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Average rating:
4.40
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User reviews
(3)
4.40
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| Quick links: | Announcement | Forum |
| Announced: | May 8, 2006 |
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Average rating:
4.40
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Opinion: I bought this camera for its rugged, waterproof construction to take on an expedition to Antarctica in December 06. I was very glad I did as it allowed me to take photos on bouncing, splashing Zodiacs without concern. We also had some wet and windy weather. On the way to Ushuaia for our ship's departure we went to the Iguacu falls and on one of the 2 days we had tropical downpours. The Ricoh was the only camera I could use and gave me some interesting images. A bit of judicious postprocessing provided excellent A4 prints.
Opinion: I bought this for the 28mm FOV and it has more flexibility than other water resistant P&S cameras. The optical VF is not perfect but it is better than not having one. The IQ, IMHO, is very good and the larger size makes it easy to 'find the buttons'. Relatively expensive but it has no peer. Great battery life too. I am going to put Rainex on the glass that covers the lens.
Problems: None.
Opinion: From the field - Some that studiotesting not always cover
As for most Ricohs - Great UI.
The camera operates fast and the AF is even faster than the GRD1 thanks to the active AF.
Well built except for the zoom (More about that on the cons)
It is also not too loud except the AF.
The noise is rather grainy, clearly better than for the G600 and it look fine in B&W too.
Problems: Fragile zoom though being covered. I dropped my first one on the floor from hip-height and the zoom either broke or got stuck.
I've seen three other different 500SE/G on Ebay.com in a few months which have been struck by the same problem.
The custom white balance won't remember the setting next time I turn on the camera. More irritating than it may sound as it won't allow me to turn off the camera for a short while.
The 400G didn't behave like this, luckily.
Sometimes odd purple cast in outdoor-pictures. (One may need to set AWB to cloudy weather to get rid of that) Bokeh is OK but could be a litte more smooth in macro.
The 500SE/G seems to require a little more fiddling with exposure compensation and sometimes white balance to get the best out of it, compared to the 400G.
Banding at higher isos.
Purple or sometimes even blue fringing around high contrast breakings.
That's why I only give it 4.0 for IQ.
AF begin to crawl when AA-batteries is used. But by blocking the phase detection windows with some black tape it gets about as fast as with the DB-43 battery and blocked phase-detection windows. Weird yes, but that's it.
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 | 22.3 megapixels 3.2" screen Full frame sensor |
