Thursday, January 9, 2014

Ricoh GR

L1002219
I'm really impressed with the Ricoh GR, I thought that the Fuji X100s and X-Pro1 were going to be my street and travel cameras but I've realized that the GR worked better for me.
Don't get me wrong, the Fuji cameras are great (I'll write a mini-review of both cameras at a later time), I've contemplated numerous times selling my Leica M9 and return back to an X-Pro1 but the M9 is just a hard camera to let go.
Anyhow, for weeks I kept going back and forth between the GR and the X100s, which one to keep and which one to keep. I may have many film cameras but for digital, I try to keep the bare essential as ultimately I liked the output taken from a film camera more, especially medium format.

Eventually I decided to settle with the GR for a couple of reason:
-smaller, fits in almost any pockets, even on the jeans as long as it's not skinny
-quiet and discreet, both really are silent but I noticed that you can see the leaf shutter closing/opening when shooting with the X100s
-crop mode is very useful, 35mm 10MP and 50mm 6MP; not like I'm going to make 24x36 prints of my street shots
-21mm with the GH3 and GW3 adapterlens. It's my UWA digital camera now.
-snap mode is very easy to use, there's nothing faster than a preset focus

L1002218

When street shooting I set my ISO to 1600, Aperture mode and snap focus set to 2m.
I set the aperture to f/11 or 16 when there's light, f/5.6 in low light and f/8 if in between. (I find f/6.3 the sweet spot in low light because focus is from ~1m to ~9m).
My shutter speed usually hovers around 1/250-1/1000 most of the time.
A couple of peers have suggested using the TAv mode next and let the ISO change, I'll give this a try next as shooting at f/11 and 1/500th speed all the time would be great. I just don't like the GR files once the ISO is over 1600 unless I process it in B&W.
I then turn the screen off and concentrate on composing on my 28/35mm viewfinder.












Haven't had much chance to shoot landscape with it but here's a few