Ricoh RDC-7
Ricoh RCD-7
Blast from the past
Released in late February back in 2000 this beauty housed a 3MP CCD sensor with a maximum resolution of 2048 x 1536, ISO of 150 - 400, aperture of 2.6 - 3.4 and focal length of 35mm - 105mm and probably well ahead of it’s time a flippy screen.
I got my hands back on this camera from my parents who found it in some old boxes, I last used it sometime in the early 2000’s for photos at Lake Eppalock.
The camera has a few battle scars and the screen does not work so the camera is like an old film point and shoot (with the ability to zoom). The view finder just looks through the body and has no information about what the camera is doing.
I can hook the camera up to a screen via the AV port and see settings and review photos but this isn’t really an option when photographing.
The camera has a propriety data connector and on the other end has a serial port, it also comes with a serial port to PS2 Port for Macintosh computers so the instructions say.
To store the amazing images this camera captures is a 16MB SmartMedia card that looks just like a huge mobile SIM card.
With no way to get the files from the camera via the cables I jumped online and found a multi-card reader that included one for a SmartMedia card for a little under $20 and it works great!
The first set of photos below compares three cameras that I had with me last night, the Ricoh image was edited in Lightroom, the Pixel 2 is un-edited but utilising the HDR mode and the last one from my Olympus camera, shot in Raw and edited in Lightroom.
The following two photos show a good example of how the old camera that doesn’t shoot HDR (like most phones) has trouble retaining data in both highlights and shadows. Both have been edited on the Pixel 2. The narrow field of view on the Ricoh does keep everything looking close to real life as far as distortion goes but is quite limiting in what can fit into frame.
The final set of photos are all from the Ricoh RDC-7. On the left as captured and on the right edited on the Pixel 2.
I’m actually a little impressed with how the camera holds up.
There’s a mode on the camera that allows to shoot in TIFF and also one that does something similar to my Olympus EM-1 MKII where it can take a 12MP image from the 3PM sensor (the EM-1 MKII can take a 80MP Raw from the 20MP sensor in Hi-Res mode)
I’ll probably play with the camera for a little while then it’ll sit on a shelf at home with some other old cameras.