Damage on Capilo RX

[Pac76]

Hello,

i'm quit sad because my capilo rx seems to have some major damage.

(i bought it at ebay for 11 euro and it was a good companion for 3 weeks in kenia and uganda.)

now back home, from one picture to the other happened the following.

the shutter speed above maybe 1/30 is not working anymore, all pictures are to bright.. (see attach)

is there something i can do besides the trash can..

b.t.w. There was always a flaw that when i start whith the preiew mode the screen of the record mode was black

Thanx in advanced

oli

 

[odklizec]

Re: Ricoh GR + GT1 - useful or not?

Hi Oli and welcome here! I'm afraid, the sensor in your camera is dead. Any attempt to fix it would be, in my opinion, too expensive and not worth such old camera. I think the best you can so is to try your luck at ebay and buy a replacement?

 

[Schaki]

It is a known ccd fault which affected some Ricoh cameras http://www.ricoh-imaging.co.jp/english/r_dc/info/ccd/
Ricoh Convar service in Germany could replace the ccd for free except for the shipping cost to the service center.
Make sure to put these affected images into the memory card in the camera if you decide to send it in for a repair. The technician might need to find these images to really realize that there is a fault if it not shows up in every image. You could also put that link above into the RMA if you send the camera in for service.
If it have a good sample of that zoom with good corner sharpness and you like the camera enough then sure it might be worth the shipping cost to get it repaired.

But there is other possible inexpensive options as well. As Ricoh Caplio GX8 on Ebay for example. It was a popular camera in its day and still quite ok.
There currently is two of these on Ebay.
http://www.ebay.de/itm/Ricoh-Caplio-GX8 ... 19e49c2a97
http://www.ebay.de/itm/Ricoh-Caplio-GX8 ... 4615bd0226

A good upgrade path from the RX I would say as it uses the same menu-interface and same batteries. AA and the Ricoh DB-43 as for the RX. While the lens is slightly shorter it is better optically and have faster widest aperture at 28mm. f2.5 compared to f3.1 for RX and a little more manual control. The image sensor is bigger as well, 1/1.8" for GX8 respectively 1/2.7" for RX.

The Ricoh Caplio R4 is another good option. A compact super-zoom 28-200mm with fast AF and good image quality though somewhat noisy like the GX8 and also the RX.
One potential problem there could be ocassional horizontal slight banding. But not as serious as you RX shows in the picture and it did affect far from every R4.
I would say that the R3, if you can find one, probably would be as good or better than the R4 despite the older lcd which barely is noticeably except for being somewhat more noisy which can be seen indoors. But the images seemed to be less noisy. The R3 has the same zoom but a 5mp ccd instead of 6mp in the R4. Other than that and the lcd these two are almost identical.
http://www.ebay.de/itm/Ricoh-Caplio-R4- ... 2c76acc2c9

I would advice against the R5 and the other newer R-series cameras like R6, 7, 8 and 10. The R5 was not very reliable and could have known focus-problem at wide-angle. The R6-R7 was even worse as the Phase detection AF had been removed and more enforced noise reduction which destroy fine-details. And the zoom which not is not quite the same 28-200mm as in R3-R4 can get stuck permanently about halfway during the reach due to a wearing design flaw.
The R8-R10 was somewhat better but still had slow focusing. R10 probably the worst due to all the noise reduction which not could be set to Off or even lowered.

R3 and R4 was overall as good as the older the Ricoh super-zoom cameras got and that was not bad at all actually. I still have a R3 which follow with me many times.
The R-series was replaced with the CX series which is ok. But seemingly every of them except for maybe the CX6 seems to struggle with grey-looking noise which makes the pictures look somewhat dull and I've not found a way around that problem unfortunately. The RX which you have didn't have that problem and neither the GX8 or R3-R4.

 

[33dollars]

Don't right off the Caplio 500se. Same battery and lens thread mount. Plus splash proof.
One of the problems with old digital is always dead pixels. It apears there & spreads.
My Caplio GX8 is sorta OK. But my Caplio RX & Caplio GX are showing the age of their digital life through dead or diminishing pixels.
IMHO Ricoh smashed it all by getting it spot on with the Caplio GX100. All menus are based on this award winning camera.
That being said, the Caplio GX100 is also aging among the digital realm. You would be hard pressed to find a good one these days.
G4wide, GX, RX, GX8 & 500se all use the same battery with their built in VF. Oh how I miss that built in zoom VF.
Some times you just need to take stock & find a new or newish Ricoh camera as your goto camera.
I can talk. I bought a Ricoh RDC-2 the other day. Just to check it out. Just to play with.
Digital ages & it does so at an alarming speed. Old digital needs old cards with no longer produced batteries all to be reproduced on non supported operating systems. That's why I keep my old crappy Win XP, just to extract pics from an old digital camera.
I can't see Micro$oft even worrying about anything before Win 8. Don't know about Apple as I don't use it.
I'm sure old digital can't WiFi from a super dooper card to the cloud ether.
Hasn't the GX series & R series been rolled into the GXR & replaced with the CX series :?:
Time to up grade.


