Ricoh RDC-7A 3 megapixel "Image Capturing Device" for mobile professionals with some unusual capabilities!<<Reference: Datasheet :(Previous) | (Next): Print-Friendly Review Version>> RDC-7 Sample ImagesReview First Posted: 8/2/2000 |
| We've begun including links in our reviews to a Thumber-generated index page for our test shots. The Thumber data includes a host of information on the images, including shutter speed, ISO setting, compression setting, etc. Rather than clutter the page below with *all* that detail, we're posting the Thumber index so only those interested in the information need wade through it! ;) |
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Outdoor portrait: (1141k) The extreme tonal range of this image makes it a tough shot for many digicams, which is precisely why we set it up this way. The object is to hold highlight and shadow detail without producing a "flat" picture with muddy colors, and Ricoh's RDC-7 was a little confused by this high contrast shot. We snapped test images using the automatic (1141k) and daylight (1142k) white balance modes, choosing the automatic setting for our main series. The daylight setting resulted in a slightly cool, bluish image. Overall color balance with the automatic setting was good, although the skin tones seemed just a bit muddy and slightly too pink. The RDC-7's color is less saturated than some current consumer-level cameras, perhaps coming a bit closer to the original colors in the scene, rather than the pumped-up saturation that has become popular in consumer camera. Here, the flower colors are pretty accurate, but the greens in the leaves are a bit muted. We always look at the blue flowers in this shot, to see how the camera interprets their color. Many cameras end up putting too much red into this color, making more of a purple shade than the correct blue. The RDC-7 showed this blue pretty accurately with just a hint of purple to it. (Better than average handling of this tough color.) Resolution looks pretty good, although just a bit soft throughout. The shadow areas hold a good amount of detail, with only a moderate amount of noise. Our main image was taken with a +0.5 EV exposure adjustment to get the best exposure on the face without losing too much detail in the highlight areas. The table below shows the results of a range of exposure settings from zero to +2.0 EV in the manual white balance mode. Exposure Compensation Settings:
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Closer portrait: (1105k) The RDC-7's 3x lens does a good job on this closer, portrait shot, and we felt the skin tones came out better than on the shot above, albeit still just a tiny bit pinkish. We again shot with the automatic white balance setting. Resolution looks a little sharper in this close-up shot and shadow noise looks pretty good as well. Surprisingly, this shot seemed to need about the same exposure compensation (+0.5EV) as the Outdoor Portrait shot above: Surprising in that this tighter framing generally needs less adjustment with most cameras we've tested. The table below shows the results of a range of exposure settings from zero to +2.0 EV. Exposure Compensation Settings:
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Indoor Portrait, Flash: (1033k) The RDC-7's internal flash performs well with this shot. First, we stayed in the normal photography mode and shot with the low, normal (1107k) and high (1117k) flash intensity settings. In the normal and high flash settings, the flash did a very good job of illuminating the subject without any odd colored highlights. The low setting produces very dim results, as you'd expect. A slight warm cast pervades all three images (from the fairly bright room lighting), but isn't too bad overall. Many cameras have flashes that are color-balanced for daylight conditions: When you use these indoors under strong incandescent lighting like this, you tend to get odd-looking blue highlights. Not so with the RDC-7, the flash color balance in this shot was excellent. Next, we switched to a slower shutter and set the flash to the Slow-Synchro setting, again shooting with the low (1082k), normal (1100k) and high (1033k) flash intensity settings. The slow shutter speed combined with the flash did a very good job of allowing more ambient light into the image, which in turn toned down the flash highlights. Although the low flash setting is still a little dim, the slower shutter produces a much brighter image than when shooting in normal mode. For our main shot (1033k), we stayed with the slow shutter plus flash, but set the flash intensity to low and the exposure compensation to +0.5 EV. This produced the best image overall, with very subtle flash highlights and a good amount of ambient lighting. Overall, we were quite impressed with how well the RDC-7's flash worked in a typical incandescent-lit scene like this one, and the degree of exposure control it gave us: An excellent performance! |
