User reviews for Ricoh Caplio R8: Digital Photography Review

Opinion: I have had this little camera for 18 months now, so I thought it would be worth posting a review.

The camera is on the whole well made. Nice metal body and sturdy controls. However there is a design fault with the LCD surround, which I will mention in the problems part.

Image quality is mixed, sometimes it nails it, great colours, sharpness and good control of CA. However, sometimes the WB is off (the images seems to have a bluish hue on them) Not good for portraits as the skin tones are too pink.

Menus can be a little confusing, and for some reason won't hold the image quality setting, you set it to fine, yet everytime you then switch the camera on it defaults back to normal! Useful square format (at 7mp) is good though. Other settings are all over the place and need practice to find them. However, apart for the aformantioned IQ settings, these will hold.
Good zoom range 28-300 eqv, but need good light if you going to the long end without getting shake. optical IS would have been nice.
ISO performance is typical for a compact, Good to 200, okay to 400, average to poor over 400.

Value? Well I only paid £100 for it, so yes, for the features you get, very good value.

On the whole, a nice little camera, and when it gets it right, it nails it. Just beware of its foibles.

EDIT - There is a save setting to one of your two custom features on the dial, so the IQ can be saved. However it is deep in the menus and not very clear...

Problems: The LCD cracked, but did not drop it. So, via the shop I bought it from, went back to Ricoh for their opinion. 2 weeks later it came back, repaired and no cost. They also replaced the lens (not that there was anything wrong with it) and updated the firmware too. Excellent service from Ricoh.
So this is where there is a issue with the R8 (and CX3 and R10) the casing surrounding the LCD is too soft, so prone to breaking the LCD. Clearly a design fault.

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Opinion: Nice piece of equipment, well built. Serves as an addition to my Canon G9 and replaces my old Ricoh R3. Got it on Ebay for 120 euro.

What I still like:

1. 28-200 zoom and a real usefull macro
2. fast responsiviness and write times
3. superb menu and handling
4. small pocket sized
5. built quality
6. the general "ricoh" feeling

Noise is far better than R3 (should be, there's a gap of 3 years between the two). Also battery cover, built quality and general design are very much better.

With the Ricohs I have made my best fotographs, not due to the fact that it is a technical suberp camera, but due to the simple fact that the camera is always with me, it has the versatile 28-200 on board, it starts op quickly and allows to make very quick adjustments.

Problems: What I dislike:

1. I sense some white-balance problems at low light, manual adjustment though is just two buttons away. At first sight (I have the camera for a week now, so only 800 shots :-) ) I do not like the skin-tone produced by the camera, or it to red, or to white.
2. Ricohs images sometimes need some tweaking
3. You don't get "certainly not equal but almost DSLR" results as I get from the G9

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Opinion: I bought this on impulse because of the price £130 and the features. I liked the size of the camera, the long wide angle zoom, and the design of the camera. It all looked promising.

When I got home I charged the battery and read the manual. Then I started testing the features and learning how to use the camera and setting up. So far so good. Then I started taking pictures along side my 2 year old Canon A710is. That is when it all started to fall down.

Noise on pictures from the R8 is high and even worse there is banding, similar to old inkjet print banding. This started happening at iso 400 and above.

Then I did the moon test. I aimed the R8 at the moon and selected spot focus /metering. The R8 struggled. The Canon did better plus when setting to shutter priority got a decent picture of the moon with details. The macro test was a tie. They got was close at 1cm and were very good. Flash was okay and it recharged quick. The picture was hardly an improvement on other tests and the white balance again from iso 400 has a orange tint. The image stabilizer worked well but is not as good as Canons. The lens is slow too.

Basically the picture quality was a letdown, because the R8 features and handling are good.
Ricoh put some mode such as black and white, and face detection as scene modes. Worse still there is restricted override or adjustments with those scene modes. The manual focus is welcome and the 2 my settings are great. I missed the manual modes which I use.

My greatest concern was the battery. It was going fast. My Canons and Panasonic's last for days or weeks on a single charge and 500 plus shots. I am an AA NiMH user and have fast chargers. The Lithium Ion battery will only last 270 shots and a spare would cost as much a charger and 4 AA set.

I took it back and exchanged it for the Canon Power Shot SX110is. I have a review of that camera. The Panasonic TZ5 was the other option but I want manual control and the macro is not as close. The battery life is only about 300-330 shots too.

