Ricoh Caplio G4
Review Date: 28th January 2004
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Image Quality
All of the sample images in this Review were taken at the highest quality setting of F2048, which gives an average image size of around 1.3Mb.
Noise
There are 4 ISO settings available on the Caplio G4, which you can select at any time. There is also an Auto setting if you want to let the camera decide the best speed for the current situation. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting:
ISO 125 (100% crop) |
ISO 200 (100% crop) |
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ISO 400 (100% crop) |
ISO 800 (100% crop) |
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The noise levels look good at ISO 125, with some noise starting to appear at ISO 200. ISO 800 is very noisy and you would probably want to avoid using this setting unless you had no choice.
Sharpening
Here are two 100% crops which have been Saved as Web - Quality 60 in Photoshop. The right-hand image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop. The images were shot with the Sharpness set to "Normal". Consequently they are quite sharp straight out of the camera.
Original 100% Crop |
Sharpened 100% Crop |
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Chromatic Aberrations
The Ricoh Caplio G4 suffers from quite excessive chromatic aberrations in bright outdoor conditions where there is high-contrast.
There was no sun in the sky when I took the images shown below, but the sky itself was a stark shade of white. Both the tree branches and the side of the building exhibit strong purple fringing.
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Flash
Here are two 100% crops which have been Saved as Web - Quality 60 in Photoshop. They show the difference that flash makes indoors in low light conditions, both in terms of sharpness and white balance. In both cases it was too dim to handheld the camera without using flash. Setting the Capilo G4 to AutoFlash gave an acceptably sharp image.
No Flash |
Flash |
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Overall Image Quality
The image quality of the Ricoh Caplio G4 is perfectly acceptable, but not outstanding. It's biggest achilles heel seems to be purple fringing, with more in evidence than other digital cameras that I've reviewed. The images aren't too noisy at the lower ISO speeds and the built-in flash allows you to take indoor shots in dim lighting conditions. At the default sharpening setting of "Normal" the images are fairly sharp and won't require too much sharpening during post-processing. All-in-all an adequate but rather underwhelming performance.
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