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Indoor portrait, no flash: (1142k) This shot is always a very tough test of a camera's white balance capability, given the strong, yellowish color cast of the household incandescent bulbs used for the lighting, and the RDC-7's white balance system had a little trouble here. We tested the automatic (1136k) and incandescent (1142k) white balance settings, choosing incandescent for our main series. The automatic setting produced rather magenta results, and although the incandescent setting also appears slightly pink, wasn't too bad in its overall color balance. For our main shot (1142k), we chose a +1.0 EV adjustment. In addition to the slightly pinkish skin tones, color balance looks a little warm throughout the image (causing the blue flowers to appear nearly violet), a fairly typical behavior among the cameras we've tested. We also tested the camera's ISO settings, shooting at Auto (1141k), 200 (1102k) and 400 (1088k). The increasing ISO setting does noticeably brighten the image, but also slightly raises the noise level. As it happens, in the Auto setting actually appears to have chosen an ISO value of 200 anyway. Between 200 and 400, the noise level increases somewhat, but the overall noise level at ISO 400 is quite good, lower than we're accustomed to seeing. The table below shows a range of exposure adjustments from zero to +2.0 EV using the incandescent white balance setting. Exposure Compensation Settings:
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House shot: (1000k) NOTE that this is the "new" house shot, a much higher-resolution poster than we first used in our tests. To compare the image of the RDC-7 with previously tested cameras, here's a shot of the original house poster in the automatic (846k) white balance setting. We shot this image with the automatic (115k) and daylight (114k) white balance settings. Despite a slightly magenta cast, the automatic setting produced the best overall color balance, while daylight appeared a bit too warm. The image looks pretty crisp in this shot, especially in the leaves above the roof and in the lines of the bricks. There seems to be a fair amount of noise in the roof shingles, but the in-camera sharpening is fairly restrained, showing up only as a couple of pixels (noticeable as a tiny halo effect around the light and dark edges of the white trim along the roof line). We also snapped an image in the camera's Soft (1076k) mode, which greatly softens all of the contours in the image, and in the Black and White (1137k) mode, which produces a very even, monotone image. We again tested the camera's ISO settings, shooting in Auto (1000k), 200 (1002k) and 400 (945k), which kept the image at approximately the same level of brightness and ever so slightly increased the noise level. Finally, we shot with the camera's PRO settings, which are intended to produce a larger image size and slightly increased sharpness. (Judging by the shutter speeds, it appears the camera was again choosing ISO 200 in Auto mode, despite the fairly bright lighting on this shot.) The standard PRO (2376k) setting simply increases the image size to 3072 x 2304, with the image softening somewhat, due to the digital enlargement. PRO-H and PRO-L modes did both seem to increase the resolution, thanks to the double-exposure, taken with the CCD slightly shifted between shots. Both PRO-H and PRO-L seemed to slightly intensify the colors and contrast as well. The PRO-H setting produced an image that clearly held more detail, although some fine details such as the pine needles and tiny tree branches didn't seem to improve all that much: To see the increased resolution most clearly, examine the bricks on the front of the house and compare between the standard PRO mode (which is just interpolating) and the PRO-H mode. The PRO-H shot clearly shows more detail and crisper edges. PRO-L (1096k) keeps the 2048 x 1536 image size, but attempts to sharpen resolution (which again results in very pixelated edges). Again comparing the bricks in this shot against the standard fine-mode JPEG image, you'll see that there is once more greater detail visible. (Although the PRO-L mode image did seem to have more artifacts in it, perhaps because we triggered the shutter simply by pressing the shutter button, rather than using the self-timer option. - The PRO-L and PRO-H modes seem to be quite sensitive to camera movement or vibration during the exposure.) The table below shows the full range of resolution and quality settings for the RDC-7 in the automatic white balance mode. Resolution/Quality series
