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Ricoh GX200 - Digital camera - prosumer - 12.1 Mpix - optical zoom: 3 x - supported memory: SD, SDHC | 
| Brand: Ricoh
Category: CE
Buy New: £275.00
as of 8/9/2010 19:41 CDT details
New (5) from £275.00
Seller: Morris Photo
Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 35774
Media: Electronics
Batteries Included: Yes
Optical Zoom: 3
Display Size: 2.7
Maximum Focal Length: 15.3
Minimum Focal Length: 5.1
Maximum Resolution: 12
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.7 x 5.8 x 4.5
MPN: 4961311847912
Model: 173554
EAN: 4961311847912
ASIN: B001C40OSQ
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Ricoh Caplio GX 200
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| Customer Reviews:
A very responsive camera with "no-nonsense" controls January 23, 2010
C. Watts (UK)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Main Features
12 megapixel CCD
SLR-like controls
Continuous RAW mode capture
2.7-inch, 460,000-dots HVGA LCD
Electronic level
Extensive shooting functions
Enhanced image editing functions
Removable electronic viewnder
Introduction
The Ricoh GX200 was announced on June 24, 2008. I first experienced this camera when I attended Photokina 2008 and was immediately impressed. But, what is it really like?
Design and Build Quality
The review model I received came with a European plug, so I needed to scout around for an adaptor. Within about 2 hours the battery was fully charged and immediately I was reminded what a fine LCD this camera has even though it struggles in bright light. Of course, the brightness setting for the LCD is adjustable and compensates for this. The electronic viewfinder is fantastic the compact character of the camera. I found the step-zoom setting really useful. This menu driven setting (which can be assigned to one of the two function buttons) means that whenever you press the zoom button the lens moves to the next focal length. This allows for 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 72mm focal lengths. This is great for street and candid photography. When the zoom is fully extended the camera tends to be weighted to the left, which can make one-handed operation a challenge. The controls and menu system are very well thought out and unrivalled in the serious compact market.
Image Quality
As with my views on the Ricoh GR Digital II, I found the JPEG output of the Ricoh GX200 to be very good. However, when looking at the RAW files I noticed strong colour noise at all ISO
settings. I will qualify this by saying that I did not turn on any in-camera noise reduction when shooting in RAW. Is this a problem in Ricoh's image pipeline or is it perhaps more related to the DNG format? This means I will stick with JPEG when using the Ricoh GX200. Perhaps this lessens the sting of not being able to shoot exclusively in RAW mode, since the camera will always produce a JPEG image with every RAW image.
Conclusion
The Ricoh GX200 is a very responsive camera. That, along with the "no-nonsense" controls and diminutive size, means that this camera will often be found in your coat or jacket pocket ready for action. The step zoom feature may seem strange at first but it is one of the best features of this camera and very well implemented. The design choice of a removable lens cap offers more protection than the reticulating kind and gives you confidence in carrying the camera at all times knowing the lens is well protected. It is such a shame that colour noise dominates the RAW images thus necessitating processing on all such files.
Rating
5/5 (updated October 7, 2009)
(Original rating 7/10)
Pros. Step zoom functionality, responsiveness, LCD, JPEG quality
Cons. RAW images require noise processing
**Update** October 7, 2009
As is explained in the review above, I found that DNG files when opened in Capture One Pro show a very high level of noise. At the time I unfortunately did not compare this result with other RAW processing software. Recently I did this using Adobe Lightroom 2.5 and found no noise at all when viewing the same DNG files! I am thus updating my review rating for the Ricoh GX200 to a 5/5 rating.
By way of a possible explanation, the Phase One Capture One Pro user documentation says: "DNG support is not optimized for specific cameras." Of course, it is possible to adjust the files for colour noise (which seems to be the culprit rather than luminance noise) but one shouldn't have to do that for every DNG file. Currently, it seems that Phase One do not have any future plans to optimize the handling of DNG files produced by different camera systems as they prefer to concentrate on implementing customized support for original raw files, which they say provide higher quality than DNG. This of course could change in the future.
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