Let me first say that I'm not a beginner. I began to use reflex cameras 15 years ago (I'm using the Canon Eos system at the moment), and entered the digital world with a 3.2MP camera first. I've bought the Ricoh Caplio GX about 5 months ago.
There are several tests about this camera on the Internet: some of them have been worked out by guys who think to be masters but are just beginners in photography. Don't believe to those who sentence about cromatic aberration, refering to this camera, or who use some other technical terms without having NO technical idea of what they are speaking about. As an example: if you don't understand that white balance is crucial when working with digital cameras or you are not able to set white balance correctly and manually, and don't know what cromatic aberration really is, you could probably believe that some strange colors are due to the latter.
Now a realistic opinion: this is a very good camera. Photo and optical quality are on the top (I've printed out 30x45 cm photos with any kind of problem !). It is strong built, easy to use even in manual mode, zoom range (28-85 mm) fits to almost all kind of photographic situation, one can use an external TTL professional flash (of course you have to get it separately), photos can be stored in jpeg and even in uncompressed tiff format (about 10MB !! This is the one I've used to get surprisingly sharp 30x45 cm photos !). Just one weak feature: manual mode is not "really" manual, in the sense that you can manually only adjust the light amount on your photo in steps of 1 stop: this is a pretty much big amount of light ! I was a bit disappointed about that ! I must ask Ricoh: why that ? Why not developing, with a low cost, a new firmware that allows 1/2 light amount steps (or better 1/3 stops, like Canon, Nikon ... ?). Of course I'm not speaking about light compensation but about time-shutter and aperture in manual mode.

Nach meinem Umstieg von der Caplio G4wide auf dieses Modell dachte ich, dass Ricoh endlich mal was positiv verändert hätte. Dies bestätigte sich jedoch leider nicht. Das verwendete Plastikgehäuse wirkt billig und wies bereits nach wenigen Betriebsstunden oberflächliche Kratzer auf. Was jedoch noch gravierender ins Auge fällt, ist der deutliche Schattenwurf durch das eigene Objektiv bei der Macro-Fotografie (unter Verwendung des integrierten Blitzlichtes). Auch die Fokussierung im Macro - Bereich bei nicht optimaler Ausleuchtung des Motivs ist weiterhin verbesserungswürdig. Ansonsten kann man mit dem Preis - Leistungsverhältnis recht zufrieden sein.Die Bildqualität ist gut und die mitgelieferte Software leicht zu installieren. Beim nächsten Kauf versuch` ich jedoch mal das Produkt eines anderen Herstellers.