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Far-Field Test (1030k) This image is shot at infinity to test far-field lens performance. NOTE that this image cannot be directly compared to the other "house" shot, which is a poster, shot in the studio. The rendering of detail in the poster will be very different than in this shot, and color values (and even the presence or absence of leaves on the trees!) will vary in this subject as the seasons progress. In general though, you can evaluate detail in the bricks, shingles and window detail, and in the tree branches against the sky. Compression artifacts are most likely to show in the trim along the edge of the roof, in the bricks, or in the relatively "flat" areas in the windows. For this test, we shot with the automatic (113k) and daylight (113k) white balance modes. Both settings resulted in nearly identical results, so we chose the automatic white balance for our main series. This is the strongest test of detail of any that we do, since the bright white of the central bay window often tricks digicams into losing detail in the highlight areas. The RDC-7 fell victim to this trap, as only the strongest details show. Both resolution and detail look good in the architectural details as well as in the brush and tree limbs. Color balance looks a little cool, and some of the shadow areas on the white trim have a very blue cast. The shingles show only a moderate amount of noise. We again shot with the Auto (1030k), 200 (1030k) and 400 (980k) ISO settings, with the 400 setting showing the most visible noise. As with the House poster, we also snapped images in the Black and White (1135k), PRO (2384k), PRO-L (1115k) and PRO-H (2432k) modes, with similar results. Since this was an outdoor shot with "live" subjects, the effect of subject motion during the PRO-L and -H shots was much more evident. - See our main review for examples and a discussion of this. (Or, just check the PRO-H mode image here, and check out the leaves in the small tree just to the right of center. There was a slight wind blowing when we shot this, and the moving leaves produced artifacts.) The table below shows the full resolution and quality series in the automatic white balance setting.
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Lens Zoom Range We've received a number of requests from readers to take shots showing the lens focal length range of those cameras with zoom lenses. Thus, we're happy to present you here with the following series of shots, showing the field of view with the lens at full wide-angle and at full 3x telephoto. With a focal length range equivalent to a 35-105mm lens on a 35mm camera, the zoom range of the RDC-7 is about typical of digicams we've tested.
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Musicians Poster (1115k) We shot this test with the automatic (141k) and daylight (141k) white balance settings, choosing automatic as the most accurate overall. The daylight setting produced a color cast that was both slightly cool and yet with a magenta tinge. Color balance looks pretty good throughout, although the skin tones seem just a little pinkish. The blue robe also looks a little off in hue (this is a hard blue for many digicams to interpret accurately). Overall, a very good handling of the image. The image looks reasonably crisp, as there's a fair amount of detail in the bird wings and silver threads on the blue robe, as well as in the flower garland. (Really, this poster is starting to show its age a bit, as the resolution of the target itself isn't that much higher than current 3 megapixel cameras. A moderate level of noise permeates the image, most noticeably in the background (some of which may be from the actual poster). We shot test images with the Auto (1115k), 200 (1006k) and 400 (1102k) ISO settings, with the 400 setting producing the noisiest image. As with some of our other tests, we also snapped images in the Black and White (1124k), PRO (2207k), PRO-L (1117k) and PRO-H settings. Again, the PRO settings seemed to punch up the brightness and contrast slightly. Even given the lower resolution of the poster, the PRO-H mode version has noticeably sharper detail than the standard PRO (interpolated) or normal 3 megapixel shots. Below is our standard resolution and quality series in the automatic white balance setting. Resolution/Quality series
