Ricoh announce the CX1 digital camera: A DSLR by any other name?

Ricoh’s latest camera has one huge selling point, their brand spanking new Smooth Imaging engine. They’ve just announced the soon to be released CX1, a camera that combines high speed continuous shooting modes (of four frames per second) in conjunction with their 9.3 megapixel CMOS sensor. Should you shoot in continuous mode of 640×480 you can get frame rates of 120 per second which is ridiculously impressive for a digital camera.

For those who think a 9 megapixel camera is outdated, I’ll stress again the fact that it uses a CMOS sensor- for the uninitiated this means that image quality is hugely improved; with true, richer blacks and that you’re being fooled by thinking the more megapixels the better. They’ve also added in a dynamic range double shot mode, which intelligently overexposes and alters images depending on the light, and it also hands a Multi-Pattern Auto white balance to transform the way we take portrait photos.

This seems to be the closest you can get to a DSLR in compact forms, in terms of specs at least- but I’ll need to go hands on with it before I can conclusively call it the best thing ever.

Watch this space for a full review.

£299 from the Ricoh on the 13th March

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