Ricoh R10 review

It's just six months since Ricoh launched the R8 (What's New, Shopper 245).

The company has decided to jump two digits, but there's little to differentiate the R10 from its predecessor. A 3in screen (up from 2.7in), a few grams extra weight and a wider choice of colours are all that separate their specifications. There's a new onscreen digital spirit level to help the user hold the camera straight; this is unusual, and we didn't find it particularly helpful, but it's easy to deactivate.

Otherwise, the R10 replicates the strengths and weaknesses of the R8. Its best feature is its 7.1x zoom lens, which starts at a wide-angle 28mm and is versatile for such a compact camera. The screen is excellent, too. Its 460,000-pixel resolution is twice that of most cameras we see, and packed with detail. It's a nippy performer, capturing a photo every 1.7 seconds, while continuous shooting ran at 1.5fps. However, its optical image stabilisation wasn't as effective as other systems, keeping only around 50 per cent of shots sharp at a 1/30s shutter speed and 100mm focal length.

The R8 was the first camera we saw to come fitted with a 10-megapixel, 1/2.3in CCD. This sensor specification has dominated compact digital cameras ever since, and has been responsible for a significant slump in image quality, particularly in low light where excessive noise is noticeable. Sadly, there's no evidence of Ricoh making any improvement on the R8's image quality. Even in bright light, noise-reduction processing obscured subtle details, giving photos a painted appearance. Dimmer lighting conditions resulted in slow, blur-inducing, shutter speeds, and when we raised the sensitivity to counteract it, images became hopelessly messy and vague.

Panasonic's TZ5 uses the same kind of sensor but gets better results and has a bigger 10x zoom. However, if you're content with a slightly smaller 5x zoom, try the FinePix F100fd.