This is a record of some of my impressions of the digital camera I took with me on my trip to Greece and Turkey in May of 1997.

The camera lived up pretty well to my expectations. My impressions are colored a bit by the fact that I have never carried a camera smaller than a 35mm SLR, so some of the advantages I see are available in any point-and-shoot camera and some others of compact design. The Ricoh RDC-2 is small enough to fit in my trouser pocket (especially without its optional monitor) but probably heavier than most film cameras that size. I had considered buying the RDC-1 despite its older technology and still higher price, just to gain the smaller size allowed by its built-in rechargeable batteries. The "2" has a big bump on its right side where the four "AA" batteries fit. Later Ricoh cameras save a bit in size, weight and/or price by eliminating some of the RDC-2's features. I've never used the sound recording capabilities except to demonstrate them to others, or occasionally by accident -- you may be happy without sound.

I did carry one spare set of lithium batteries on the trip, though not usually on my person. The set that I bought with the camera (two months before) gave out gracefully in my hotel room on Naxos. Had I been sightseeing, I could have stopped in anyplace tourists are expected and bought more batteries. Studies show that the cheaper batteries are a better value; you replace them slightly more often at a much lower cost.

I also bought and carried one 4mb and one 10mb PCMCIA card. These two storage cards probably cost me a total of $400, but I have made use of them since. I figured that along with the built-in memory they gave me room for a total of about eighty fine-resolution images, enough for two weeks' worth of snapshots. I was pretty happy with this number when I was through -- I came home with a few "blank" "exposures" left. This doesn't sound like a lot of pictures, until you remember that you don't have to bring home any pictures you're not totally satisfied with. My Nepal slide show, shot on Fuji Provia, is twice this size, for close to three weeks; but for every image shown there are two more that just cost money to process.

The other thing about storage: most people who would use the camera a lot probably don't need to store the images on cards. If you have a laptop computer with you, you just download the images to your hard drive at the end of each day and erase your "flash" memory. I'm pleased overall with the pictures, though the camera does some things much better than others. As I learned early on (see my earlier story "My First Day with a Digital Camera"), closeup work is fun and exciting, while landscapes frequently seem a bit "blah." The camera interprets the lightest part of the scene as "white," and I think this may cause a problem where there are areas of hazy sky. There isn't the fine detail to crop into that there is with film.

Potentially the most serious problem is with dust or smudges. The tiny "film" size means dust particles are huge.The window in front of the lens needs to be kept clean.

There are other features of the camera that could be great depending on where you're going. You may be able to show pictures you took the first week to people you meet the second week. A cord that comes with the camera plugs into recently-made TVs and into most VCRs -- but not in Greece or most other Eastern hemisphere countries where the NTSC format is not in use. The attached monitor works anywhere of course but is more a curiosity than a compelling sight for most people.

Another interesting idea: On a hiking trail one day I ran across an inscription I couldn't read without my dictionary, which was back at my hotel room. I photographed it, deciphered the image an hour later, then erased it so that it used no more resources. Try that with emulsion-based photography.