The New Ricoh GR Announced and Available for Pre-Order ($797 at B&H)

Ming Thein got ahold of a pre-production Ricoh GR and the first part of his review is up HERE...

He seems pretty positive but has some reservations, some of which may be cleared up in the final production model. Part 2, with a fuller comparison to the Nikon Coolpix A, is supposed to be available tomorrow. And, one supposes, there may be a part 3 or an addendum once he gets a production model to see if the production firmware fixes some of the issues he has with the pre-production model.

I always enjoy his reviews - I can't vouch for the accuracy of his technical analysis but he's one of the few reviewers who I think is a really fine photographer, so at the very least there's always some damn fine photography to see, even when he has issues with a camera...

-Ray
 
Interesting comments on firmware and B&W/color in Q&A:

Ming do you think it is fair to compare a pre-production firmware version camera (GR) with a final production model (A)?

Hopefully mine has pre-production firmware – doubt it as it’s 1.11 though. I was told it’s pretty final, and there were no restrictions. I’ve disclosed as much up front, and caveated where necessary. The companies are usually the first to embargo if there are any issues with the cameras. I have a feeling the color/ tonal choices were consciously made in favor of B&W processing – the more I run files from this camera, the more I’m impressed with the ease of getting absolutely gorgeous, film-like B&W tonality out of it. It’s the closest I’ve seen to film from a digital. The A seems to have an oddly compressed palette that requires a lot of careful work to get a good B&W out of, but it does color very well.

Ming Thein got ahold of a pre-production Ricoh GR and the first part of his review is up HERE...
 
I like his reviews and honesty. Hopefully someone at Ricoh would be fixing any potential problem with AF and/or P mode behavior in firmware update. Looking forward to your review too, Ray. :)
 
Ming even says that the GR has technical image quality better than the Leica M9 and 28mm Summicron lens, and very close to the M240, which is a VERY big statement. He said the same about the Nikon A, too. If this is true, it means that you can have M9/28mm image quality in your pocket! I can finally have a pocket camera without a sense of compromised image quality. This is something I've longed for since the Canon S70 in 2005, and nearly every compact camera I've bought since then has been an attempt to find that level of quality.

Certainly, the way the lens draws and the sensor renders will be different from the M9, and I am keeping my hopes in check by using the GXR-M as my level of expectation. For me, if the GR has GXR-M image quality with another 1-1.5 stops of ISO range, I will be very happy.
 
REally good reading those reviews. I was a bit surprised that they dropped IS from the GR, after having it in the IV... its put me out of contention for any of these. Lately I have been needing it, and after yesterday, the III has been mothballed. Dont mind with the X100, one's head is a good enough steadying point... It just *never* occurred to me that they would drop IS. Damn.
 
Yeah, after reading both parts, the simple takeaway is that the Nikon's strength is shooting color and the Ricoh's B&W and with the Ricoh you have to be more careful about blowing highlights. At least with the raw - Ricoh seems fine in color on the jpegs. I hadn't really thought about the Nikon being particularly strong in color and weak in B&W when I was shooting with it, but going back through the stuff I did, I left a WAAAAAAY higher percentage in color than I usually do, particularly with my street shooting. Probably more to do with how much I liked the color files than disliking the B&W conversions, because I'm plenty happy with those too.

So of course now I start over thinking things... I'm more of a B&W shooter mostly, so per Ming's findings (assuming mine match his once I have the cameras in hand), I should arguably get the Ricoh. OTOH, I know my way around B&W processing a LOT better than color, so I can DEAL with weaker B&W files a whole lot better than I can weak color files, which I can really get into trouble with (I remember wrestling with the GH2 and G3 raw files and getting really poor results while other folks were getting brilliant results with them). I just went back and processed a few more Nikon shots in B&W and I'm fine with those. Perhaps not as sublime as some of the stuff Ming is turning out with the Ricoh, but a lot of that is down to Ming, I'm pretty sure - my stuff would probably look like my stuff coming out of the Ricoh OR the Nikon... Which makes me think I should go with the Nikon because I can DEAL with its weakness (to the extent it has one), but maybe not as well with the Ricoh's weak point.

