Ricoh GR Digital Announced

Ricoh has announced the GR Digital, a "professional-grade" compact camera.  The GR Digital is specifically designed to provide the best resolution, minmal noise level, best color correction and minimal distortion.  The 8.1 megapixel camera has a fixed focal length GR lens with a 24 mm (35 mm equivalent) focal length and features a new GR Engine processing system.  The camera is expected to be available on October 21, 2005.

From the press release

Tokyo, Japan - September 13 - Ricoh Co., Ltd. (president and CEO: Masamitsu Sakurai) announced today the October 21 launch of the GR Digital, a newly developed professional-grade high-resolution compact digital camera. In addition to a CCD with 8,130,000 effective pixels, the new digital camera boasts superb resolution through a newly developed high-performance lens, image-processing algorithms, and other innovations, as well as low noise and low chromatic aberration.

The new GR Digital inherits the superb image quality that made the award winning GR Series (first launched in 1996) of 35mm compact film cameras so popular, as well as the depictive performance to satisfy professional photographers, distilled into a compact 25mm thin body.
With a high-quality feel and superb expandability, this is the perfect tool for professional photographers and advanced amateurs.

When planning the GR Digital, Ricoh's engineers began by identifying the elements that provide the high picture quality demanded by discerning photographers. After much study, Ricoh placed special emphasis on resolution, noise level, color aberration correction, color reproduction, tone, and distortion characteristics. In order to achieve extremely high levels in each of these areas, Ricoh gave the GR Digital a CCD with 8,130,000 effective pixels, and also developed two key components: (1) a F2.4 fixed focal length GR lens with f = 5.9 mm (28 mm converted to 35 mm format camera) having high resolution and depictive power; and (2) a new GR Engine image-processing system featuring natural composition and rich, fine gradations while further lowering noise in all images.