Ricoh Caplio RX Camera. See some random sample photos below
But its not that old that it doesn't take a normal SD card, which is good. I've put a 1GB SD card inside and it works well, no errors. Takes two AA battery's, which last a long time, and has a small but useful set of modes and settings. Some of those include Macro [good], Landscape, Portrait, Text [whiter than white - see below] and Sport Mode [pretty good].
Sports Mode
Ricoh state that the Caplio RX can also use a Li-ion battery, so it seems like it has an old school dual battery option. If they haven't already, big camera brands should bring this feature back into today's up-to-date cameras.
Spitfire Island. Birmingham, UK
It can even record video footage. But the highest quality is 320. Not even 360p. This camera was released when video capability on cameras was in its infancy. Shows you just how old this digital camera is.
But sometimes less is more, and older technology now feels a bit more of a novetly. Having to make use of what you have got rather than having everything in a camera is more pleasing to me.
Text Mode is super white and bold
But that only goes as far as the image quality and having limited settings and features. Video footage is a different matter altogether. I'd rather not use the video in camera like this at all, that's how bad it is by today's standards.
Here are the Elephants talked about in the text above
I was however a bit disappointed to discover that this camera does not have any colour adjust settings like sepia, vivid, and my favourite, black and white. It's just in constant normal mode. But that's still alright, I can't expect everything for a pound.
Patterns of an old mirror
The zoom isn't very good. Once the zoom is applied, at any length, the quality takes a nose dive. Picture quality isn't the best anyway so as you can imagine, it's pretty terrible with zoom. Without zoom the quality is much better, but just about acceptable [at least to me] in today's world of super sharp, detailed images that have been edited / enhanced beyond belief.
Holland and Barrett Lutein Gold supplements in the bottle
That is, if they're not blurred like a lot of them are. If images taken with the Ricoh Caplio RX are kept small, and the camera is in focus / has good stability etc, they are not too bad.
Ginger Tom beer bottle cats face
Overall, if you're into older digital cameras and can find a Caplio RX for sale @ £1 - £5, it's worth buying to mess around with. But if I had to pick an older camera and I only had say £10 to spend, it would not be spent on a Caplio RX. There are much better options out there.
Two that stand out for me are the older Panasonic Lumix models, like the TZ1 and TZ3, and some of the old Canon IXUS models. Both the Lumix and IXUS models are still capable of taking some really impressive pictures considering how old they now are.
Although I will say, the Caplio RX is definitely better than both the Lumix TZ1 and TZ3 when taking pictures indoors. And I know this first hand as I own both models.
