Ricoh R1 / R1S / Rollei Prego Micro
The Ricoh R1 is a compact, point and shoot, 35mm camera introduced in 1994. It predated the much better known GR1 (and subsequent GR series) but is a simpler, less expensive design. The R1 (also marketed as the Rollei Prego Micron) was designed for the consumer market. It was made with a simpler design and lots of lighter weight plastic components (though there is an aluminum front cover). Despite being targeted for a lower price point, the Ricoh R1 is a nifty little camera for a couple of reasons. Its first big selling point is the incredibly slim profile. This camera fits in your pocket as well as most smartphones, and maybe even better than some. With the lens retracted, the camera is a mere one inch thick. The other interesting/attractive feature to the R1 is the dual lens system. By default the R1 uses a 30mm f3.5 lens. This is decently wide and decently fast for this type of camera. There is also the standard panoramic mode that is fairly common on such cameras. As you would expect, this mode merely crops the normal frame down to a 12x36mm frame size. But then there is the Wide Panorama mode that converts the R1's lens to an even wider 24mm focal length while cropping the frame to the aforementioned panoramic aspect ratio. All the while the R1's viewfinder projects framelines appropriate for each of the settings and adjusts for parallax while focusing.
Beyond that, the R1 has a pretty standard array of controls. Exposure is entirely automatic. Film speed is DX-coded. Focusing is done automatically, though the R1 does have an infinity lock mode and a spot autofocus mode. There are a few different flash modes (auto, red eye reduction, off, fill). The R1 has one interesting special effect mode called Super Night mode that actually makes a double exposure: the first exposure firing with flash and the second exposure firing without flash with focus set to infinity. Film advance is motorized, of course, with the entire roll pulled from the can at time of loading and rewound into the can as exposures are made. This has the benefit of potentially protecting exposed film if the camera is ever opened accidentally but also limits the number of exposures per roll to no more than 36.
The lens on the Ricoh R1 should be thought of as average... depending on the aperture and camera mode. For the type of camera it is, image quality is just fine, but taken objectively the lens is only really sharp in the middle and shows obvious signs of mushiness (technical term) at the corners and even edges. This is most pronounced when the chosen aperture is f3.5 or close and image quality does improve as the aperture is stopped down. If you loaded your R1 mostly with high ISO film then your images will have better sharpness throughout. When switching to the Wide Panoramic mode and its 24mm lens, the aperture has a maximum of f8. This is presumably to help with the increased image quality issues that arise with this optical configuration. Even at f8, the 24mm panoramic frames show noticeable mushiness at the edges. There are those who have removed the panoramic blinds to use the 24mm lens full frame but that comes with heavy vignetting and significantly soft corners.
Overall, the R1 is a decent camera. It is ok performance-wise but also will be ok price-wise compared to higher end point and shoots. Ricoh released a couple later versions of this camera. The R1S came out in 1995 and introduced some cosmetic changes but functionality was the same. The R1E was introduced in 1996 and removed the Wide Panoramic (24mm lens) mode. And that is about it!
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