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September 18, 2008
[REVIEW—RICOH GX200 VF kit]
Price: $900 with electronic viewfinder
OK camera with bad noise
The low-down: This 12 megapixel camera has a 24-72mm (film equivalent) zoom that is reasonably fast with an f2.5 maximum aperture. In other words this is a true wide angle optic. The build quality is excellent and ergonomics are good. Appearance is austere and purposeful and the camera is a little larger than most compacts, with a useful hand-grip bulge at one end. In its basic state there is no optical viewfinder but an electronic viewfinder is offered as an option. It slots into the flash shoe and can be tilted forward, making low-level photography easier. And adding the viewfinder doesn’t interfere with the on-camera flash. This is one of the very few compacts that will capture in RAW, in three different sizes and aspect ratios, using the Adobe universal DNG format.
Like: The wide angle lens is ideal for travellers. Distortion is reasonably well controlled and there is a Distortion Correction function that almost, but not quite, eliminates barrel distortion. The RAW recording ability should be a plus but we found that the JPEG output was almost as good.
Dislike: This camera suffers from extreme image noise. Even with noise reduction turned on full-time we couldn’t get the graininess under control, except at speeds below ISO100. Unfortunately the shadow noise coagulates into ugly black clumps.
Verdict: This camera has a lot going for it. It feels like it has been made by serious photographers for serious photographers. The electronic viewfinder is a useful accessory. And for anyone content to stick with ISO speeds under 100 it produces good images, well exposed and with very good white balance and lovely skin tones. 12 megapixels on such a small sensor is asking for trouble and Ricoh haven’t worked out how to improve the signal-to-noise ratio as well as Sony, for instance, have done. Now if we could only put the Sony image processor into the Ricoh we would have a great little camera.
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Posted by terry at September 18, 2008 01:45 AM
Worth Checking Out
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