Ricoh RR-120

Purchased for £144 brand new, for a 2.2 pixel camera with x3 zoom this is a rather good buy.

Settings take a bit of working out, but once you've messed around with them, then it's very ease to use.

An often overlooked brand and definetly a bargin of a digi camera.

I have to say I was quite impressed initially with the Ricoh Caplio RR120 digital camera, having a 2.1 MP resolution for such a low price (which is what prompted me to buy it). The menu system is logically laid out, making the camera easy to operate. In normal daylight, the image quality was very good, with well exposed and sharp results. However, indoor shots were far less impressive, with the flash barely being enough to illuminate more than a couple of metres. The exposure system was also easily fooled by white clothing or light backgrounds when using flash, causing underexposure. (there is a brief pre-flash to set the exposure and focus). This is when the ISO problem was discovered. The ISO 400 setting actually seems to make the CCD LESS sensitive, making shots muddy and grey, or even total failure to record an image. This was very annoying.

After about two weeks of owning the RR120, I noticed the "RICOH" and "Caplio RR120" legends on the front of the camera had started to rub off. I was sterting to get annoyed. So, here we have a camera retailing for around £200 (300 Euros) which looked like it was ten years old and worth two balloons and a goldfish.

I contacted Ricoh on several occasions to explain the problems and was not very impressed with the level of expertise from their team. After several E-mails outlining the ISO fault and the disappearing legends, I finally received a reply admitting there was a firmware fault and a fix was being worked on.

I decided not to wait, and took the offending article back for a refund. RICOH, you should not release cameras on to the public before faults like these are ironed out!

I now own an Olympus C-300 which is FAR better built, exposure with flash is superb, and it fits the hand better.

The Ricoh Caplio RR120 is a good digital camera, use without effort.