Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"The Ricoh GR Digital IV is a brand new compact camera with a fixed 28mm lens that’s aimed firmly at the serious photographer. Virtually identical in design to the two-year old GR Digital III model, this latest version has a brand new Hybrid auto-focus system, image processing engine, sensor-shift image stabilization, a refined optical filter and a higher-resolution LCD screen."

When I was still shooting film, the compact camera I wanted was the Ricoh GR1V. Small and with my preferred 28mm lens (instead a focal length of 35mm), I never got around to getting one. In the digital era, however, Ricoh's GR Digitals use tiny compact camera sensors, of which I have never been quite enamoured with Ricoh's execution. The GR Digital has many improvements, but despite the review, I can't quite imagine using a camera that starts smearing detail at ISO 400. Maybe next time Ricoh?

Looks like that rumour is less crazy than first thought. Personally, as Ricoh championed things like "dust-free" and "lens matched to sensor" as part of the GXR's selling points, having a module that has a lens mount means Ricoh just subtly admitted that their strategy is not working quite the way they wanted it to. It will feature an APS-C sensor; unlike what DPReview claims, Ricoh simply states "photographers can mount lenses such as Leica M lenses" without stating an actual mount, making me wonder if they will be using something even more universal, like a dumb mount with a very short flange distance that can take on any lens via an adapter.

"The Ricoh CX4 is Ricoh’s latest compact camera in a long line of compact cameras, which started with the Ricoh CX1 (9mp CMOS sensor, 7.1x optical zoom lens), Ricoh CX2 (10.7x optical zoom lens), Ricoh CX3 (10mp update), and now the Ricoh CX4, which adds improved image stabilisation, new creative modes, a new night shot mode, subject tracking AF, and improved battery life."

Ricoh is another industry stalwart that never quite got the massive success other companies did, and nowadays are better known for their office automation products than cameras. The CX series, when first announced, was something that interested me: It packed a lot in a very smart-looking camera. Sad to say, the images were not as good as those from the other manufacturers; Ricoh's lack of experience in image processing for digital cameras showed. Now at up to version 4, the CX4 looks just as smart, and there are some improvements to the imaging side of things. I'm still not terribly convinced by that ISO test though...

"The Ricoh P10 is the third lens-sensor module for the revolutionary Ricoh GXR camera system, which combines the lens and sensor into a single interchangeable unit. The new P10 unit combines a 10.7x, 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 lens with a 10 megapixel 1/2.3-inch back-illuminated CMOS image sensor."

PhotographyBLOG takes a look at Ricoh's GXR, this time with the P10 module. The GXR is a pretty unique camera as it uses modules that come complete with both the lens and the sensor. The result is that unlike most other interchangeable lens cameras, the only thing that is consistent is the UI. The image quality is going to be varied, as different sensors will give different results.

While PhotographyBLOG is very impressed with this setup, I myself am a little unsure. In addition to the usual complaint about the system being potentially expensive as a new sensor has to be bought with each lens iteration, it is taxing to have to learn how to extract the best possible images from each sensor. To top it off, there is only one module with a large sensor; the A12 module with an APS-C sized sensor and a 33mm f/2.5 Macro lens. As it stands, while the UI and build quality is very nice, the system currently is very tiny, and the pricing restrictive.