Ricoh announced today the 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 is touted as having 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 25-mm thin body.

The 8,130,000 effective pixel CCD, the 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 the new GR Engine image-processing system translate into a high Modulation Transfer Function (MTF) rating for the central area of the image as well as the edges.

MTF is a measure of contrast and resolution, and one of the most widely used standards for evaluating image quality.

A retro-focus lens using a concave lens toward the subject and a convex lens toward the CCD, widely used in wide-angle SLRs and the like, is used. In addition to this two glass-moulded aspheric lenses and one special low dispersion lens are used.

A retracting lens system is employed, allowing part of the lens groupings (rear group) to be stowed inside the camera body. This shortens the distance between the second and third lenses when stowed. This not only helps to improve the image quality it also helps to reduce the camera size.

The ND filter uniformly absorbs each base colour: R, G, and B, allowing larger apertures to be utilized.

The camera is equipped with a bright, high-definition, large 2.5-inch/210,000 pixel LCD. The field of view is 100%, enabling accurate framing.

Images can be captured in various combinations of resolution and compression. RAW compression and RAW with JPEG can be selected for ultimate quality

The Caplio GR Digital will be available from October for £399.99 inc VAT.