Ricoh R10

Hello, I'm Rich Trenholm of CNET UK, and this is the Ricoh R10. The first thing we noticed about this retro-styled 10-megapixel point-and-shoot is that it's seriously dark - even the bits you can't see are black. You can also choose silver or brown, but why would you want that when you could get a camera that looks like it left the SAS because life just wasn't exciting enough? It's certainly got the build quality of a special forces killing machine, with an all-metal frame. There's rubberised grip for you right-hand, and round the back there's a decent-sized 3-inch screen. Controls are down the side, with five buttons and a fun little flattened mini-joystick. The controls are simple and straightforward, but the best thing about them is that you can customise the joystick and this Function button, so you can put the most useful shooting options at your fingertips. Once you have the camera set up the way you want it, your settings can be saved to two customisable scene positions. So you could set the camera up for indoor use and outdoor use, and changing between them would simply be a question of turning this dial, rather than adjusting all the settings every time. There's no manual exposure control, only exposure compensation, which isn't ideal, but pretty much everything else can be tweaked. To our great delight this includes the flash intensity, so you're not stuck with bleached-out subjects when shooting in the pub or at parties - not that we ever get invited to parties. If you prefer to let the camera do the work, there are ten scene modes and a fully automatic easy mode. The flexibility of the controls is matched by the versatility of the shooting experience. It packs a 28mm wide angle lens that lets you get more into your shots. You can get up close with a 1cm macro function or shoot from a distance with a 7x optical zoom, so you can zoom in for portraits, sports, or general stalking. Camera shake is minimised by optical image stabilisation, and we also had fun with the onscreen spirit level, because we're a bit geeky like that. So it looks great and handles like a dream. But it's a little slow, and noise is more of an issue than we'd like. Still, the amount of control the camera gives you means you have the best possible chance to make the best of almost any shooting situation. I'm Rich Trenholm of CNET UK, and this is the Ricoh R10.