With the market increasingly saturated with me-too camera models, manufacturers are branching out in more exotic directions. One area that possibly hasn't had enough interest is the adventure camera market. A typical compact doesn't respond well to a snorkelling holiday, a spot of caving, or desert trekking. Back home it may stop responding at all if water and sand damage take their toll.

And so to Ricoh's Caplio Wide range. Although marketed as a tool for builders, architects and firefighters (who have their own, unique exposure mode listed in the settings), the 500G Wide plays well as an adventure-cam.

Its double-cased build uses sealed rubber buttons, and extra seals around the various compartments make the design waterproof and dust-proof. It's also built to take knocks, passing a military-standard one-metre drop test on to a variety of hard and angular surfaces.

Waterproof here means what you'd expect it to - up to a point. You can dunk the 500G into liquid up to a depth of a metre and expect it to keep working - in fact, it floats, which is rather sensible. This doesn't mean you can take it surfing or scuba diving.

Inside story

Heavy waves, a strong waterfall, or even a powerful bathroom shower may apply more than a metre's worth of pressure. So the waterproofing is only enough to make rain irrelevant, and allow some low-intensity beach immersion.

Taking a look inside the case, the Caplio is a fairly standard compact with some interesting twists. The lens is equivalent to a 28mm wide-angle, which is more useful and also more fun than the more common 35mm. Wide landscapes and towering architectural portrait-mode shots are where the Caplio seems to feel most at home.

There's a 4x digital zoom, and a 20m flash range, improved from the previous 400G model; a wide aperture range that touches f/2.5; and a full selection of exposure settings from 8 seconds to 2/2,000. More obscure features abound and include low-resolution 320x240 video recording; sound recording, for photo annotation and standalone; and a TIFF mode, apparently included to take photos of documents.