Buying a compact digital camera: advice wanted!
I'm very happy with my Nikon D70 DSLR camera. All of pics on Flickr were shot with it. However, quite often this camera feels like a bulky overkill kind of thing. This is why I am currently looking for an extra digital camera featuring a minimal size combined with a maximum amount of useful features.
The all new Ricoh Caplio R4 has managed to attract my attention. Let's take a look at it.

Ricoh seems to have done a remarkable job by cramming a whopping 28-200mm zoom lens into a case with the size of a pack of cigarettes. The most interesting features are:
- 28-200mm zoom (yeah baby, yeah!)
- Vibration reduction
- Up to ISO 800 (!)
- Macro's as close as 1cm
- Very nice price (about EUR 300-320)
I guess the only drawback that I can see now is the maximum aperture of f3.3-4.8. But, improving this would have resulted in a larger camera body so I think this is a price worth paying.
What do you think? Should I get this camera or do you have a better suggestion?
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At 21 May '06 - 00:41 Phil Sherry wrote:
At 21 May '06 - 03:54 Bram wrote:
Anyways, the Z750 might be a little bit old, I’m a satisfied user for about a year now, it’s still a marvelous little piece of equipment. Even Mike Davidson agrees with me (or the other way around
There’s also a successor to the Z750, the Z850. With one more megapixel, who needs it anyways, better image stabilization and some other minor improvements. DPReview has reviews online of both cameras.
The Casio’s don’t have such a zoom range as your Ricoh or that good macro capabilities, but it does have for instance better manual controls, better aperture range, very good battery life (!) and fairly high quality video capture (30fps, 640×480). It’s also a very fast camera, people are always surprised when I’m already putting my camera away after snapping a shot: “Did you take one already?”
Think clearly in what will be your goal with an ultra-compact camera. I wanted it to be small, fits in your pocket, long battery life and good snapshot capabilities. A high zoom range is something ultra-compact camera are always missing, but I don’t see when you would need superb macro capabilities with an ultra-compact
Good luck with finding the right one, you know where to find me for questions about the Z750.
At 22 May '06 - 09:58 Nathan Logan wrote:
Personally, I can’t get over the image quality in Canon’s compact digital cameras. I just haven’t seen anything that compares in the digital point-and-shoot realm.
At 20 December '06 - 04:23 Scott Brison >> International business wrote:
I have a Canon’s digital camera, and i’m glad of my joice!
But this camera is not bad too :)