*edit for spelling

 

[Schaki]

I agree that the Ricoh Caplio 500SE is superb for being a splash proof digital camera. It is heavily based on the GX8 which I recommended. The problem is just that the 500SE is hard to find and at the moment there seems to be none of it, at least not in usual auctions at Ebay.
The G4 Wide is good as well and have faster aperture at 28mm than the RX, though shorter zoom reach and somewhat thicker body. It is in fact the predecessor to the RX and doesn't have that last custimzable option for the ADJ-button which the RX has. Not the option to move the cross in Macro either. But other than that them seems to be pretty close matched as far as software based features go. I've had a RX, unfortunately one which not had a good copy of that zoom and also a G4 Wide as well as the 400G wide which is a shock and waterproof version of the G4 Wide.
The GX100 is good as well but I found myself had to use Raw/Dng to get something decent from it unlike the other cameras mentioned. Even with sharpening set to -2 there was still some well visible artifacts in the jpegs.
Sure GX has been trasnferred to the GXR and the R-series to the CX. But the GXR with the S10 module is bulkier than a GX100 and the whole GXR system seems to have come to an end. At least until we hear something new about it from Ricoh and I won't hold me breath for that to happen because I think it has come to an end.

 

[Schaki]

A Ricoh Caplio R3 has recently showed up in a auction at Ebay http://www.ebay.de/itm/RICOH-Caplio-R3- ... 35ce7cca1f
About as good as the R4 despite less pixels and the lcd which is somewhat noisier. But the benefit as said earlier is that there almost no worry about the occassional banding problem which the R4 can have.

 

[Schaki]

Just curious if there some news on your Ricoh Caplio RX or replacement?

 

[Pac76]

OK as i paid not alot and took around 400 pictures i let the cam r.i.p.
i found now a replacement: a Ricoh Caplio R 1 V, for again cheap money, for me its important to have aa battery for best flexibility.
My first ricoh cam was besides the g4 wide, which was stolen while takin pictures on a concert (i used it as secondary cam :lol: )
So i m curious by myself waitin for the item to see what luck i have now with it :mrgreen:

 

[Schaki]

Oh, the R1V, one or two years ago I had a long and hard look at sample images from these early R-series Ricohs and finally bought a R2 which unfortunately had a bad copy of that zoom. I chose the R2 as it uses slightly less noise reduction. Both of them seems to have problem with oversharpening so to test with both sharpness set to Low and Normal to see what is best might be worth it. One nice thing with the R1 and R1V have a viewfinder which was removed for the R2.
I managed to find these sample images again.
http://www.quesabesde.com/camaras/ricoh ... v/muestras
http://www.quesabesde.com/camaras/ricoh ... 2/muestras

The Ricoh Caplio GX8 can also be used with with AA batteries, that one and the Ricoh Caplio 500G/SE where the last Ricohs which had AA as a power option. But the AF might be slow on AA with the GX8 and the 500SE for sure is. Inside it is mostly the same hardware as the 500G/SE are based on GX8. The reason I've doubt however the GX8 have slow AF or not with AA is that the previous camera with same zoom, the GX 5mp definitely have slower AF than the 500SE no matter if I used the original Ricoh DB-43 or AA batteries.
I used the Ricoh R2 with AA briefly but don't remember if the AF was slowed down with AA batteries or not and I don't have that Ricoh anymore as I gave it and a small bunch of other compact cameras away to a second hand store not very long ago.

After having moved to a newer battery like the Ricoh DB-60 one could now only use the GR Digital with the smaller AAA battery and the performance is not impressive with slow AF. It is somewhat weird that the the Ricoh R3, R4 and R5 not can be used with AAA as it is th same battery as for the first Ricoh GR Digital.
Maybe Ricoh tried with that option in beta testing and found the AF or handling in general to be too slow or not deliver enough power or last long enough. I don't know for sure. Not sure how many pictures with can be taken with a Ricoh GRD on quality AAA batteries like Sanyo Eneloop.
But I never had any major problem with my first Ricoh 400G Wide which is based on the G4 Wide to use that one with AA batteries.

 

[Pac76]

i think its because of the charging time of the flash.
i have the cam now and guess its ok, as secondary cam..

 

[Schaki]

i think its because of the charging time of the flash.
i have the cam now and guess its ok, as secondary cam..

Yes sure the usage of flash may have an impact on battery life. I didn't think about it before as I not use flash very often with my cameras.
The R1V should be ok I think. It have the advantage of being smaller than the GX8 and maybe faster AF if both are used with AA batteries.
Though like many other Ricohs including the R2 and R3 etc, it oversharps at with the sharpening set to Normal. When I bought my R2 it was out of curiously mostly to get a real feel for what the first generation R-series compacts was like to use.
An other tips for Ricoh cameras is to use Center-metering instead of Multi as multi usually blows out highlights somewhat more easily. But with that said I still need to use exposure compensation for some pictures not to blow highlights too badly.

 

[Pac76]

Next Dead

Ricoh r1v

north sea sand killed zoom



"new ebay found" r2 around 10 €

i like the vignetting again

 

[Schaki]

Sorry to hear about the damaged R1V. At least the R2 is a small though ok upgrade from there in image quality.
Sand and cameras are almost never a good combination unless it is a waterproof camera. One that I might recommend despite not being exactly as good as the previous model, the Ricoh Caplio 500G, is the Ricoh G600 which I actually rate higher than the Ricoh PX for image quality. The older 500G is far more bulky. The G600 supports AAA batteries and the usual Ricoh DB-60 as well as the newest DB-65.
http://www.ebay.de/itm/Ricoh-G-600-Wass ... 1e8eee9378
The old Pentax Optio W60 are still best among the Pentax waterproof compacts, followed probably by the W80. The rest of them has unfortunately been like trash for image quality as most other newer waterproof compacts due to too much NR which smudge details too badly. The Ricoh G600 is not having that problem even though not being perfect either.
There is two other used worth two have a look at on Ebay. Canon Powershot D10 and Panasonic TS1 / FT1