Our reader Onur (Thanks!) sent me this:

I have some bad news from Olympus in Japan. Olympus has plazas and service stations in four cities (Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, Sapporo) in Japan. Half of them are being closed. Yesterday, Olympus announced that the plazas and service stations in Osaka and Sapporo will be completely closed in December. Also, the service station in Fukuoka will move to somewhere else. Also, the service center and plaza in Tokyo, which is using two floors in a building, will be reduced to a single floor. The announcement is on the page https://www.olympus.co.jp/news/2020/an01868.html

Skylum posted this new video showing how their new Landscape AI edits your images automatically on the new Luminar AI (preorder here).

Useful links
LuminarAI homepage – https://skylum.com/luminar-ai
Frequently Asked Questions – https://skylum.com/luminar-faq/ai/general
Preorder – https://skylum.com/checkout/luminar-ai/nu

G9 vs S5 High Res Battle

Olympus Doesn’t Love You… – Coffee time with Jimmy Cheng
Zhiyun-Tech Announces the CRANE 2S Gimbal for Cameras Small to Large (Explora).
120 seconds of PURE Photography tips (Manny Ortiz).
Test Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark IV : un bel hybride pour se lancer sérieusement dans la photographie (Les Numeriques).

Plenty of news on the facebook OMD group, Panasonic FF and the GH5 group.

Topaz released the new Gigapixel AI v5.2 update and added limited time 20% discount (Click here). Don’t forget you can also use the free trial if you want to test the results.

Major New Features:

• New AI Model – “Compressed”. You can find it under the “Image Type” option in the right panel. This image type works best with photos that have a lot of artifacts, old family photos, and images downloaded from the internet
• Whole New Look – Entire program has been given a UI overhaul to make it look more pleasing, as well as more consistent.
• Crop your images using the new Crop Tool

Improvements:

• Faster previewing and saving of images
• File list is now collapsible, and you can now add images directly from the file list
• Tutorials have been moved to the drop area on the starting screen

Olympus Europe launched the 101 anniversary deals. You save 10% on lenses. Check out the offical page here.

Reminder: Just like in the USA also in Europe Olympus is offering a ton of deals ahead of their camera business sale. Today you get the rather excellent E-M10III with kit lens for 444 Euro only using the checkout code “brian444” at Olympus Deutschland.

You can find many more EU deals on those special deal pages: Olympus Germany, Olympus France, Olympus Italy, Olympus Spain, Olympus UK, Olympus Netherland.

–

via Mydealz

You can now preorder the new Capture One 21 on this page (Click here) with a 20% discount. It’s a bit tricky to preorder it so here I explain how to do it for C20 owners:

1. Login to Capture One
2. Go to the upgrade page and enter your license number
3. Upgrade to C21 and get the 20% discount using the checkout code “PREORDER2020“

If you do own C12 or older version you first have to purchase C20 (with no discount code). And they will than get C21 update for free.

New features and release time:

Capture One has decided to not disclose any info about the new features (I know this is odd). So if you wonder why the heck you should pay for a new version without knowing what you get…I can only give you one reason: The 20% discount that you get now and you will NOT get the day of the official launch!

The release date has not been announced but as usual expect the release to be between mid November and mid December.

ThePhoBlographer created this Infographic to help you understand if you really need a second camera. The answer is always YES :)