R10 - first photos and initial comments

[odklizec]

Hi folks,

Here are some R10 full res. samples. At the moment, only R10 photos. I will post some R8/R10 comparisons later.

It's too early to say something firm, but in my humble opinion, the R10 is definitely an improvement over the R8. Default sharpening is lowered (as we requested) and it can be decreased even a bit more by moving the Sharpness slider to -2. However, lower sharpening is not the only change in image processing. Another significant difference is in level of color depth and contrast. When I took first few photos with my usual image settings (contrast=0, sharpening=-2, color depth=0) I was a bit surprised by the significant difference between R8 and R10. The R10 photos were somewhat gray with very low contrast. So I experimented a bit with the image settings and found that the best output (under daylight) can be achieved with these settings:

contrast = +2
sharpening = -2
color depth = +2

Some more comments...

• I love the addition of electronic level. It's definitely a very handy feature, first introduced in GRDII. It's nice to see it in R10.
• FN button is nice addition, but it allows only limited degree of customization. I wish it would allow to set the same features as ADJ buttons (particularly AF/manual focus switch or Flash Compensation option would be rally nice).
• LCD is nice, large and bright with great viewing angles. Usual high Ricoh standard I would say Additionally, there is visibly improved internal camera processing and LCD no longer shows any interference stripes and "noise" while focusing. It was greatly improved in R8, but now it's almost perfect!
• As I mentioned in another thread, SD compartment is now oriented in the same way as GRD and GX (finally!).
• BW and Sepia modes are now a part of Image Settings, unfortunately, there are no detailed settings like contrast and sharpness for these color effects.
• R10 now shows the actual ISO value used in Auto and AutoHi modes (the same as GRDII and GX200). It's especially handy in AutoHi ISO mode.
• You can now enable displaying of min. macro distance. If in Macro mode, the camera displays numerical value (right under the macro icon), representing the minimum camera distance required for actual zoom.
• R10 ISO starts at 80. R8 base ISO starts at 64. This suggest that there is used different CCD in R10
• R10 Auto and Cloudy WB is now warmer than in case of R8. I prefer warmer colors so I always use Cloudy WB, even in bright sunny days.

Here you can see some samples taken with above mentioned settings. Full resolution photos can be found right under the small previews.
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[waloszek]

Hi,
I posted this already in another thread in this forum:
"My wife received her new R10 this week (still has the R8, so I hope to be able to make a few comparison shots in the next weeks).
I noticed the same: The card is now oriented as in GX100/200, "normal" setting is much softer and less contrasty than "normal" (and probably even "soft") of R8. However, I also had the impression that -- compared to the R8 -- some details were missing (softened out...) -- which is not a good thing..."

A few more comments:
- the level indicator is why my wife changed from the R8 to the R10; however it seems to disagree a little with the one in my GX200 -- the question is now, which one is correct, and which camera will have to be sent to Ricoh for an adjustment...
- The FN button would have been useful if one could set, for example, distance to infinity. The current options are fairly useless.
- LCD screen colors seem to look less bluish and more natural, but contrast seems to be lower; the image looks different after it has been taken but this was always the case with Ricoh cameras (and some other brands, too...)
- I had hoped that there might be a WB preset as in the GX200, but it isn't (there must be some differences for the difference in price...)

I took some comparison shots today at 28 mm and 200 mm, changing the sharpness level. I have not the time to publish the results at the moment but here are some first observations:
- R10 is much softer at "nomal" and "soft" than R8; "sharp" looks fairly similar
- "soft" on R10 looks really fuzzy and less contrasty than on R8
- contrast seems to be lower on R10 but my results are not always consistent
- I could not detect major differences in color saturation but my results were not consistent here, either; particularly the "sharp" setting produced contrasty and saturated images on the R10

All in all, I am not as sure as Pavel, whether I find image quality improved on the R10...

Overall, the R10 has some improvements regarding the settings, a useful level indicator, and a nice LCD screen -- reasons enough for me to prefer it over the R8 (but our R8 has a better lens than the new R10, which was a bit disappointing for me -- we had already some issues in this respect with the R6).

BTW: The top wheel is harder to turn than on the R8, which is good news for my wife who often turned that wheel on the R8 inadvertently.

Best regards, Gerd

 

[rodzio]

could you also post some low light-hand held pics for comparison?

 

[odklizec]

Of course, but not today

 

[rodzio]

Of course, but not today

thanks! and don't forget to use Tom's settings for the r8

 

[odklizec]

Of course, I'm using more or less the same settings with my R8 and R10. But according of my preliminary tests, using AutoHi ISO 1600 does not make any difference. I mean, it does not matter if you use AutoHi 400 or 1600. The later one only allows to use faster shutter speeds at a cost of increased ISO and so noise and noise reduction. But I'm afraid, there is no "magic routine" telling the camera to do less aggressive NR at ISO200 or 400, if camera AutoHi ISO is set to 1600.

What really does matter (at least in case of R10) is the level of contrast and color depth! From R8 I'm used to use Soft sharpness and Natural color settings. It seems to me that Color setting in R8 is "color depth" and "contrast" in one feature. R10, on the other hand, allows to set Color depth and Contrast separately. Fiddling with contrast and color depth settings (in Cust. Set.) can dramatically improve (or damage) the R10 output

 

[rodzio]

accordingly to photography blog review, the r10 is a great camera but for outdoor only as in low light noise is still a big problem.
Don't know what to think, but the fuji f100fd seems globally a better camera :/

 

[odklizec]

It depends... I need to do some more tests, but I don't think that R10 is so hopeless indoor. It's definitely not worse than R8 or R7. And if you check for example this "R8 sushi in bar" test, I think you would agree that the result is far from "problem". The problem of Photographyblog review (and many other reviews in general), is that it's done with default camera settings, which are not always optimal. And time pressure is another bad factor playing a major role here.

Actually, I still think R7, R8 and now most probably also R10 does better high ISO NR job than for example GX200 or GRDII jpeg! The thing is, that R cameras (since R7) does some color (chroma) noise reduction and only limited luminance noise reduction. Yes, there are still a lot of tiny details smeared and R8/10 photos are a bit too much sharpened to my taste. But there is definitely left some pleasant grain in shadows or large areas of the same colour (unlike GRDII or GX200 JPEG).

Se another two my posts about it...
http://ricohforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=694
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1648

If I would be a JPEG photographer (which I'm not), I would prefer the R7-R10 way of noise reduction before GRDII or GX200 way. But it's jut me and my taste

 

[dgilmour]

Very nice and rich colours. Does it support RAW? It would be great to tune up details in shadow areas.

 

[odklizec]

Unfortunately, the R range does not support RAW...not yet. That's a pity, because I'm quite sure this would be a major reason for many people to buy R range camera over another brand. The funny thing is, that R range is most probably capable of RAW writing. It's just available only in a service/debug mode. We don't need full manual/aperture mode, but RAW would definitely be a great addition to R cameras.

 

[rodzio]

one more comparison....
http://www.lesnumeriques.com/duels.php? ... 3715&ph=20

not so positive :/

 

[odklizec]

But did you notice that in this particular comparison is compared ISO400 and ISO800?