The R5 I bought had a problem with the shift correction. The first 30-40 seconds after the camera was turned on shift correction wouldn't activate in spite it was set to 'on' and its icon appeared in the LCD. I first blamed myself for needing a few "warm up" shots before I could hold the camera steady, but then I read about the problem in this forum, and I could easily verify it was not me but the camera. You can hear a faint buzz from the camera if the shift correction is operating when you half-press the shutter button. You can also check the shift correction by taking pictures while holding the camera so that it shakes just a little, but camera shake does not always produce "shaky" pictures, and shift correction can not compensate if it shakes too much, so you have to set up the right conditions.
The second problem was that some menus were really slow. I could not quick-step through the scene modes, the flash settings, or any settings on the adj button. The last one of course being the most annoying, since it rendered the adj button pretty useless.
Then it had some minor problems. The flash was badly "calibrated", although that can be hard to tell since the flash on most compact digital cameras are fairly limited even when they do work correctly, which they probably do most of the time even if faces sometimes come out completely washed out. Finally, pictures taken at wide-angle had a dark rounded upper left corner.
Ricoh immediately replaced it with a new R5. All the minor problems were gone, and much of my self confidence was restored.
But the slow menus and shift correction were still there, although peculiarly the scene modes were not slow on the new camera. So it had at least improved somewhat. ;-)
I have been e-mailing with Ricoh for three weeks now, and they have asked me to perform various tests with the camera. I suspect the long time can be explained by that I probably have been communicating with "second line support" but via the "first line support", so e-mails have been forwarded and sometimes delayed.
Anyway, last Friday they gave me a Go to send in the camera for another service, and if they are as quick as they were last time I'll have the camera back within little over a week.
