Ricoh Caplio R7

Opinion: a fine, small, good value for money camera

Opinion: I love the 28mm wide angle, the flash works well at night on street scenes, snow scenes and inside. The images are sharp and colour is often very good if properly exposed.

The AF is very accurate in descent lighting, and quite good in poor lighting with the flash. The LCD is very clear.

In Mode scene, I have used the macro for bugs, frogs and plants that took impressive shots at all zoom length. My unexpected surprise is Text exposure - a complete high-contrast black or white exposure which can give some funky results. The movie mode at night need some street light or else the scene is dark.

The EV compensation is nice. It fits in my pocket and I have taken thousands of shots because I can take it places without worry - unlike lugging around an SLR.

You can use a high capacity SD card. Also, you can turn off the sound so it doesn't beep when taking a picture.

Opinion: 1. IQ: There are samples on the net i was largely satisfied it was what i expected from the sensor/lens/processing combo. It does ok for ISO values between 64 and 400 but 800 and 160 do push the envelope, white balance is a little to warm.

2 Ease of use: Found all i needed to know about operating the camera in about 15 mins. Good manual, quite intelligible (in contrast to some olympus manuals a few years back) I quite liked the joystick features that allows to quickly change Exp. Comp, ISO and WB. I found everything quite logically arranged i would have liked bigger buttons but i'm realistic and i understand the overall size imposes this kind of limitations.

3. Zoom: 28-200mm very versatile quite a change from the boring 35-105mm run of the mill and i rather like the zoom lever. By default zooming is way to fast but this can be quickly and easily changed from the menu (slow is jus fine).

4. Battery: Li-Ion charges in about 150 mins, CIPA states it's good for 270 pics which is all relative i took 250 in moderately good light from which about ten were done using the flash without the battery showing any sign of fatigue.

5. Size/Color: very small and slim it goes discretely in any pocket. Got it in black (de gustibus) which i like better than the usual silver grey all P&S have.

6. Resolution: not really important to me 8Mp on 1/2.5" sensor is nothing spectacular, files have enough detail to be easily PP with Photoshop/Gimp and noise cleans up nicely with noiseware/ noise ninja (still i would only use ISO 800 and 1600 in desperate situations).

7. IS: sensor based stabilization, it works it's on by default i left that way doesn't seem to reduce battery life or at least not noticeably. It helps at the long end however in poor light with increasing exp times it becomes quite useless. Maybe i should have mentioned that at the zoom segment but in anything less than ideal lighting the long end is actually unusable.

8. Scene modes: not something i find particularly interesting only tried macro (up to one cm, might sound impressive but it isn't), portrait and landscape (for the latter i didn't find any noticeable advantage compared to normal shooting however it might give novice users reassurance)

9. Misc. : No VF instead a 2.7" screen with average resolution (230 Kpixels) and average performance, woks good with a 4Gb SDHC card (which i had to take out of my GPS unit as by default this camera comes without a card which i find quite normal), shows histogram (actually there quite a few thins to say about menus but i leave that to people who like to write N+ review pages), flash slightly underexposing which was to be expected, anyway that's about the only conclusion i could draw from my ten flash pics, focusing speed: good in good light, slow otherwise as i only used it to shoot landscapes and portraits this wasn't really a problem.

10. Problems: not really problems but rather nuisances, zooming is a bit on the loud side but i can't really think of a situation where that would be an issue, missed a manual mode, movie mode is quite average but it's not something i care about (also noticed the background noise however as i don't shoot videos with a P&S camera i could care less about this issue) i see it seems to be a problem on the R7 range and i take it as such, somehow related: i updated the firmware (quite easy compared to dslrs, rather appreciated it) but saw no change good or bad.

Opinion: Spent ages looking at reviews of different point and shoot cameras, that were compact. Decided on the R7 because
- fantastic zoom
- amazing macro ability
- good quality pictures (from what I have seen on the net)

I had the camera a day and spent a lot of time trying different shots outside and in and in different lighting conditions.

Outside good light - good pictures (although I found them grainy at 100% and a lot of barrel distortion at wide angle when viewed on pc)
Inside on auto - very grainy poorly defined, very poor.
macro - outstanding
video mode - terrible noise obliterating any other noise, quality of movie was good.

I wasn't impressed with the quality of the pictures I was getting even in brightly lit scenes so I took it back and exchanged it for a Canon a720IS (twice the size but twice the quality from what I've found today)

This is my opinion and I'm a novice but have experience with changing setting from the auto function to gain better pictures.

Opinion: I purchased this acmera for my grandaughter and I also tried it. The combination of IQ, zoom range, camera size is really impressive. The movie clips are quite adequate.

Opinion: Have had camera 4 mo, am very pleased. I too am mystified by low image quality ratings by some others - maybe Ricoh's spotty QC ? The zoom lens range (28 mm (equiv) - 7x), and 1 cm macro focus is a great asset and must be unmatched in this camera class...amazing for such a compact camera.

Opinion: Good DC and it was with me for over 2 months, $1800 hong now, and it was increditble of 7x zoomwith this size, and good choice for traveller, battery is quite good, over 300 shots with 1/10 with flash. Pic quality was good ( did not know why so many user said it was worse or bad) overall is 4.5 star DC, recommeded to beginners.

Opinion: I have owned the R7 for about 2 months. I also cannot understand some of the other user reviews here which complain of poor image quality. I have found the camera to be very responsive, of course with an excellent wide angle/ large zoom and macro combination, and produces very good image quality for outdoor/ good light conditions. For indoor shots I had some initial problems with 'white out' faces . I changed the flash setting to 'soft' which helped and also took shots from a bit further away (ample zoom after all), and also found that very good results can sometimes be obtained if the light is 'reasonable' by increasing the maximum shutter time and turning the flash off. Others have suggested this elsewhere on the boards. Overall I am very pleased with this camera.

Opinion: The people below me giving this camera such bad rating i dont understand what they are doing wrong. This camera is one of the best in this small handpocket size. When i was in the store looking for a camera all the Ixus 70/75 was out but the manager said this camera was better due to more optical zoom, 28-200mm angle vs ixus regular one and a good lcd screen.

I also updated the cameras firmware first thing i did, i cant really complain on anything, its focus is good i dont feel it being very slow in daylight at all. I bought this camera to take photos mostly outside and at home but you cant really expect this camera to take flawless pictures under poor light conditions wether it being a canon ixus, panasonic lumix or whatever. People should do some research before buying and not give bad rating just cause they cant handle the cameras controls.

Also you can change the slow shutter speed 1/2 1/4 and 1/8 or turn it off, canons ixus ones does not have this feature what i know of.