Objectif Numerique reviews Ricoh RDC-i500! By
Mike Tomkins
(Friday, May 25, 2001 - 19:10 EDT)
Laurent Katz tries out Ricoh's unusual 'image capturing device'...
We first told you about Ricoh's RDC-i500 digital camera, which the company refers to as an 'image capturing device', back on March 22nd, and today we can point you to the first review we've seen of the camera. A combination of previous design concepts, the camera has much of the extended functionality of the RDC-i700 (send/receive emails, build web pages and Word/Excel documents, and FTP files in camera) but in a chassis that is much closer to the size of the smaller RDC-7.
Laurent Katz, of French website Objectif Numerique has today posted a review of the RDC-i500. A rough summarisation of Laurent's conclusion is as follows: "This digital camera will probably seem expensive: the absence of shutter or aperture priority is likely to be an issue. On the other hand, it is a dream device for a professional who, in the setting of his work, must capture and send photos. You also must consider the remarkable quality of the zoom in terms of resolution, albeit sullied somewhat by distortion at wide-angle. The photographs are mostly of excellent quality, although the metering is occasionally tricked by strong sunlight, as is the white balance when the flash is activated. These two issues can of course be overridden with manual adjustments. Now all we need to know is not the price, but what is included for your 8,500 francs (including tax): will the modem card be included in the bundle, or not?" (Our apologies for any translation errors, Mike's French is *very* rusty)... If you speak French, you can read Laurent's full review; if you can't, the translation from Altavista Babelfish is readable with a little guesswork. ;) There are three sample photos at the end of the review, as well as a screenshot of the camera configuration accessible via a web browser, and four pages of screen-captures of the camera's interface (1, 2, 3, 4).
Source:
Objectif Numerique website
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