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Macro Shot (1134k) The RDC-7 turns in an excellent performance in the macro category, capturing a very tiny minimum area of just 0.94 x 0.70 inches (23.77 x 17.83 mm). Color balance looks pretty accurate, with tremendous resolution and detail. The RDC-7's flash is automatically disabled with the macro setting, so we were unable to test flash performance here. We did snap an image at the PRO-H (2271k) setting, which again produced somewhat higher-resolution results. |
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"Davebox" Test Target (1076k) We shot this test target with the automatic (150k) and daylight (153k) white balance settings. The daylight setting produced a slightly magenta color cast, so we again chose the automatic setting for our main series. Color balance is very good overall, with the RDC-7 producing almost perfectly neutral gray colors across the full tonal range. Color accuracy and saturation are very good also, but the large cyan, magenta and yellow color blocks appear a little weak, particularly the yellow swatch. The RDC-7 does a nice job of separating the red and magenta color blocks on the middle, horizontal color chart, clearly distinguishing the two hues (many digicams try to blend the two colors into one). The subtle tonal variations of the Q60 chart are completely visible up to the "C" range, and just barely noticeable in the "B" range. The shadow area of the briquettes shows a nice amount of detail, with only a moderate amount of noise. Alternatively, the bright white highlights of the cheesecloth are all visible, only just beginning to lose detail in the very strongest highlights. We again shot with the Auto (1076k), 200 (1078k) and 400 (1088k) ISO settings. As the ISO level increased, brightness and noise followed. Since this target really doesn't include good resolution elements, we saved disk space, and didn't shoot it using the PRO modes. Below is our standard resolution and quality series, shot in the automatic white balance mode. Resolution/Quality series
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Low-Light Tests The RDC-7 performs very well in the low-light category, as we were able to obtain useable images at light levels as low as 1/8 foot candles (1.3 lux), albeit with some noise. The autofocus system does seem to have some trouble at light levels of 1 foot candle and below: We shot the 1 and 1/2 foot candle images using the autofocus (which really wasn't focusing), and then switched to manual focus for the versions darker than 1/2 foot candle. Interestingly, boosting the ISO rating had no effect on autofocus behavior: 2 foot candles was about the darkest we could get the camera to focus at. (For comparison, a normal city night scene with typical street lighting is about 1 foot candle.) From 8 to 1 foot candles (88 to 11 lux), we obtained the best exposures with the camera's Automatic exposure mode. From 1/2 to 1/16 foot candles (5.5 to 0.67 lux), we used the camera's Time Exposure mode to take advantage of slower shutter speeds. We also shot at each of the ISO settings (Auto, 200 and 400). As before, it appears that the "Auto" ISO setting is in fact boosting the ISO as the lighting gets darker (as you'd expect). Judging from the shutter speeds recorded in the file headers, the camera switched over from ISO 200 to ISO 400 somewhere between 2 and 1 foot candles of illumination. Noise does increase with the ISO setting, but the increase is surprisingly modest, even at ISO 400. (Just to be clear, there's a fair bit of image noise at ISO 400, just less than we're accustomed to seeing in consumer-level cameras we've tested.) The table below shows the best exposure we were able to obtain for each of a range of illumination levels, at all three ISO settings. Images in this table (like all our sample photos) are untouched, exactly as they came from the camera.
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Flash Range Test Ricoh estimates the RDC-7's flash as effective from 2.0 to 8.2 feet (0.6 to 2.5 m) in the normal intensity setting. In our testing, we found the RDC-7's built-in flash to be reasonably effective all the way out to 14 feet, without getting too dark. All of these shots were somewhat dark though. We think the flash may have been "fooled" by the reflection from the shiny surface of the vertical gray scale on the Davebox, causing it to throttle back its power somewhat. The table below shows results obtained at a range of distances from eight to 14 feet.
