Ricoh Caplio R30

With no shortage of 5megapixel digicams around, manufacturers have been keen to mark their products out with increasingly style-led design.

The Caplio R30 from Ricoh, however, is rather plain. It would look positively bulky next to ultra-compact models from Sony or Canon, but at least puts its extra millimeters to good use.

The 26mm thick body houses a powerful 5.7x optical zoom lens that retracts fully into the chassis thanks to Ricoh's double retracing lens system. Even with these more complicated mechanics to contend with on start up, the Caplio R30 is ready for action in just over a second.

The action of the zoom itself is a little clumsy. It's possible to zoom in and out in small increments, but it's jerky to operate and very noisy.

On the plus side, you can take close-up shots as near as 1cm from a subject in macro mode. Ricoh has included an anti-shake system to counteract the effect of the powerful zoom and this worked well in our tests.

All the usual scene modes are present and shutter speeds range from 1/2000 to eight seconds, which opens up the possibilities for more creative photography.

The 26MB of internal memory will store 13 best-quality images or 39 seconds of movie footage. An SD memory card slot supplements the internal memory, although no card is included with the camera.

Picture quality was generally good. Areas of uniform colour tended to have a speckled appearance - this is a common shortcoming of compact digital cameras that cram a high number of sensors onto a relatively small CCD.

However, the R30 performed well in other areas. It picked out detail in areas of shadow and the shots we took using the macro mode were impressive.

What it lacks in looks, this attractively priced camera makes up for in features and good all-round performance. The R30 would suit the casual photographer who wants more than point-and-shoot predictability.