can find the gallery here.

Leica have released a new firmware update, 2.002, for its M8 and M8.2 cameras. IThe new firmware update adds detection of 6-bit coding for new M lenses and fixes a number of bugs.

Leica M8 Firmware Update 2.002

Leica is more affordable now! Valid in the US and Canada until January 1st 2009, Leica are offering a $1500 rebate on its M8 digital camera. The rebates will be processed 6 to 8 weeks after the product has been registered. Leica are also offering $300 off a new M-Lens (50mm/f0.95, 21mm/f1.4, 24mm/f1.4 and 24mm/f3.8 lenses are excluded).

Leica Press Release

The Nikon D3x was shown in the Nikon Pro magazine,and scans of the magazine can be found here and here. As you can see below, it shares many features with D3 but the main difference is in resolution as expected.

Nikon D3x Main Features:

• 24.5-Megapixel 35.9x24mm Full Frame sensor
• 16-bit EXPEED engine
• 5fps at full-resolution
• 7fps at DX crop mode (10-Megapixe
• DX mode captures 10-megapixels
• Dual Compact Flash slots (at 35MB/s)
• MultiCAM 3500FX autofocus w/51 points
• ISO 100-1600 (expandable to ISO 50-6400)
• 3" LCD (922000 dots, 170 degrees)
• Live View
• Battery EN-EL4a (like D3)
• Weather-Resistant Magnesium Body
• 12ms startup
• 41ms shutter release lag

Nikon D3x images have been live on the official Nikon website for a very short period and then removed. What an accident! Seems like 1st of December will be the day of announcement...

“The first thing I did with my very first camera was climb Mt. Fuji. Climbing Mt. Fuji is a lesson in determination and moderation. It would be fair to ask if I took the moderation part to heart. But it certainly was a lesson in respecting your camera. If I was going to live with this thing, I was going to have to think about what that meant. There were not going to be any pictures without it."
—Annie Leibovitz

Being one of the most celebrated and admired photographers of our time, Annie Leibovitz in her new book called "Annie Leibovitz at Work" describes how her pictures were made, starting with Richard Nixon's resignation, a story she covered with Hunter S. Thompson, and ending with Barack Obama's campaign. In between are a Rolling Stones Tour, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, The Blues Brothers, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keith Haring, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Patti Smith, George W. Bush, William S. Burroughs, Kate Moss and Queen Elizabeth.

For each image on the book, there's at least a full page of editorial, as the author describing how each shot came about and her experience. Leibovitz also includes an insightful essay about the equipment she has used over the years, as well as an FAQ list.

Get Annie Leibovitz at Work at Amazon for $24 (%40 discounted price)

Adobe has released a new utility called Configurator that enables you to create your own panels for Photoshop CS4. Configurator makes it easy to drag and drop tools, menu items, scripts, actions, and other objects into a panel design, and export the results to be used in Photoshop.

Configurator is free for anyone to use, but you need Photoshop CS4 to be installed in order to use the panels that it generates.A full 30-day tryout version can be downloaded here.

Adobe Labs Press Release:

I don't know if you have already noticed but we have added a new section to Photolectic, called "Camera Deals and Promotions". There you can find the latest and best deals and discounts from the most trusted retailers on the web like Amazon.com, B&H Photo Video and Adorama. Some of these promotions are available for only US (where majority of our readers come from), but I am trying to find and add more deals that are also available for the rest of the world. You can find the direct links to the latest deals at the top of left sidebar and another link on the right hand side of the top-menu.

Here is the link to our Camera Deals RSS Feed. I strongly recommend you to subscribe, the holiday season is so close and discounts are huge!

Below are the latest posts from Camera Deals section:

Nikon has released a firmware update for its flagship flashgun: Speedlight SB-900. New Firmware v5.02 fixes a bug that could result overexposure and makes some minor change to the unit's TTL auto flash performance

• SB-900 Firmware Update 5.02 for Mac (Nikon Europe)
• SB-900 Firmware Update 5.02 for Windows (Nikon Europe)

* Installing the firmware requires the SB-900 to be connected to a Nikon D3, D300, D700 or D90 digital SLR camera.

Canon has updated the Digital Photo Professional, EOS Utility, WFT Utility and Picture Style Editor softwares for Mac and Windows. The updates bring new features andsupport for DSLRs including the EOS 5D Mark II. Also a new version of Canon RAW Codec is released for Windows, adding support for the EOS 5D Mark II.

The updated versions of the Canon Softwares are:

- Digital Photo Professional 3.5.1
- EOS Utility 2.5.1
- Picture Style Editor 1.4.1
- WFT Utility 3.3
- Canon RAW Codec 1.4

Click here to update your software