This Just In: Ricoh Caplio R6 and Caplio GX100

When a box arrives in the Pop Photo lab we always glance at the return label to see which company it came from. When we saw the label was marked "Ricoh", a warm and fuzzy feeling came over us.  Ricoh cameras are sort of like comfort food for photographers; they are simple, reliable and make you feel safe. That's because for many of us, a Ricoh SLR was our first real camera. There were a number of Ricoh point-and-shoot cameras and SLRs, the GR-1, XR-P, KR-5, and XR-7 to name a few, and who can forget that weird shaped bridge camera, the Ricoh Mirai.

Ricoh withdrew from the US market back in the late 1990s, but some of their compact digital cameras have been trickling in from other countries. Now they are back in the U.S. officially, with Adorama being their exclusive US distributor.

The box contained two Ricoh cameras, the Caplio GX100 and the Caplio R6, along with some accessories for the GX100: a wide conversion lens, hood adapter, and external viewfinder. The GX100, the most interesting of the two cameras, has a comfortable grip (1.78 inch in length), and a very quiet, chirp-like, shutter release sound. But the most unique thing about it is the removable electronic viewfinder that slides right onto the hot shoe enabling the camera to offer 100% viewfinder coverage. It's  small and cute, and easily slides on and off the hot shoe, as we tried it several times. We particularly liked the adjust mode lever, which you can use for various shooting settings. For example in manual mode you can use the adjust mode lever to change the shutter speed, its very fast, and easy on the fingers.
   
The Capilio R6, is a very small camera with a 35mm equivalent lens of 28-200mm. It measures 3.9 inches in length, a mere 1 inch in thickness, and 2.38 inches when zoomed out to 200mm. It's nice and quiet like the GX100, and also quiet when zooming. Not as unique as the GX100, but it's nice to see any Ricoh back being sold on US soil. Look for our write-up on the GX100 in the Goods in the July issue.
—Julia Silber