Ricoh Caplio R3 Review

Review Date: December 13th 2005

Conclusion

(out of 5 stars)

The Ricoh Caplio R3 promises an awful lot on paper. A camera that can easily fit in your pocket, yet has a massive 7x wide-angle optical zoom lens. A camera that has a potentially winning combination of an anti-shake system and an extensive ISO range of 64-800. A camera that is easy-to-use, well-built and stylish in an understated kind of way. And a camera that that offers all this for less than £250. The The Ricoh Caplio R3 delivers on all of these promises, except the most important one of all - image quality. Yes, the seemingly endless succession of Ricoh cameras that look great in the marketing literature, but not so great in terms of the images that they produce, continues with the R3. Noise at ISO 100, obvious chromatic aberrations, poor night shots - only the amazing macro mode and the anti-shake system are worth having. I can only repeat what I said about the previous Ricoh camera that I reviewed, the GX8. The Ricoh Caplio R3 is one of the most usable, intuitive and well-designed digital cameras that I have ever reviewed, but at the same time, however, the images that it produces are some of the worst that I have seen. This is even more inexcusable on the R3 because it only has a 5 megapixel sensor, albeit smaller in physical size than the sensor in the GX8. If only Ricoh could solve this seemingly eternal problem and give us a camera that creates good, or even merely average, photographs. Instead I'm left moaning about yet another missed opportunity. The Ricoh Caplio R3 could undoubtedly have caused a big splash if the image quality was up to scratch - I would have bought one myself! As it stands, save your money and pray that the future R4 finally solves Ricoh's image quality issues.

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