Digital Camera News: Nikon Decreasing Film Camera Production, Ricoh Caplio R30 Announced

[Ben Stafford]

Nikon to Focus on Digital Cameras, Decrease Film Camera Production

Nikon has announced that they're going to discontinue all large format Nikkor lenses and enlarging lenses, all but two of their film camera bodies, and all but one manual focus Nikkor interchangeable lenses.  They will still be producing the F6 and F10 bodies and the 85mm f/2.8D PC Micro-Nikkor lens.  Nikon will also provide post-sale service for a period of ten years from the last date of sale.

According to some numbers from an article at Cnet, film camera bodies accounted for 3% in sales, down from 16% from the previous years.  On the digital side, 75% of sales for the year ending in March 2005 were from digital cameras, up from 47% three years earlier.

Nikon announcement

Ricoh Caplio R30 Digital Camera Announced

Another one of those great products that we probably won't see in the US, at least on a wide-spread basis, is the newly announced Ricoh Caplio R30.  Positioned as a more affordable version of the Caplio R3, the R30 provides a 5.7x optical zoom in a body that is only 26mm thick.

Available in Champagne and Black colors, the R30 can capture images at 5 megapixels and has an improved macro function to let you focus on a subject as close as 1cm.  The R30 is also very snappy.  The shutter lag for a full depress of the shutter (when not already pre-focused) can take as little as 0.09 seconds.  If you already have the focus lock (with the shutter depressed partway), shutter lag is only 0.007 seconds.

The camera, including it's 2.5 inch LCD, is powered by a rechargeable battery that is good 330 images (by CIPA standards).  It will be available starting on January 20, 2006 - no pricing is set yet.

 

[pt9386]

I have been waiting for the day when one of the big name camera companies were gonna do this. Digital SLR's are very close to being the same as Manual SLR's, but without the hassle of film processing. I hope Nikon will up their product line and make something a little more competive to try to knock Canon off its pedestal, since more will be invested toward the Digital side of photography.

The Ricoh sounds like a close to perfect snapshot camera, to bad us in the Americas will never be able to see something like this.