We recently reviewed the Ricoh Caplio GX camera, a 5.1-megapixel device, roughly the size of a compact 35mm conventional camera. Ricoh's new R1 goes a lot smaller, about 10mm wider than a credit card and only 25mm thick. Its all-metal case gives it a luxury feel and positive responses from all controls make it good to handle.
The finger grip on the right-hand side doubles as a sliding power switch and six buttons plus a jog dial on the back control access to the camera through a clear and well-designed menu system. The R1's bright LCD monitor shows up even in strong daylight, though colours sometimes look more bleached out in the LCD than your final images appear.
Taking pictures with everything set to automatic is no problem, but you can also override the white balance manually, compensate up and down two stops on exposure and set the film sensitivity to ISO 64, 100, 200, 400 or 800. These functions are available via the new Adjust button - press it to cycle through them - as well as via traditional menu functions.
The R1 has a 4.8x Ricoh optical zoom lens, which can take you in close to delicate subjects, but if that's not enough, you can use the macro facility to take you as close as 10mm. You'll need a tripod for this kind of work, though. 3.6x digital zoom is also provided, giving a composite zoom of over 17x.
Somewhat oddly for a 4-megapixel camera, Ricoh only supplies 12MB of internal memory and no memory card. This means that at the camera's highest resolution of 2,304 by 1,728, you get just 12 pictures in Normal mode, six if you use the lower compression Fine mode. If you can make do with a lower resolution this rises to 29 shots, but then why buy a 4-megapixel camera? You really need to budget extra for an SD/MM card of around 32MB to give you a decent picture capacity.
As with the Caplio GX, there's no rechargeable battery or charger included, so you're reliant on changing a pair of alkaline AA cells every 200 shots or so. You can buy a Li-ion battery pack and charger as optional extras and their omission looks like a price-cutting exercise on Ricoh's part. The mains power supply, another optional extra, has to be inserted into the camera's battery compartment in place of its normal batteries, which is a fiddly solution.
Finally, since the Caplio R1 comes with only its internal memory, rather than a memory card, you have to use a USB cable to connect to your PC or to a Pict-Bridge printer for computer-free printing. Basic photo management software is included with the camera.
