The WG-70 provides some control over exposure – in Program auto mode you can set the ISO sensitivity and white balance and apply up to plus or minus two stops of exposure compensation. But that’s as far as it goes, there’s no aperture priority mode as on the TOUGH TG-6. The WG-70 also falls well behind the TOUGH TG-6 when it comes to continuous shooting. Where the TG-6 can shoot full resolution at 20fps and offers Pro-capture buffering providing five frames prior to when you fully press the shutter release, the best the WG-70 can manage at full resolution is just shy of 2fps – though there is a 5 megapixel mode that shoots a 29-frame burst at just under 7fps. An arguably inessential yet defining feature of this endlessly regenerated compact series, new this time around – and the only feature, along with a new Cross Processing mode – we could find that has altered since the WG-60 – is the ability to select a 2MP recording size, up to a maximum 12MP in said mode. Essentially the camera deploys its digital zoom – in effect a crop – to make it appear as if subjects have been ‘enlarged’. Here’s the first of two underwater shots of anemones I took with the WG-70. To get this close to subjects you need to enable the WG-70’s 1cm macro mode – the standard macro will only get you within 10cm. For this shot I turned on the macro ring light – 6 LEDs mounted around the lens illuminate to evenly light the subject. In this case it hasn’t made a huge difference to the quality of the shot and I think it might actually be more useful for shots out of the water. Resolution (ISO-12233):We use a resolution chart based on ISO-12233 from Applied Image inc to indicate the limit of the camera’s vertical resolution at the centre of the frame. The higher the value, the better the detail resolution. WATERPROOF 14M: With features that include uncompromising waterproofing - good for 2 hours of continuous use at a depth of 14 meters

Both the Olympus TOUGH TG-6 and Nikon W300 offer Wi-fi in addition to a host of other built-in sensors. In the TOUGH TG-6 there’s a manometer for altitude and depth recording, an electronic compass, and a temperature sensor, while the Nikon W300 sports GPS, Bluetooth, a barometer and electronic compass.

Ricoh WG-70 Battery life

All of the sample images in this review were taken using the 20 megapixel SuperFine JPEG setting, which produces an average image size of around 7Mb. In this mode, the camera takes two pictures each time the shutter button is pressed, one with the flash off and the other with it on, letting you concentrate on composition without fiddling with the controls. * Available in Underwater Mode. You don't have to restrict yourself to digital! There are also some handy underwater disposable film cameras, which work just like the disposable cameras you used to take on holidays, with the crucial difference being that they can be taken underwater. With, more unusually, 68MB of internal memory on board the Ricoh WG-70, a thumbnail-sized SD card is once again the optional removable media of choice here. The supplied lithium ion battery which is inserted into the base of the camera, next to said SD card slot, is good for a modest 300 shots from a full charge according to CIPA testing (a drop from the maximum 340 pictures offered by the WG-6); pretty standard for this equally modest class of camera. During movie recording, this mode effectively compensates for the misalignment of images caused by camera shake through the use of exclusive software to produce beautiful, blur-free movie clips.

The screens shown here ensure easy navigation – being divided into folders for stills shooting, video, custom settings and set up – even if, as we’ve mentioned when looking at previous generations of the camera, they appear somewhat dated in appearance. The fact that this is a toughened camera also means that we don’t get touch screen operation here, nor do we get an articulated LCD, for obvious reasons.The Ricoh WG-70's flash has three modes: Auto, On, Off, plus a separate setting to enable or disable red-eye reduction. Whether this is active or not, the camera successfully avoids any trace of red-eye. The WG-70 feature a high-performance, five-times optical zoom lens with a focal-length coverage from 5mm to 25mm (equivalent to approx. 28mm to 140mm in the 35mm format) to accommodate a wide range of scenes and subjects, including sweeping landscapes. They also provide other convenient shooting functions, such as a macro mode to capture dramatic close-up images from a minimum focusing distance of a mere one centimeter; an Intelligent Zoom function to extend the zoom range to approximately 36 times (equivalent to 1008mm in the 35mm format) without compromising image quality, for superior telephoto photography; and an interval shooting mode, which comes in handy for fixed-point observation.