Ricoh has been making a name for itself by exploring the digital camera market in the last few years, both with its CX range and more especially with the GR DIGITAL series which is now in its third incarnation.

Ricoh's main aim with the GR DIGITAL series was to concentrate on image quality above all else and it was for this reason that the company overhauled the engine for the GR DIGITAL II to try to find the optimum balance between noise and signal, ending up with a clarity of picture that was virtually the same whether shot at ISO 100 or ISO 400.

For the GR DIGITAL III, a further refinement has taken place so you now have both a new engine and a new lens. While the camera body remains essentially the same, the lens is now a F1.9, f-6.0mm (28mm equivalent for 35mm cameras) which, it's claimed, not only allows faster shutter speeds (or lower ISO settings for the same shutter speed) but also uses an improved lens drive system for better quality macro images.

The new engine makes use of a high-sensitivity 1/1.75-inch 10-megapixel CCD sensor to err on the side of enhanced noise reduction while still maintaining superior resolution and, as with the CX2, there's now Pre-AF for focusing on moving subjects and a larger 3.0-inch, 920,000-pixel LCD display which replaces the 2.7-inch, 230,000 pixels of its predecessor. Make no mistake, this is a serious photographer's camera, with enough variable settings to make you believe you're holding a DSLR.

For a start, this digital camera uses a fixed-focus lens. There's no optical zoom: instead the rocker zoom control can be programmed to alter exposure compensation, white balance or digital zoom (up to 5.7x). You also now have shutter speed priority alongside aperture priority, greater control over hue and saturation and the ability to record five RAW images in continuous shooting or bracketing.

The 'My Settings' on the mode dial has been expanded to three options and with two Fn (function) buttons on the back, there are plenty of ways of customising your favourite shooting types. In addition, the Adjust and Up-down dials are particularly useful when making rapid alterations to exposure and speed settings in the various manual shooting modes.

It's unlikely that you'll use this camera much for capturing movies as the maximum resolution is 640 x 480 at 30fps, so there's no following the HD trend here. But for stills photography it's hard to imagine a more impressive degree of image quality and variation on a compact digital, especially when there's a range of extra bits of kit such as an optical viewfinder, 0.75x wide conversion lens plus hood and adapter to further enhance your snapping experience.

But here's the rub: how happy would you be to pay £530 for all of this excellence when you could purchase a perfectly respectable full DSLR (body, at least) for the same or less?

Verdict
The latest in Ricoh's GR DIGITAL range of superior compact digital cameras is its finest achievement yet with exceptional picture quality, a wide range of manual settings, RAW capability and plenty of scope for customisation... but all at an uncomfortably high price.

Company: Ricoh

Contact: 020 8261 4000

Tags: ricoh camera digital single-lens reflex camera film speed liquid crystal display shutter speed charge-coupled device photography