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The Ricoh FF-9; short on looks, big on performance (All pics: Stephen Dowling)
You. Yes you. Step away from those endless Olympus Mju-II eBay listings and stop dreaming about finding a £4 Yashica T4 at a flea market.
The compact camera that you want – that you really, really want – has been hiding in plain sight all along.
This camera won't win on looks and you'll rarely find it bothering the must-shoot lists on YouTube and tech blogs. But trust me. With more than 100 compact cameras in my collection and experience with dozens more that have bothered the Cameraburo shelves over the years, this is the 35mm compact camera I always urge people to buy if they find one.
The Ricoh FF-9 was first released in 1988, when autofocus was less than a decade old and camera manufacturers were releasing a swathe of new models at various price points. Ricoh brought out their fair share, and in the 1980s their FF range included several excellent examples.
This is not only my pick of the range, but the camera I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone looking for a decent fixed-lens compact for a reasonable price.
Plenty of hyped compact cameras are now priced at a premium. Olympus Mju-IIs in working order – without a bleeding LCD panel, a broken battery door and all the other myriad mishaps that are affecting them – rarely come in at less that £250. And a Yashica T4? Fashion photographer-approved, and sporting a fantastic Zeiss lens, they are decidedly expensive.
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I'm not denying either of these cameras aren't excellent and worth shooting, but like many other camera bloggers, I'm not convinced the high ticket price is worth it. More than a decade ago, I started exploring cheaper options, and the Ricoh FF-9 was an early discovery around 2014. It cost me less than £10 and I thought it might be worth putting a few through it. Back then, Ricoh compacts were a bit of an unknown quantity to me.
I soon discovered this under-the-radar Ricoh was a cult-compact in the making. It's certainly not going to make the grade due to its looks; it has a utilitarian spareness bordering on the boring. The camera is dominated by a large LCD panel on the top with a smattering of buttons that help you cycle through the cameras functions, some of which are decidedly strange.
The Ricoh FF-9 is still easily found for about £50
The Ricoh's 35mm lens is hidden behind a lens cover – open it and the camera is ready for action. It might not as be as flash as the sliding panels that awaken the likes of the Mju-II, but it's one last moving part to go wrong.
The Ricoh's 35mm lens is the star attraction here. It has four element so it's not the most complex design you can find, but plenty sharp enough. The FF-9's shots have a touch of vignetting but nothing too intense. The coatings are good enough to keep most flare and aberrations at bay.
The maximum aperture of f/3.5 is a stop slower than the Mju-IIs but exactly the same as the Yashica T4. Is the lens as sharp as the T4? Nope, but it's plenty sharp enough for a fraction of the cost.
Check the example pics here:
Creeping tree shadows on Kodak ColorPlus 200, Blackheath, London,
Rich red retro roadster in central London shot on Kodak Ektar 100
Half of a conversation, Kodak Ektar 100
Greenwich Park moment on cross-processed Lomography Xpro Chrome 100
Xpro London City blue near the Greenwich Foot Tunnel
The FF-9’s lens works equally well with black-and-white film - this was shot on Kosmo Foto Mono
Paris cafe atmosphere on expired Kodak Farbwelt 100
A confusion of flags outside the Trafalgar tavern in Greenwich, taken
And I rarely find broken FF-9s. Maybe it's the 1980s construction; the FF range wasn't cheap and Ricoh were perhaps aware this would be a camera taken everywhere. It's a compact that can take the knocks. Even the LCD panels seem to be holding up pretty well, nearly 40 years after the camera was released.
No hard sell to buy one here, as I don't currently have one in stock to sell, but if you like decent compacts that don't cost an arm and a leg and give very good results for the money, well, you know what to do. A working FF-9, even now, shouldn’t cost much more than £50 and it’s money well spent.