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September 06, 2006
[ REVIEW–RICOH Caplio 500G wide ]
Price: $1100
Highly Recommended
The low-down: The Ricoh 500G “wide” is an 8 megapixel camera with a 3x zoom lens with a film-equivalent range of 28–85mm. There is an optional extender lens that takes the camera to 22mm at the wide angle end. Ricoh produce exceptional wide angle lenses with no trace of barrel distortion.
The Ricoh 500G is a highly specialised camera. It has a mode setting for “fire fighting”, which “allows you to take clear, sharp pictures…unaffected by flames or smoke.” This is truly a go-anywhere camera -- through dust, fire and flood. And it is no flimsy little point and shooter with a waterproof housing. The 500G is totally enclosed in a tough, flexible rubberised waterproof case. Ricoh invite you to drop it on a hard floor from a metre if you must. And, being a serious piece of gear, the 500G sports an external flash shoe.
The all-nasties-proof body means that the 500G is no pocket camera but it fits nicely in the hand and, like all Ricohs, it is responsive with fast focus and no shutter lag. And, as befits a no nonssense camera, it is powered with either the proprietory Ricoh rechargeable or with AAs. It has a small but useful optical viewfinder.
Like this: The Ricoh 500G is made for a particular niche market which includes firefighters, builders, engineers and architects and, we assume, explorers and white water rafters. It even has a mode for correcting photos of documents so that they are straight, with edges aligned, in the final image. It has the most amazing macro facility that photographs subjects as close as 5mm from the camera.
The user guide is a 193 page book of exemplary detail.
Dislike that: The write time to the SD card is slow.
Parting shot: The Ricoh 500G wide is a tool -- there is no other way to describe it. It’s not pretty but it’s certainly tough. And it has been well thought out for a particular customer who wants a camera that can stand abuse and still produce good pictures.
Posted by terry at September 6, 2006 11:11 PM
Worth Checking Out
Digital Cameras SydneyTrackback Pings
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Comments
to: Terry Lane
subject: Digital information vanishing from CDs
28 October 2006
Hi,
Recently (within the last 3 months) in the Age Green Guide you described a CD-ROM having lost information recorded to it. This information could not be found on the CD.
The article mentioned music CDs recorded by a commercial company years ago were unaffected by the passage of time.
I found this very disquieting, as my friends back up their photos to CD-ROMs to free up space on their hard disk drives.
Does that mean that their photos may not be there when they look at their CDs in the future? I was considering storing my photos on CDs, and I do not have a DVD writer. Or are DVDs not immune either?
I thought that CDs have the digital data recorded as permanent configuration in molten plastic, and that data could not be lost - unlike floppies, where data may be erased by a magnetic field, or perhaps by oxidation of the magnetic coating.
More information, please, as this is probably alarming news to digital camera owners.
Cheers,
Anna
Posted by: Anna at October 28, 2006 09:42 AM
Anna:
You can find the original article about CD/DVD longevity here...
http://www.dpexpert.com.au/archives/2006/06/_saving_the_picture_for_poster.html
Terry L
Posted by: Terry at October 29, 2006 12:05 AM