Ricoh need to add manual control and a better picture quality for me to buy the successor to the R8/R10. The Ricoh design with a fast 10x wide angle zoom lens of the Panasonic and manual control and battery of the Canon would be the ultimate compact.

In a 3 horse race, I chose the SX110 over the TZ5 because of the manual features. The R8 is a good camera but for the picture quality and minor mode settings.

Problems: Average picture for a good well designed camera. ISO 400 and above change the white balance and colour.

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Opinion: Wow! This is extremely well construction camera, just the feel of it in your hands confirms this, a useful hand grip and two point neck strap option. Features, well is all here as far as I am concerned, 1 cm macro, 460K LCD, smooth and silent 7x (28~200mm) optical zoom, excellent user interface, 22mm ? thin body but not too small, 1:1 shooting ratio, continuous shooting mode, mechanical anti-shake, step zoom & interval shooting.

Problems: Flash range could be better, average when compared to other compacts in its class. No optical view-finder but the hi resolution LCD makes up for this.

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Opinion: This camera is pretty and compact, with lots of features and a simple interface ... but the image quality is not very good.

Problems: The high resolution images are really noisy at 100 ISO. The finest JPEG compression isn't very fine at all. You'll have to reduce the 10MP image to 7MP or so to make it look clean.

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Opinion: I am a self confessed Ricoh freak and know them well enough to get the most out of them. I have seen no need to upgrade from my trusty R4 and will still keep that as my rough and ready go everywhere 7x optical carry about. The R8 is a more sophisticated looking piece of equipment and whilst the R4 merged into the tourist crowd and kept its true capabilities hidden inside its plebean looks the R8 needs the designer sunnies and the cafe latte. But looks are deceptive and I find the R8 just a more developed and sophisticated R4 in a sleek box. Perhaps gone is the fact that the R4 produced better real images than the lcd previewed and it might now be the other way around.

The R8 has just about reached the pinnacle of less is more in user intuitive interface. The controls are as right as any camera I have ever owned. And other Ricoh cameras are the standard that has to be met and bettered.

Oh - and photographs? I can already see where the comments from other early adopters of "extra smoothing" are coming from. My first experience with the R8 imaging was one of great disappointment that such a finely made camera was spoiled by excessive image smoothing (yuk). Gone was the fine film-like grainy images with high resolution such a great feature of other Ricoh cameras.

That was until I found the trick of setting auto-high = 1600 in the shootings menu. This apparently turns off the worst of the smoothing algorythm - now the usual low-smear Ricoh-type images can be enjoyed.

This is one fine little carry-about camera - if you are looking for a cheap point and shoot you had best look elsewhere - this camera is for those that get enjoyment out of taking the images and taking them well.

Problems: Can't find the native b&w mode - I fear that Ricoh have binned it (they have) - pity because grainy film-like high ISO black and whites are a Ricoh standard in themselves.

There is a "scene mode" b&w but the settings are pretty well fixed and far too restrictive.

I had become disappointed at the level of smoothing applied to the images. However I have found that setting "Auto-High=1600" in the shootings menu seems to turn the smoothing algorythm off and gives a much more acceptable result no matter what other setting is used. I recommend that this be tried it has a magic effect on the imaging performance.

A b&w capture mode - then we might again see the more grainy images that have been one of the joys of their other models. Seems like the b&w grainy images are still possible but require a conversion by computer software - another step but at least you still have the high-iso colour-noised original so that you can appreciate the b&w version that much better.

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Opinion: RICOH DISAPPOINTS AGAIN...

Problems: Despite repeated pleas with Ricoh's engineering design team, they continue to overlook a very important feature which virtually all other camera manufacturers now include. THIS IS INEXCUSABLE!

Specifically, an aspect ratio setting of 16:9 is still lacking, as with earlier Caplio models. This is a major negative for the many of us who wish to view their photos on a wide, 16:9 PC screen or on HDTV.

Also, more and more camera makers now provide an HDTV OUT to connect the camera directly to an HDTV for high resolution viewing. Ricoh's R8 still does not!

Also, while the 28mmm-200mm lens is fabulous in terms of its 7.1x zoom range and its macro capabilities, it suffers from lack of adequate anti-reflective multi-coating. You will NEVER be able to take adequate sunrise or sunset pictures due to excessive internal lens reflections.

The new R8 continues not to offer a Panorama setting, i.e. a setting that would permit panning the camera to take a series of shots that can be stitched together to create a panorama.

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