Digital Focus: How to Clear Up Red-Eye

Mini Review: Ricoh RDC-i700

In the future, everyone will fly in hovercars...and all portable devices will have wireless modems built in. Spurring us along the way toward that Jetson-esque vision is the Ricoh RDC-i700, a digital camera that Ricoh bills as "Internet ready." When equipped with a CompactFlash-style wireless modem or connected to a cellular phone, the RDC-i700 can transmit photographs, along with graphical annotations and text messages, to e-mail accounts, FTP accounts, and fax machines.

It captures great-looking images in resolutions up to 3.3 megapixels and has features typical of a high-end digital camera, such as a 3X optical zoom and a high-quality close-up macro mode. On the other hand, it's a Ricoh camera--and that means it relies on the same clumsy, non-camera-like flip-up LCD display that I usually dislike.

Ricoh has priced the RDC-i700 around $1300 and clearly hopes it will attract the attention of businesses that can benefit from the ability to wirelessly transmit digital images directly from an on-the-scene camera to a remote destination. That includes real estate agents, insurance adjusters, film location scouts, criminal investigators, and photojournalists, to name a few.

That's a lot of money, though, in a market that's crowded with similar non-wireless 3-megapixel cameras that cost a few hundred dollars less. Even as a journalist who sometimes has to photograph trade shows and press conferences, I don't see the need for on-location transmission; my editors can typically wait a few hours for me to e-mail pictures from the press room. I'm not sold, but will enough other people see the value for the RDC-i700 to succeed?