My favorite travel camera
Written: Jan 14 '06 (Updated Sep 22 '06)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Durability: |
|
|
| Battery Life: |
 |
|
| Photo Quality: |
 |
|
| Shutter Lag |
|
|
|
Pros: 7x zoom. Wide angle. Barely larger than cellphone. Good color, detail, battery life. Fast.
Cons: Blades protecting lens are flimsy. Need -0.3 exposure compensation.
The Bottom Line: My favorite travel camera. Be careful not to bump the blades covering the lens.
|
|
|
| tcchou71's Full Review: Ricoh Caplio R3 Digital Camera |
Epinions does not allow me to embed images in reviews. This is rather sad for camera reviews, which really benefit from photos. Hence, I've also posted a photo-enhanced version of this review at the following link:
http://www.geocities.com/tom_jhou/ricoh_r3.html
All the info on this page is also at the above link, so I highly recommend browsing there, especially if you want to see 100% crops and comparisons with my other digicam (a Canon Powershot S60).
Many "professional" reviews of this camera are unusually harsh, due to initial problems with noise and autofocus. Ricoh fixed many of these problems with a series of firmware updates, but almost none of the professional reviews were updated to reflect these changes. Hence, you should be wary of online reviews written before about January 2006 or so. Personally, I found the camera performs much better than the professional reviews led me to expect.
I should also note that the R4 and R5, the successors to the R3, are now available. They have more megapixels, an improved LCD, and movie mode (R5 only).
My favorite travel camera
This has become my favorite travel camera due to its small size, large zoom, rapid startup and focus, and excellent color rendition. I prefer it over my Canon S60 (which is too slow), Panasonic LZ2 (which has over-aggressive noise-reduction, no wide angle, and less appealing colors), and even my DSLR (which doesn't fit in my pocket).
At normal print and viewing sizes, images look very good up to ISO 200, with good color and detail, and without the "oil-painting" look that some cameras, like Panasonics, have at higher ISOs. At normal viewing distances, images are very close in quality to my Canon S60, which produces some of the best images I've seen. At 100% magnification, the R3 is slightly worse, but the flaws are correctable if needed (see my review at Geocities for an example).
Early reviews of this camera harshly criticized image noise, but my tests (using updated firmware version 1.28) seem to show less noise than the earlier versions. At ISO 400 noise is lower than my Canon S60. If needed, NeatImage does a very good job of cleaning up noise.
Ironically, after all the bad press about image quality, my biggest complaint has nothing to do with the images. I find that the thin blades that protect the lens are easily jostled out of position, exposing the lens. Hence, this camera should not be thrown into a bag with other hard objects. Fortunately, Ricoh provides an unusually sturdy leather carrying case with the camera. A second minor problem is that the camera overexposes sunny contrasty scenes unless the EV is turned to -0.3. Fortunately, the camera remembers this setting, even if batteries are removed, so I leave it there permanently.
Vibration correction
It works. I can take hand-held nightshots down to 1/8 second at wide angle, which was impossible with my old Canon S60. The stabilization seems to give me 1.5-2 stops of improved hand-holdability, slightly better than the Panasonic LZ2 (http://www.epinions.com/content_182222098052).
In summary, the Caplio R3 has some amazingly good features and only a few downsides - much better than the early reviews suggest. Overall, this is the most fun and versatile pocket-sized camera I've ever used. The icing on the cake is that it's fairly cheap.
More details:
As much as I like Epinions, this site doesn't let me embed photos into the reviews. One needs to see photos to truly judge things like image quality. So, I posted a lot of sample images, as well as more detailed commentary, on my Yahoo/Geocities webpage. I thank you for reading this far, but for further reading you should copy the following link into your browser:
http://www.geocities.com/tom_jhou/ricoh_r3.html
Other cameras
The R3 is my latest attempt to find the perfect pocket travel camera. This is my favorite, but the runner up was the Canon S60 (now superseded by Canon's S80). The Canon models are bulkier, have only half the zoom, lack image stabilization, and are slower to startup and focus, but also have better build quality and slightly better metering and automatic white balance. I reviewed the S60 here:
http://www.epinions.com/content_184597712516).
The Sony DSC-40 is also an interesting camera - very small yet takes AA batteries, has good VGA movies, and a wider-than-average 32mm lens. But low-light performance is unusually bad.
http://www.epinions.com/content_180326272644
The Panasonic LZ2 was disappointing. Despite its awesome 6x stabilized zoom, I couldn't stand its aggressive noise-reduction. Its color rendition was not as good as the other cameras listed, including the R3:
http://www.epinions.com/content_182222098052
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 338
This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Flexible Enough for Enthusiasts
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
tcchou71
|
 - Top 1000 |
|
Member: Elephant Seal
Location: Baltimore, MD
Reviews written: 53
Trusted by: 3 members
About Me:
I'm a behavioral neuroscientist/psychologist. The giant animal in the photo is an elephant seal.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.