unca mikey

<p>The Ricoh GX200 has 24mm at the wide end, great image quality, lots of manual controls, and will take AAAs besides proprietary batteries. It's not as small as the smallest, but has many great features, including wonderful interval shooting.</p>

<p>I've used 8GB SDHC cards in my A720IS without a problem. It's an awful lot of snaps on one card!</p>

<p>I love my UltraPod! I've had mine for years, never travel without it. The white lettering rubbed off long ago, and I've had to reglue the rubber feet a few times, but it still works great.</p>

<p>A tip that may help someone -- I sometimes had trouble because the tree/rail/whatever that I wanted to attach the Ultrapod to was too large and the strap wouldn't fit around it. I wrote the UltraPod folks about the problem, and they sent me some extra straps with velcro so that now I can attach it to almost anything.</p>

<p>Recently I bought a Panasonic FX35, with a zoom lens that starts at 25mm (35mm equivalent) wide angle. I used MSN live.com cashback at the time and got it for about $140. The newer FX37 has the same lens range.<br>

The Ricoh GX series goes down to 24mm equivalent, but they are expensive. I got rid of my GX100 because of persistent sensor dust issues.<br>

I think this is as wide as you can get in a P&S without using expensive and cumbersome adapters that seriously degrade image quality.</p>

That much? Well, oops, never mind then. :-) Good luck.

I have the GX-100 and don't plan on getting the newer model.

 

My impression is that Ricoh caters to such a niche market that you won't see significant price changes before and

after a new model is introduced. There's only two official Ricoh retailers in the US, and I don't think GX-100

prices came down much at all.

 

Ricoh cameras have a lot of great features, but 'reasonably priced' is not one of them.

I love the Eneloops, no doubt about it; they seem to last forever. We travel regularly to Europe and S. America and usually take along a Mac laptop. I have the plug adapters for the Mac, so I got a USB charger for the eneloops. It plugs into a USB port on the Mac and charges up 2 AA or AAA batteries in a few hours. My Pentax K100D Super (and my Oral-B toothbrush!) takes AA and my Ricoh GX-100 takes AAA, so I don't have to take along extra chargers and plug adapters.

The Ricoh GX-100 can shoot at user-selectable intervals from 5 seconds to 3 hrs, in 5 sec increments. It's a great camera, too.

I think everyone who bought either has been pleased with their purchase. I got the K100D Super and a set of DA pancakes because I like smaller cameras -- so far I'm having fun with it, no regrets at all.

 

Whichever you choose, I'd buy soon because they're apparently not in production any more, retail stocks are going down, and the rebate goes away at the end of January.

I used one quite a bit with my film SLRs (*ist and ZX-L) and was very impressed with it -- you can get new/almost new versions on ebay for $100 or less. It's light and compact and well worth the money, IMO.

Oh, I checked the Ricoh site again, and I see what you mean, if you are referring to the older Ricoh GX.

 

If I were you, I'd leave it alone at 1.09. Maybe since it's an older camera, Ricoh stopped posting firmware updates on their website? The 1.07 appears to be about 2.5 years old.

 

More info at dpreview, as Dean said. See this msg, for example:

 

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1013&message=23246421

 

You can also search that forum for other msgs about 1.09 for the GX.

If you mean the GX-100, the latest version is 1.16. Download and instructions are on the Ricoh US site:

 

http://www.ricoh.com/r_dc/download/

P.S. We've visited your country several times, lovely place and people -- Pura Vida!

Why not have your friend buy the camera online from a reputable dealer like B&H or Adorama, then bring the camera with her?

Took me a while to find the ISO stuff in the manual, too: AUTO means the camera automatically varies the ISO between 80 and 154 (or more, depending on image size); AUTO-HI means the ISO varies between 80 and whatever upper limit you set. See pp 104-105 in the manual.

Another vote for the Ricoh GX-100 -- I just got mine about a week or so, and really like it. That wide lens is really something!

One other lens w/o an aperture ring that you may consider using with the ZX-L is the DA 40mm pancake lens. Although Pentax says this lens is for the digital sensor only, it works fine with no vignetting on 35mm film.

 

It's an excellent lens, too.

After trying quite a few color films, I've settled on Fuji Superia 400. It's cheap, widely available, and has great color. The 400 speed is fast enough -- when I've taken faster (800 and above) films on trips, they've been affected by the x-ray machines.

 

I don't do much telephoto work, but the FA J 75-300 is cheap and works great, for me. It's light and the MZ-50 will have no problem with the lack of an aperture ring. Anything longer and you'll need a tripod.

 

Travel light and have fun!

You have to ask yourself, what do you want the 'upgrade' to do? And, what lenses do you have/want?

 

I think a ZX-L is the best deal in film bodies nowadays, with virtually new ones auctioning for $50-$75. Sturdy construction, good features, and will work with all Pentax lenses, including those without an aperture ring.

I shoot mostly with my Pentax *ist 35mm, sometimes a ZX-L, sometimes a Olympus Stylus Epic. When I need digital, I use my Canon A510.

 

The K100D and K10D are very tempting, but I much prefer smaller cameras. I'd also hate to lose the wider FOV of 35mm.

 

I keep thinking I will move up to a digital SLR, but then I shoot just one more roll of film...

Custom Function #5 -- set the value to (1), and the ZX-L will switch to spot metering when you hit the AE lock button.

And the really fun next step is realizing that not having everything in focus can be fun and interesting...

Your camera is fine, and probably has at least one good lens with it. Get to know your camera, take lots of pictures, find out what you like and don't like -- when the time is right, you'll be able to make a much more informed decision about whether you need another camera, and which one.

I just tested this with my own *ist. If you have the flash on AUTO or have manually popped up the flash, then yes, the flash fires to assist the auto-focus. If you have disabled the flash, then it won't fire.

 

I did notice that it has to be very very dim for the flash to fire -- I've found the auto-focus on the *ist to be fast and accurate even in low light. To do the test above, I had to point the camera behind a dark cabinet in an unlit room.

 

I don't believe there is any setting for this. If you don't want the flash to fire, don't pop it up.

I have the *ist film SLR, and like it a lot. I love the small size, and for me, the ergonomics are great. All lenses with an "A" setting will work fine, as well as the DA 40mm pancake lens. The *ist does not have the build quality of the LX, but mine has proven to be more rugged than it looks.

 

Prices for film SLR bodies in general are dropping, but prices for *ist 35mm bodies seem to be holding up well. They don't show up often on the auction site, and usually generate interest when they do.

 

Lots of people like the *ist, and the LX is one of the greatest Pentax bodies made -- I think they are very different cameras, so a direct comparison may be difficult.