Life just isn’t fair, is it? The worst part is that it chooses to be most unfair with some of the worthiest people or companies. For instance, Japanese company Ricoh happened to be one of the pioneers when it came to digital imaging or cameras. All its innovation went unheard of and, consequently, unrewarded, when it came to actually being able to establish themselves in the market and earning a consumer base. For years Ricoh cameras have been praised for performance as well as innovation, which unfortunately never translated into enough fan base in the market. The Ricoh R10 is also another camera often praised for its performance. It is a 10mp and 7.1x optical zoom camera, offering wide angle range of 28mm to 200mm.
Design and FunctioningThe R10 has quite a boxy, minimalist shape but one-handed operation of the shutter release and zoom rocker is not a problem. The rubberized grip that wraps itself around the camera's edge certainly helps. It is a stylish, attractive camera that manages to squeeze an incredibly useful 28-200mm equivalent lens into a very compact body. There's a DSLR-like dial on top of the camera for the user to select from the Camera, Movie and Scene options, plus two settings called MY1 and MY2 which allow the user to configure the R10 for different uses and allows quick access to each configuration, which the camera will remember even after being turned off. Its Adjust button, or more accurately the Adjust four-way joystick, allows the user to quickly adjust 4 different settings that are commonly used. One can use this button to alter Exposure Compensation, White Balance, ISO Speed and the AF Target, which for shifting the target for AF or AE or both without having to move the camera. The Ricoh R10 features an anti-shake system called Camera Shake Correction – turning to its Main menu would result in the Ricoh R10 automatically compensating for camera shake, which is a slight blurring of the image that typically occurs at slow shutter speeds. It also provides a Recover File option which will rescue deleted images, provided the camera remains in the on position. Level Compensation lets the user correct the contrast and tone of an image after it has been taken, Skew Correction function alters any photo that was taken at an angle so it appears as if it were taken directly in front of the user and the White Saturation display mode during image playback indicates over-exposed highlights by flashing those areas on and off. This camera comes with 54MB of internal memory and is compatible with SD/SDHC cards.
