RICOH Caplio RR1
A review and Photo example of the RICOH Caplio RR1.
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Review
The Caplio RR1 is a lens-integrated digital camera released by Ricoh in 2000.
I found this junk item somewhere, and it was so bad that the included battery had already deteriorated and would not charge even when it was charged. The battery cover had worn claws, and the battery would fall out if it wasn’t taped down. It’s a pretty good junk item.
Still, it’s a bit disappointing that it’s now priced so highly due to the old compact digital camera boom of the 2020s. I think it was selling for around 1,000 yen in the 2010s.
As stated in the specifications, this camera has five sibling cameras with a shape resembling a kamaboko board.
The RDC-7, RDC-7s, and Caplio RR1 (hereafter referred to as RR1) are the three direct descendants.
The RDC-i700 and Caplio RDC-i500 have larger bodies than the three above, and by taking advantage of the increased space, they have adopted compact flash as a recording medium, making them like a scaled-up version of the RDC-7 series.
The RR1 is equipped with a 1/1.8-inch primary color CCD with 4 million pixels, which is the highest sensor pixel count among the five models. The recording pixel count is 2272 x 1704 pixels, the full 4 million pixels, and can be saved in uncompressed TIFF (hereafter referred to as TIFF), FINE (1/4-JPG), NORMAL (1/8-JPG), and ECONOMY (1/16-JPG).
The recording pixel count can be reduced, but this is unlikely to be used for still image shooting.
The camera’s operation is generally slow. The autofocus (hereafter referred to as AF) is also quite slow, making it difficult to capture moving objects or decisive moments.
The image quality is as expected for a camera of this era, and even at the lowest sensitivity of ISO 150, there is a certain amount of noise. When shooting in backlight, there is a noticeable ghosting, but it is difficult to determine whether this is due to lens deterioration or an issue with the coating itself.
The highest quality TIFF has an image size of 7.8MB per image, and if you use a 128MB SmartMedia card, you can store 16 images. This number of shots is reminiscent of the old 12-exposure film.
The next best quality FINE (JPEG) has an image size of about 1.5MB per image, and if you use a 128MB SmartMedia card, you can store 85 images, which is satisfactory for general photography purposes.
So, to check the difference in image quality between FINE and TIFF, I shot with TIFF and found two major problems.
- Recording time is too long
- Recorded image color is abnormal
The “recording time is too long” problem is that after pressing the shutter button, it takes 37 seconds to complete recording one image by manual measurement. Since it is a camera from this era, the camera freezes until the image recording is finished, and it keeps writing data, so the battery is consumed very quickly.
I had a used battery that was getting old, and after taking four shots from a full charge, the battery was empty. In the case of FINE (1/4-JPG), the image recording time was about 2 seconds, and around 40 images were taken, so it is clear that TIFF shooting consumes a lot of battery power.
The problem of “abnormal colors in recorded images” is that images recorded in TIFF format have strange colors when viewed on a PC. As shown in the image below, the orange flowers have been beautifully converted to blue, and the light blue of the sky has been beautifully converted to light orange.
In conclusion, this phenomenon appears to be a display problem with certain Mac software.
When using the Mac’s image processing software Affinity Photo2, or copying the images to a Windows PC and using a free image viewer, the colors were displayed normal.
The correct colors are displayed in JPG shooting results, the image displayed on the camera’s LCD when shooting TIFF, and when playing back the image after shooting.
TIFF images contain a separate mini image for a thumbnail in addition to the actual image itself. To check if this was recorded correctly, I displayed it in my Mac’s image display software Preview, and the thumbnail image also turned blue. Suspecting that the data had been altered when copied to the PC, I loaded the SmartMedia image directly from the card reader into Mac’s Preview, but the result was the same.
The difference in display between the camera and the PC was assumed to be due to a problem with how colors were handled, so the problematic image was copied to a Windows PC and displayed correctly. It appears that Mac’s image display software Preview cannot display old TIFF images correctly.
