Minicams with a wideangle lens?

I have an Olympus E-10 that is just too big to take with me on mountain biking trips or to pop into my pocket so I need something smaller and I like a wideangle lens so the Panasonic FX01 looked like the camera for me. Well....there I was thinking the Panasonic was the only minicamera with a wideangle lens then I spot that the Ricoh Caplio R4 is for sale in the UK now. The Ricoh has a 7x zoom aswell as the 28mm wide Course I'm now wondering if this is just the beginning of a whole raft of minicams with wide angle lenses to hit the market and maybe I should wait until someone solves the noise issue that these both seem to have and brings out a near faultless 28mm, big zoom pocket sized camera!?

What you reckon? Is it worth waiting or should I just plump for one of the above safe in the knowledge that with ultracompact cameras noise is always going to be an issue?

 

No opinion on this from the camera buffs here?

 

not sure - you could read some reviews on dpreview - thats a good site

www.dpreview.com

 

Spooky. In the DSLR thread I mentioned that my compact digital camera broke recently and I was looking for a replacement. I too was loooking at a wide-angle option and came across the Ricoh Caplio R5. Unfortunately it has only just been announced and not yet widely available. As far as I know it offers the widest angle (28mm) lens and one of the lowest "shutter" delays in a compact digital camera.

I'm still split between this and the Nikon Coolpix S10, which isn't as fast but has a very good zoom range 38-380.

 

I've been waiting to see some reviews of the R5 but dpreview doesn't seem keen to review Ricoh cameras and no luck with stevesdigicams.com either. Theres some dpreview user reviews on the R4 and a couple of reviews elsewhere on the net for the R4 although I always prefer to see a review from Steve or dpreview as they're so indepth.

I'm wondering if the R5 will solve the noise issue that the R4 has so I'd be interested to see a review.

 

Found this review of R5.

 

I have the FX01, recently bought after believing (falsely) I had lost its predecessor, the FX7 (I have too many rucksacks). I liked them both very much and find them quick and easy to use. Reviews comment on colour noise in low light levels, but on the other hand I particularly like them for letting me take without flash down to say 1/8th because of the antishake. The noise is never evident under a broad range of normal light levels; the wide angle and anti-shake a great for taking discreet shots in bars, etc. when on holiday.

I took one on a two-week MTB trip of Cuba and it survived with no problems whatsoever. Such a large viewfinder screen is a pleasure to have but on my first one I stuck on an anti-scratch sheet from the start. The second one seems to manage without so far. The battery typically lasts 300+ shots, enough that one doesn't mind playing back video or shots for people