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ISO-12233 (WG-18) Resolution Test (1066k) This was an interesting test for the RDC-7, as it really showed the impact of the various PRO mode resolution-boosting options. In normal resolution mode, the camera performed similarly to other 3 megapixel cameras we've tested, although we saw more aliasing along the vertical axis than we're accustomed to seeing. In the vertical direction, normal-mode resolution was 750-800 lines per picture height,, but aliasing began to be evident as early as 600 lines. Normal-mode horizontal resolution was 750 to 775 but aliasing again was visible as early as 600. As you'd expect, "standard" PRO mode (2029k) (which just interpolates a large image up from the same basic CCD source data) showed no improvement in resolution over normal exposure mode, and in fact to our eye worsened matters a little bit. PRO-L mode (958k) is an interesting one, in that the camera uses two images captured in rapid succession, slightly shifted relative to each other to produce a single image at the normal 2048 x 1536 file size. Confirming the results of our "real world" tests, we found that PRO-L mode vertical resolution was about the same as that in normal exposure mode, but with the introduction of some fuzzy-looking "zipper" artifacts superimposed. By contrast, horizontal resolution is significantly improved in PRO-L mode, looking good to 900 lines or so, but minor color artifacts are visible starting at about 800. PRO-H mode again uses two images captured in rapid succession, with a CCD shift in between, but combines them in such a way as to produce a single image with the significantly larger image size of 3072 x 2304 pixels. Again confirming our "real-world" test results, horizontal resolution in PRO-H mode is significantly boosted, looking good to nearly 1000 lines per picture height, but does show artifacts starting back at about 800 lines. Vertical resolution in PRO-H mode does seem improved relative to that in other modes, showing good detail out to roughly 900 lines, but minor artifacts are again evident as far back as 600 lines. (We did see considerably less of the "zipper" artifacts in PRO-H mode though). We also shot this target in the "Soft" mode at telephoto (942k) and wide angle (952k). Overall, the PRO-L and PRO-H modes do genuinely boost resolution, albeit mostly along the horizontal axis. As reported in our main review text, these modes are really only usable with completely stationary objects, but do provide a very real resolution increase in still-life applications. The tables below show our standard resolution/image quality series for the RDC-7, in all its capture modes. NOTE though, that we've only included links to the uncompressed TIFF images for the wide-angle standard-mode images. The difference between TIFF and the highest-quality JPEG formats is very slight, and we really didn't want to incur the bandwidth costs associate with people downloading 20 megabyte (!) PRO-H mode TIFF images. (The standard camera TIFFs are actually 13.5 megabytes in their YUV CCIR format, but take up 20.5 megabytes when expanded into standard PC or Mac-formatted TIFF files.) If you *really* have a need to look at the raw TIFF images, email us and we'll arrange some way for you to have access to them.
PRO Series,Wide Angle
Resolution/Quality series,Telephoto
PRO Series,Telephoto
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Viewfinder Accuracy/Flash Uniformity We found the RDC-7's optical viewfinder to be somewhat tight (a change in our terminology, we previously would have called this "loose", before spring of '2000), showing about 84.5 percent of the final image area at wide-angle (276k)and about 81.8 percent at telephoto.(259k) The optical viewfinder on our test unit also showed about an 0.8 degree counterclockwise rotation in the final image, requiring some awareness of that fact when shooting with it. (Optical viewfinder rotation is surprisingly common with digicams, but rather annoying. Not too difficult to learn to adapt to a given camera, but a pain to constantly have to remember to do so.) The LCD monitor was also rather tight, showing about 86 percent of the final image area at wide-angle (293k)and 88 percent at telephoto.(269k) We generally like to see LCD monitors as close to 100 percent accuracy as possible, so the RDC-7's LCD monitor underperforms a little in this area. We also noticed that with the small (640 x 480) image size, accuracy was slightly higher on the LCD monitor's framing, showing 92 percent at wide angle (942k)and 94 percent at telephoto.(942k) Optical distortion on the RDC-7 is moderately on the wide angle end, as we measured barrel distortion of 0.74 percent. Alternatively, the telephoto end showed only about one pixel of pincushion distortion, not enough to effectively measure. Chromatic aberration is also very low, showing about half a pixel of coloration on each side of the black target lines. (This distortion is visible as a very slight colored fringe around the objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target.) Overall, the RDC-7's lens appears to be of unusually high quality, at least in terms of measurable distortion. (0.7 percent barrel distortion is about typical, no pincushion in telephoto mode is unusual, and the chromatic aberration is quite a bit lower than we're accustomed to seeing.) Flash distribution appears very even at telephoto, with only a slight fall off at the corners in the wide angle setting. |
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