After investigating whether there was any software that could display the images correctly on a Mac, I found that the paid Affinity Photo 2 was able to display the problematic TIFF images in the correct colors. Another software I normally use for Raw development, HASSELBLAD’s Phocus, showed the same color abnormalities as Preview when displaying a Caplio RR1 TIFF image.
Before coming to the above conclusion, I tried to correct the color of the blue image with image processing software, but negative-positive conversion and white balance change were not possible, and I was unable to correct it with any of the image processing I tried.
The blue image viewed on a Mac is also a beautiful shooting result in its own way, but I never thought that there would be such a pitfall with TIFF images.
To record TIFF images with the Caplio RR1, you need to change “Uncompressed” > “ON” in the shooting menu. This change is reset to “Uncompressed” > “OFF” every time the camera is turned off, so if you want to record TIFF images, you need to set “Uncompressed” > “ON” in the shooting menu every time you shoot, and I get the feeling that this mode is not recommended.
Also, when the AF does not focus on the desired location, you want to use manual focus (hereinafter referred to as MF), but since the AF / MF focus mode change is also set in the menu, it is quite a hassle to change it.
Since it is a camera of this era, you cannot expect AF performance, and the focus is often lost and the battery is consumed, so it is stressful not to be able to quickly change to MF mode.
However, since it is a camera from over 20 years ago, I am well aware that there is no point in complaining.
Also, since the body is a direct descendant of the RDC-7, it is a shame that the recording media is the slow, low-capacity SmartMedia. I wish the Caplio RR1 had a CompactFlash slot, but even if it had, I don’t think it would have had a big impact on sales, so I think it was the right decision to continue using SmartMedia.
Fortunately, I have a lot of 128MB SmartMedia cards in my home that came as a bonus with previous digital cameras, so I have no shortage of recording media.
The battery used is a relatively versatile battery, and is compatible with the manufacturer’s model numbers shown in the table below, with the same shape and voltage.
| Camera makers | Battery model number |
| FUJIFILM | NP-80 |
| RICOH | DB-20、DB-20L、DB-30 |
| KODAK | KLIC-3000 |
| TOSHIBA kyocera | BP-1100R |
Specification and Competitor
| Mdel name | RDC-7 | RDC-7S | RDC-i700 | Caplio RDC-i500 | Caplio RR1 |
| Image sensor | 11/1.8-inch primary color CCD | ← | ← | ← | ← |
| Pixels | 334 | ← | 324 | ← | 395 |
| Lens Construction | 10elements in 7groups | ← | ← | ← | ← |
| Focal length | 7.3～21.9 | ← | ← | ← | ← |
| 35mm equivalent focal length | 35～105 | ← | ← | ← | ← |
| Maximum aperture | 2.6～3.4 | ← | ← | ← | ← |
| Minimum shooting distance (mm) | 10 | ← | ← | ← | ← |
| View Finder | Real image optical zoom | ← | ← | ← | ← |
| LCD | 2-inch TFT LCD, 200,000 pixels | ← | 3.5-inch TFT LCD with 200,000 pixels and touch panel | 2-inch TFT LCD, 200,000 pixels | ← |
| ISO Sensitivity | 150、200、400 | ← | ← | ← | ← |
| Recording media | Smart Media | ← | Compact Flash PCMCIA ATA Card | Compact Flash | Smart Media |
| Battery | DB-20L | ← | DB-30 | ← | DB-20L |
| External dimensions (mm) Width x Height x Depth | 135 × 27 × 74 | ← | 157 × 33 × 93 | 142 × 30 × 78 | 135 × 27 × 74 |
| Weight(g) | 270 | ← | 450 | 295 | 270 |
| Body colors | Silver Black | Silver | ← | ← | ← |
| Release date | June 16, 2000 | November 17, 2000 | September 20, 2000 | April 20, 2001 | September 21, 2001 |
| Price(Yen/No-tax) | ¥108,000 | ← | ¥158,000 | ¥115,000 | Open price ¥70,000~80,000 |
Options
- RICOH BJ-1 Charger
- AC Adapter AC-3
Reference links
Update history
- 2024.8.4
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