Ricoh CX5

UPDATE 07/07/2011: In line with our new, tighter test criteria, the CX5 is now a three-star camera rather than a four-star camera. This is due to its inconsistent lens quality and limited video mode.

Ricoh seems to upgrade its superzoom compact every six months. As the name suggests, the CX5 will be replacing the CX4 released in autumn 2010, and has the usual minor tweaks an little improvements that we've come to expect from the Japanese manufacturer. The CX5 still looks very much like 2009's CX1 and it has the same lens and internal electronics as the previous model. However, it does have one rather interesting new feature, as after half a dozen years, the rangefinder has returned to a compact camera.

Handling

The overall design has actually changed very little since the R8, released three years ago. The buttons are all the same and practically have the same layout too.


The 3-inch LCD is nice and sharp thanks to VGA resolution and is pleasant to use, even if greys are a little on the light side (gamma = 1.8) and colour reproduction is only just acceptable (delta E = 5.5). Like its predecessors, the CX5 has several customisable settings. You can, for example, choose the options listed in the ADJ menu and assign the function of your choice to the Fn button. The camera's huge range of settings can be intimidating for beginners, but it's sure to please more advanced users who could, for example, use the customisable controls to make the camera more responsive.

The flash has been moved due to the arrival of the rangefinder (see sidebar). This could prove slightly problematic for those of you who grip the camera quite high up, as the flash ends up being covered by your middle finger. You may therefore find yourself covering the flash either partially or completely.

Responsiveness

The CX5 behaves in a similar way to its predecessors: start-up still takes just over two seconds and photo-to-photo turnaround is a little slow, but once it's up and running, the CX5 is reasonably responsive. The inclusion of a rangefinder is supposed to bring a big boost to the autofocus but we didn't notice any real difference. Then again, the rangefinder-free CX4 already focused in under half a second.

Those of you who are looking for super-fast shooting can always choose the 'snapshot' mode or 'infinite' mode, both of which lock the focus for a near-instant shutter release.

Picture Quality

If you've already read our reviews of the CX3 and CX4—which have the same lens and internal electronics as this model—there'll be no surprises in store in this section.

The lens delivers good results in the middle of the frame, but around the edges sharpness is slightly lost and chromatic aberration is visible (some manufacturers get rid of this with processing techniques, but Ricoh still hasn't adopted this kind of technology).


Otherwise, smoothing is apparent from 400 ISO and increases strongly at 800 ISO along with digital noise. The resulting compromise between smoothing and noise gives results that aren't too bad for a compact camera. However, with the same kind of sensor technology, models with high-end image processing systems certainly do a better job (Sony, Canon etc.).

Video

Nothing has changed in this field so, like Ricoh, we'll just do a straight copy and paste from the CX4: the CX4 CX5 films 720p HD video. That's probably the video mode's only strong point too, as with no optical zoom, a poor-quality digital zoom and bog-standard mono sound, it's certainly nothing special. We wouldn't go as far as to say it's totally awful, but it's not exactly a selling point either.