While high dynamic range is only recently getting some attention in the gaming and
display worlds, for decades it's been a tool of serious photographers wanting eye-popping exposures. Now Ricoh's gone and offered it to the masses with its latest consumer digi cam, the CX1, creating a "dynamic range double shot" mode that takes two images nearly simultaneously with different exposures, then combines them automatically to present the best bits of both. It features a 9 megapixel CMOS sensor fronted by a 7.1x (28-200mm) lens and backed by a 3-inch LCD. VGA videos are a bit disappointing these days, but 120 frames per second can be captured at that resolution, which is good news for slow-mo junkies. UK release is mid-March for £299, about $430, and we expect/hope it'll be lighting up dim photos Stateside around the same time.
[Via
PhotographyBLOG]
posted Feb 19th 2009 9:12AM
Does anybody have experience with Ricoh point and shoots? It seems like a great upper end p&s if street prices get below $300.
I've had some issues with Ricoh http://getsatisfaction.com/ricoh.
"and we expect it'll be lighting up dim photos Stateside around the same time."
Too bad Ricoh isn't officially in the US camera market.
That said, @Matt, my Ricoh Caplio R6 was one of the best cameras I have ever owned other than maybe my FinePix F30. I was very sad the day it met its demise.
I have the GX100, wonderful camera... high price, but high quality as well..
I don't see many consumers running out and buying tripods and lugging them sround to use the HDR feature properly.
Looks like a Samsung to me. Maybe that's what it will be branded as when it makes it way to the US?
Coincidentally I was looking at some pictures yesterday and wondering if cameras had HDR built in yet... about time then.
Now someone skilled go write an Android app to duplicate this. :P
Any decent camera will have HDR capabilities built-in. It's called exposure bracketing.
It's the automatically combining part that I was referring too.
@Chris Anderson
Yes, most cameras have exposure bracketing built in, requiring the user to purchase an app like photomatix pro, learn to use it, take multiple shots, import multiple files, make adjustments to the files and then combine them. It would be naive to think that some higher end cameras won't eventually be taking multiple shots and combining them into one HDR at some point in time.
Leave it to Ricoh to make the ugliest f'ing cameras around.
What's ugly about this? It looks like it belongs in the Design Within Reach catalog. Does it need badges everywhere stating it's features and megapixel for the world to see? Yawn.
leave it to the low-brow gaytor fan to make a useless comment.
Technology is going so fast, I can't keep up! =:O
Not sure I want the camera automatically doing HDR. The "art" of HDR often comes in tweaking the blending, exposure control, and tonal mapping when creating the HDR images using HDR tools.
obviuosly this camera isn't for you then. the whole point of automatic HDR would be to provide a point and shoot alternative to doing it yourself. not everyone has the time or desire to create "art" photos... but everyone would like vivid high dynamic range photos...
What file format is it going to store this so-called HDR in? JPEG can't handle HDR. Unless this thing uses EXR or something capable of float, this looks like more LDR mislabeled as just the opposite.
@TIMMAH! - depends on how it saves the image. if its a raw-like image, or floating point tif, or best of all a half-float exr, then you'd get to do all the tonemapping you want.
unfortunately i suspect it'll bake the whole thing down to an 8bit jpg, which would be a shame. oh well.