12, Jan, 2025
2 Views
Comments Off on Ricoh RDC-5300
0 0

Ricoh RDC-5300

Written by

To describe the Ricoh RDC-5300 unit as functional-looking would be a compliment. It’s chunky in an industrial sort of way. The boxy casing has mechanical shutters that cover both the lens and viewing screen. These hide a 2.3 megapixel CCD, 8M of very fast internal memory and an external SmartMedia expansion slot.
The central viewfinder would suit most people, and the mode wheel and shutter are also well placed. The top panel has a vety small status LCD, and four singleaction buttons for intemal/extemal memory, flash, timer and image quality.
There are four quality modes, with varying sizes and compression to a maximum of 1,790 by 1,200. The back panel holds the control for the relatively slow and noisy zoom, the LCD and the power switch. A display on/off and two menu operation buttons sit below the LCD screen. The USB, TV and serial connectors and the SmartMedia card slot are positioned on the left-hand end, and four heavily worked AA alkalines fit inside the handgrip. A thumbwheel controls screen brightness.
The RDC-5300 was one of the fastest digital cameras, and had reasonable 4.5 second power up and a very rapid 1 second refresh time. The LCD viewer was also quick to react, without the image framing lag seen on some of the other models. Despite this, it took some time to view previously taken shots. The onscreen menuing system was easily bettered by the likes of Kodak and Agfa, as its intensively textual approach and the up/down options on the zoom button made all the extra functions a chore to get at. It has a good range of options, and it has useful extras such as auto-bracketing across three exposures, time-lapse shooting and soft-focus mode, in addition to the usual program and manual options.
The supplied USB driver and ArcSoft software worked well, but have to be installed manually by delving in various directories, which is hardly user friendly. Image results after a five second download (of a 780K file) were good, with neutral tones and a very balanced compromise between detail and jaggies at up to 200% enlargement. There was some loss of highlight detail, but Its shadow and midtones were as good as any. Indoor flash images were smooth and warm with good detail across the range, but without the flash the shots looked decidedly muddy and blotchy.
When compared to the new models from Kodak and Canon, this model showed its age. It’s competent, but relatively pricey.

Article Tags:
Article Categories:
Digital Camera

Comments are closed.