Sunday 22nd December 2024

Get it? Wow — I am so clever!

Took out a dual-lens Ricoh TF-200 (38mm/70mm) and dual-lens Fuji DL-400 Tele (35mm/70mm) with the same film (Fuji 400 (Kodak?) expired 12/22 but kept in the fridge) to compare the cameras.


Similar features, but different switches/buttons/controls. Both preload the film — wind the full roll onto the takeup spool when loading, and then as you shoot the film goes back into the canister, so no rewind at the end. The flash on the Ricoh seems to be manual — you have to pop it up to enable it; whereas the flash on the Fuji seems automatic (if switched on on the controls), but oddly did not fire in all appropriate situations.

Below are comparisons of the wide/tele lenses of both cameras with the same subjects.

Minimum focus distance is similar, and I used the 70mm telephoto setting on both to capture a butterfly, a bit beyond the minimum focus distance. One camera focus on the butterfly well, but the other didn’t ‘grab’ it:

Overall color, contrast and sharpness were pretty good for both, with, in general, the Ricoh being a little bit sharper:

So — I like them both in terms of the results. Switching between focal lengths on the Ricoh is interesting, you turn the collar of the lens. Where on the Fuji it’s just a push button on the top and an internal motor handles the mechanical change.

Here are links to the full albums of test photos for each. So that I could tell the results/scans apart, at first I tried taking photos of a paper with the camera model written on it, on a picnic table — and shooting at the wide/tele focal lengths. For both, the red pen on white paper on reddish table, was a little overexposed — but I had some initial shutter-button confusion on the Fuji and ended up with some extra shots.

Ricoh TF-200 Test Album

Fuji DL-400 Tele Test Album

So what do you think???

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