The Ricoh CX1 has received a couple of interesting updates in the past couple of weeks. First was the Firmware 1.16 update that fixed the problem with the M-Cont. Plus, a MP file may be recorded with missing a partial frame(s). It also fixed the problem with the Focus-Bracketing, a which was a feature with known functionality problems.

Now we have Firmware 1.19, which fixes a problem that might be aggravating some of you. When the battery is low, camera may power down without retracting the lens. This of course could lead to some serious problems if not remedied.

Another cool update, not to the camera itself is Ricoh has created an information based CX 1 site. It’s rather extensive, and you can find a slew of information about the camera. For instance, were you aware that the CX 1 only supports a 32 GB memory SD card?

On today’s Internet, video is king and still photography has taken a backseat. More people are getting their news from the Internet as opposed to subscribing to the print newspaper. Many newspapers are in trouble because of this trend. They’ve been forced to cut jobs and to do more with less thus requiring their photographers to now double-duty and become videographers as well as photographers.

Now not only do photographers have to carry multiple lenses, bodies, flash, spare batteries, and compact flash cards for their still cameras, they have to tote a video camera as well. While shooting for a local high school football team a few weeks ago, I spoke with a photographer from our local newspaper about this. He said that it was a huge burden in that he had to learn how to use the video camera to produce a quality video that would be used on the paper’s site. He then had to learn how to edit the video and get it uploaded to the paper’s web site in a timely matter. Oh yeah, he still had to get stills from the game as well. He also gave me a little inside information saying that there was light at the end of the tunnel, as major players in the world of digital SLR cameras were about to make his job easier.

(more…)