Ricoh Caplio 300G Digital Camera Tested

Ricoh Caplio 300G Digital Camera Tested

Price: £300.00

Weight: 386 grammes (including batteries)

Features: Sturdily built 3.24 Megapixel camera with 3x zoom, water and dust resistant, 0.22 second shutter repsonse time, 3.4 times digital zoom, built in macro feature, USB connection to PC or Macintosh (software supplied). Long battery life, quick start-up, six scene mode settings.uses SD Memory Card / MultiMedia card memory.

Effectively waterproof, quick start-up and shutter action, batteries last ages. Fairly bulky, not cheap.

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The Concept It's a water-resistant, dust-resistant, sturdily built camera aimed at people who go places where normal cameras take a bit of a beating and stop working, which is why we've tested it. It's not a super high-end, semi-professional thing, more of a good quality, easy-to-use snapper, so that's how we've approached it. If you're interested in the more technical aspects of the camera, we'll reproduce the spec sheet on a separate page.

Basically though, we've approached it as a camera you should be able to chuck in your pack and use to take pics regardless of the British weather and which should survive the odd knock along the way.

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Features Let's start with the water resistance. Ricoh says that the camera is well sealed enough to take pics for 30 minutes under one metre of water, which means it should be able to deal happily with wet days in the hills, it's also dust and sand resistant, so you can take it to the beach or the Sahara with confidence.

As far as the photographic side of things goes, it's a standard-ish modern digital with LCD screen, 3.4 megapixel output and the ability to take short videos. There's a 3x optical zoom for, erm, zooming in on things you're too lazy to walk to or after and a 3.4 times digital zoom as well. Oh, and it comes with a USB cable and software for easy download to a PC or Mac.

For ease of use, you get six 'scene mode' settings - portrait, landscape, motion, nightscape, text and one for dark places - or you can just use the 'do it all' standard settings. You can also adjust the sharpness, the ISO setting and so on, if you're feeling techie. And there's a built-in macro capability for snapping pretty flowers and butterflies before you tread on them...

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In Action We've been using the Ricoh for about a month and its all-round toughness has impressed us. It's been dropped onto hard paths a couple of times with no ill effects, used in heavy rain and through the back blast from Kinder Downfall and dunked in a stream, all without any ill effects.

It's also very easy to use once you're used to it. It starts up quickly, which means you might just catch the rainbow and the short shutter delay - 0.22 seconds - makes taking pics of moving subjects less hit or miss than with other digitals we've used including our usual Olympus C4040 Zoom (an expensive semi-pro camera).

The LCD screen is fine indoors and in low light, but didn't like bright sunlight, where we had to use the optical viewfinder and the optical zoom is easy to use with 'in' and 'out' yellow buttons for your right thumb. One thing we did appreciate was the long life eaked out from the twin AA bateries and aided by an automatic shut-off after about 30 seconds of inactivity.

So it's tough, quick and user friendly - even the programming menus are reasonably straight forward - but it's more of a snap-shot merchant's choice than a serious photographer's tool. We're no experts, but using the Ricoh and the admittedly more expensive Olympus side by side showed that the Olympus produced sharper images with stronger colours. That said, we still got some nice shots from the camera and we reckon most users will be satisfied, particularly after tweaking some of the base settings and using the 'sharp' mode to crisp things up.

We did have some reservations. At just under 400 grammes with two AA batteries, it's not the lightest camera out there, nor is is particularly small - the case measures five inches wide, by two and a half inches high, by two inches thick. That makes it on the borderline of pocketability and cetainly rules it out, for us anyway, as a snapshot climbing camera to be carried in a pocket and whipped out for quick action shots. To be fair, the big plastic buttons are glove friendly though.

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Verdict

The Ricoh isn't the lightest, most compact camera in the world and it won't be on David Bailey's Christmas list, but it's very user friendly and commendably tough. If you're after a digital camera that you can drag through the outdoors with confidence though, the Caplio 300G fits the bill. We dunked it in streams and dropped it on paths and it carried on snapping away dependably. The performance mark is for useability rather than outright picture quality.

If you're a serious picture merchant, you'll likely spend your £300 on something that offers higher image quality, but if you want a weather-beating, knockabout, decent quality, snapshot tool, and can live with the above average size and weight, the latest Caplio fits the bill nicely.

Performance
Value

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Ricoh Cameras UK web site

Pushed for time: Water, dust and knock resistant, the Caplio is well suited to being dragged around the outdoors and is also user friendly with a minimal shutter delay and long battery life. Image quality is reasonable rather than startling though and it's not the smallest and lightest of cameras. If you're after a weather resistant, sturdy, digital, sharp shooter though, it fits the bill.

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