Ricoh Caplio R2

Opinion: I like this camera. It fits in a shirt pocket, has good zoom range (28-135 35mm equivalent), 5 AF points (not selectable), very fast startup and negligible shutter lag, good WB selection plus manual, writes to SD card fast, 3 saturation levels selectable, 3 sharpness levels selectable, 3 metering choices, AF/AE lock, shortcut button for 4 most-used menu items, excellent macro mode, ISO 64-800.

Pictures at the "normal" settings are less sharp and saturated than most p&s cameras at this price level which is a good thing. You can set vivid colour and Sharp if you want, or neutral and soft as an alternative. The focal length range of 28-135 is excellent and zooming is quite fast. You can set "stops" for zooming at 28, 35, 50, 85 and 135 for quick step-zoooming. At w/a there is understandably some barrelling but it's not too bad.

Although there's no viewfinder, the monitor is large and clear and has 4 display modes, one of which shows a live histogram which probably isn't telling us much. Another has a grid for horizon alignment and "rule of thirds" fans. All user settings are clearly displayed

Very good effort from Ricoh.

Opinion: Warning do not compare your pictures with Canon IXUS 40. The ixus outruns this camera in form of picture quality (Ricoh 1,5 and Canon 3,5 (5=superb))
No the display is not that bad, it is the picture. The camera produces average pictures when ISO 64 is used on a sunny day, don’t bather using higher iso setting.

Pros
+ Features, superb macro 1 cm
+ Zoom x4,8 (28-135mm) at aperture 4,8
+ Candy for the eye
+ Fast camera
+ Made me buy a Fuji Finepix F10, please se that review

Cons
- miss focus on pictures very often
- Very high CCD distortion indoor and lower outdoors
- more pixel hangs at exposeure timings 1/15 sec than on my Fuji Finepix F10 at 15seconds
- Noice in pictures (depending on motive, many dots are: green, Pink)
- Random colour dirt, as if you tried to view true colour in 8k colours
- Aperture 3,3 at wide angel (2.8 would reduce the indoor CCD distortion)

I used best quality setting and max res.

2x+ sensitive CCD and a better picture processor -> top of the line camera, now it is good value for money if you want average picture quality (paper print quality).

Opinion: I haven't had this long but it is not up to scratch.

Opinion: good wide angle and zoom ratio not found on many compacts . quick startup and good video quality, however noise levels are shocking in anything but full sun . flash range very limited unless you set iso to "auto" then you get the noise BIG time . Good camera for quick casual shots where the occasion is more of an issue than the quality of the image . Will stick to my DSLR for most things.