Ricoh GR Digital II: Superior sequel

Fresh from loving the Ricoh Caplio R7, we were pretty chuffed to hear about the launch of the Ricoh GR Digital II, successor to -- you guessed it -- the Ricoh GR Digital. If this was a film instead of a camera, it wouldn't be Piranha II, no sir. It would be the Godfather Part II, Infernal Affairs II and Mad Max 2: the Road Warrior rolled in together.

The GRD II is about as top-end as you can get while still fitting in a pretty compact form. It packs a 1/1.75-inch CCD that gives you 10 megapixels. The lens manages f/2.4 aperture and f5.9mm focal length, equivalent to 28mm on a 35mm camera, which is pretty wide. You also get a large 69mm (2.7-inch) 230,000-pixel screen.

The GRD II is packed with more extras than a Spider-Man II DVD. Images are auto-rotated to match the orientation of the camera. You can set up a level indicator on the LCD screen to tell you if the camera is level, complete with an optional warning sound. Even when the screen is off, you can still display your chosen information on the monitor. An optional hotshoe-mounted viewfinder is also available.

You can shoot in 1:1 aspect ratio, giving you square-format photos. Ricoh also claims that the RGD II's image-writing time for raw images has been reduced to less than 4 seconds. Cleverly, the next shot can be taken whilst the first is still being written thanks to the boosted buffer memory.

The GRD II also shoots video, records to SDHC/SD cards, and can run on AAA batteries. It's available now for £400. -Rich Trenholm

Update: Read our full Ricoh GR Digital II review here.