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Any opinions on the new R8?

R8 arrived! I'm now charging the battery so there is not much to tell about it right now, except to comment the exterior ;)

It seems to be very well build. Visibly larger than R7. The body thickness is about the same as GRDII body. But it's not bad! It simply looks more professional ;) Small grip helps enormously with holding the camera. The buttons are redesigned and I'm now able to click all of them without any problem (even with my rather large thumb). With R7, I was often not able to click the flash button just because it's too close to a protruded edge of the LCD frame.

OK, I also quickly started the camera with remaining battery, just to test the level of audible noise. I'm happy to report the R8 is now very silent camera. The level of audible noise is very low..maybe at the same level as GRDII. Definitely a big improvement over the R7.

BTW, the R8 LCD is gorgeous (with excellent viewing angles)! I will compare it with GRDII LCD, which is also superb. But from what I saw, the R8 can show much more details when the picture is zoomed in. The 460k resolution LCD is probably not a hype? It really works! ;)
 
OK, I also quickly started the camera with remaining battery, just to test the level of audible noise. I'm happy to report the R8 is now very silent camera. The level of audible noise is very low..maybe at the same level as GRDII. Definitely a big improvement over the R7
Click to expand...

Thats great news!! Looking forward to your review..

Taking candid pics i always worry about switching the flash on accidentally, a reason i love the Grd so much,i wondering if theres a danger of that with the R8..

cheers andy
 
Went to RG Lewis here in London and played around with the R8 and I have to say it is a huge improvement build quality and control wise from the early Rx cameras. Handling and grip are very good and it is much quiter than the previous cameras. The display is very nice and very bright although not as good as the GRD II LCD it is better than the GX100 LCD.
The new design is very nice and looks more in line with the GX100 and GRD cameras. I would say now the Ricoh cameras can really be recognized as Ricoh so maybe this is why they dropped the Caplio name.
 
Hi I'm new, just bought an R8 last week, haven't taken any outdoor shots yet but flash seems very bright indoors-anyway to adjust further than 'soft flash' and -EV?

btw seems well built and little barreling on lens
 
aj16hp":2h5ujyvz said:
Thats great news!! Looking forward to your review..

Taking candid pics i always worry about switching the flash on accidentally, a reason i love the Grd so much,i wondering if theres a danger of that with the R8..

cheers andy
Click to expand...
Flash can be enabled by right joystick and selecting the appropriate flash. I thinks is not so easy to accidentally turn the flash ON if you are in a hurry. But it's now very easy to turn ON the macro mode (on left joystick press) and this could be a problem. I already did it once or twice and it resulted in soft photo. It would be nice to be able to customize the joystick directions.
 
VladimirV":3nrykgrs said:
Went to RG Lewis here in London and played around with the R8 and I have to say it is a huge improvement build quality and control wise from the early Rx cameras. Handling and grip are very good and it is much quiter than the previous cameras. The display is very nice and very bright although not as good as the GRD II LCD it is better than the GX100 LCD.
The new design is very nice and looks more in line with the GX100 and GRD cameras. I would say now the Ricoh cameras can really be recognized as Ricoh so maybe this is why they dropped the Caplio name.
Click to expand...

You are right Cristian. I already compared the R8 LCD with GRDII, GX100 and R7 and the truth is that the R8 viewing angles are not as great as in case of GRDII or even R7! This is probably caused by different antiglare treatment of the R8 LCD (if there is any)? For example, R7 LCD is somewhat bluish. And this antiglare solution definitely helps with angles on direct sunlight. Also the colors reproduced by R8 LCD seems to be slightly washed out? Nothing serious, but just a bit worse than GRDII and R7. I bet you will not notice anything wrong without side by side checking both R7 and R8 LCDs. I will try to take some LCD comparison pics later today or tomorrow morning.

However, the R8 LCD is fantastic for manual focus! As with GRDII, if you are in R8 manual focus mode, you can enlarge the central part of the screen. And the difference between the enlarged 230k GRDII/R7 LCD and this new 460k LCD is huge. I wish there would be such high resolution LCD on GRDII but with GRDII viewing angles and colors ;)
 
nadsta":ajdmixeu said:
Hi I'm new, just bought an R8 last week, haven't taken any outdoor shots yet but flash seems very bright indoors-anyway to adjust further than 'soft flash' and -EV?

btw seems well built and little barreling on lens
Click to expand...
There is unfortunately no flash compensation feature as we know it from GRD. Just Soft flash. But there can be a huge difference when you shoot in dark and you are focusing on a single face surrounded by black background. In such cases, It would be better to try the "Spot" AE metering instead of "Multi" or "Central". You see, if there is too much "black" or dark tones in the framed scene, "Multi" AE metering may consider the scene is too dark and therefore fire much stronger flash. Also, don't be afraid to use -1 or even -2EV AE compensation for dark and night scenes! It really helps (the same as you need to use +EV compensation for scenes with too much white)!
 
I received my R8 last Sunday (wasn't at home on Saturday when it arrived from TechnikDirekt in Germany) and prepared a page with samples, including comparisons with GX100, ISO samples, and size comparisons with GX100 and R5. Regrettably, I cannot compare it with the R6 because my wife has it, who is helping her parents.
I posted the link already at dpreview, so you might call it a cross-posting and ban me immediately after registering ;) : http://www.waloszek.de/R8-Test/r8_test.htm

Best regards,
Gerd
 
Hi Gerd! Nice to see you here! No problem with posting your link. We have no rule against posting links to other sites and forums ;)
 
I can understand if you do not do requests, but I would be interested to see a series high ISO pics at full 10Mp and low (say 5 Mp) resolution, to see if the NR is controlled better / less agressive for low res pics. Have not seen this yet.

Peter
 
Hi Peter,

I can do this test. But I think the NR is done before scaling the 10MP picture down to a lower resolution. However, the scaled-down pictures do look better. I agree that R8 pictures viewed at 100% are not the nicest thing. But once they are scaled down to let's say 8MP, they look very acceptable even at 100%.

Check these three samples
Out of camera 10MP file (Fine quality):
http://kudrys.com/files/r8/samples/R0010254_normal.jpg

Out of camera 8MP file (Normal quality):
http://kudrys.com/files/r8/samples/R0010257_normal.jpg

Original 10MP scaled down on PC using Bilinear algorithm:
http://kudrys.com/files/r8/samples/R001 ... linear.jpg

Both "out of camera" photos were taken with Normal sharpness and Normal color depth. The 8MP out of camera file is in my opinion very good. Unfortunately, it cannot be saved as Fine, so there may be (and there are) visible some JPEG compression artifacts. So my recommendation to anyone who need to evaluate photos at 100%, scale them down a bit before viewing them ;)
 
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