Ricoh G600 (2008)

The Ricoh G600 is a ruggedized compact digital camera announced for May 2008 availability. It was aimed at skiers, water-sports people, and anyone likely to drop their gear. Ricoh was a relatively quiet player in this space, and the G600 was their regular-interval offering in the shock/water/dust-resistant category, going up against the Olympus Mju 790 SW and Pentax Optio W30.

It is a tough little camera. The body is rubberized, with oversized controls - big yellow buttons, in fact - so you can operate them with gloves on. It withstands falls from up to 1.5 metres, accepts immersion to 1 metre, and is resistant to sand and dust to JIS protection grade 6. The construction is completely airtight, with sealed doors over the ports. Ricoh claimed compliance with US military standard MIL-STD 810F test criteria. The lens deploys inside the body, so there's no protruding barrel to snag or break.

On paper it's a 10.3-megapixel CCD (1/2.3-inch) with a 5x zoom covering 28-140mm equivalent at f/3.5-5.5. The LCD is 2.7 inches with 230,000 pixels. Sensitivity runs from ISO 64 up to 3,200, macro focuses down to 1 cm, and shutter speeds span 8 to 1/1,500 seconds. It records AVI Motion JPEG video at 640 × 480 (about 21 seconds) or 320 × 240 (just over a minute), stores to SD/SDHC or multimedia cards, and runs on two alkaline AAA batteries. There's a 52MB internal memory, a flash with a ten-metre range, and a hot shoe for an external flash. Dimensions are 116.5 × 68 × 32 mm and it weighs 260 grams.

The acknowledged weak point, noted by clubic (April 2008), is the absence of optical image stabilization. Only a digital stabilization system is fitted, and digital stabilization was generally regarded as less effective. CNET, reviewing at UK launch, found it produced good-quality pictures anyway. The Norwegian magazine Lyd & Bilde (July 2009) called it the ideal camera for firefighters and construction workers rather than vacationers. Gizmodo's headline was blunter: "Ricoh G600 Is Both Rugged and Fugged."

It was available in the UK at about £350 and around €500 in Germany. It was a successor to the popular G500, and it sat alongside Ricoh's Caplio 500G in the lineup. No production end date is documented, and there is no official US price. Third-party accessories (cases, car chargers) and printed manual reproductions may be easier to find today than the camera itself.