OTOH, I shot a LOT of raw+jpeg with the GXR-28 and I love those color jpegs I was getting in decent light and the B&W I created from the DNGs in all light. Which leads me back to the Ricoh - just shoot raw+jpeg when you think there's any chance you're gonna want to leave something in color in half decent light... BUT I really love some of the very low light color images I was getting from the Nikon at ISO 3200-6400 and I wouldn't trust the Ricoh jpegs (or any jpegs) to handle those color shots as well. So, I'm quite conflicted and haven't even touched the Ricoh yet.

I suppose once I start shooting with both, if the Ricoh B&W files blow me away as much as they did Ming (which I suspect they may not because my stuff isn't as subtle or refined as his to begin with), then maybe I get the Ricoh, shoot raw+jpeg and make the best of the color. If not, though, I probably go with the Nikon because I love the color raw files and I didn't have any problem with the B&W conversions either. So I guess I'll have to see. Do I choose based on the camera's strong point matching my own or on my greater ability to cope with its weakness???

Bottom line, though, both cameras look like total winners and, as I've said before, it would have been nice if only one had been produced in this time-frame. In which case there wouldn't be any choice to make and we'd all just celebrate how great it was! Now we have to decide and, predictably, sides are being taken and the competition has begun. I find Ming's reviews really quite helpful - plenty of technical information, but all relevant to how we'd actually USE the cameras, relevant to the type of photographs we'd actually MAKE with these cameras.

-Ray
 
I like the colors in his bar shot better with GR as A looks more digital. I think it was similar to R6 that I used, eg colors wasn't popping and easily convertible to B&W esp with the high ISO gritty look... Blown highlights is not good and that shot with the trees look better with A, esp low ISO. Tough choice...
 
Any thoughts as to the longer exposures Ming was getting with the GR at the same f stop and ISO as the A? Looks like that was the main culprit of the blown highlights.

Does the GR or A have the feature the Olympus' have where the user can set the live view to show overexposure/underexposure?
 
DPR has its comparative widget up with raw files now. I don't know how much credence to put in those things since they basically test high ISO under daylight conditions. But the differences aren't subtle, with the Nikon appearing at least a half stop better than the Ricoh to me. The Ricoh looks almost as bad at 6400 as the Nikon at 12,800. I don't know if this will prove out in real world shooting or not, but if it does, I'm probably going with the Nikon over the Ricoh. I guess I'd just have to keep the GXR-28 for when I'd need a fix of that Ricoh mojo - it's not gonna have any resale value to speak of anyway.

Edit - I might take this back. The results stand on the DPR comparometer type deal, but when I download the raw files and open them in Lightroom I'm seeing VERY little difference. Not sure whether DPR is showing them at more than 100% or what's going on, but I'd have to say that looking at the files directly, the differences ARE subtle. So, I'm back to square one on this - waiting for real world results instead of these test shots...

-Ray

I believe the default NR setting for GR raws is zero. There may be a setting issue with the DPR comparometer. Downloaded DNG files seem fine, once the NR is bumped up.
 
Ray Sachs;125151 I always enjoy his reviews - I can't vouch for the accuracy of his technical analysis but he's one of the few reviewers who I think is a really fine photographer said:
I agree! Ming is a superb photographer. I learn just by looking at the images. And as another poster writes, it's ironic that at his skill level it doesn't matter what gear he uses. Yet he writes gear reviews. This makes sense. He enjoys his tools and I am sure always trying to find new ways to express his vision.
 
I believe the default NR setting for GR raws is zero. There may be a setting issue with the DPR comparometer. Downloaded DNG files seem fine, once the NR is bumped up.

Yeah, I think we've worked this out pretty well since that post. There's a lot of chroma noise in the Ricoh DNG that doesn't show up in the Nikon raws for whatever reason. Once you import them into Lightroom, the default chroma NR of 25% is applied and the chroma noise is essentially gone. At which point its easy to compare luminance noise and they're so similar its very very hard to tell a difference, even at 100%. Ming finds a bit more noise in the Nikon (blue channel I think he said) at 6400 and up, but again its so small as to be insignificant. So my initial concerns about whether the Ricoh could match the Nikon at high ISO seems covered and now I just have to balance out the better color vs better B&W question that Ming raises pretty convincingly....

-Ray
 
After reading both of Thien's reviews, on the GR and GR vs A I feel somewhat disenchanted now. The question is are all of the issues he raises with the GR things that can be repaired with software updates and how quick is Ricoh to attend to these things? Poor color reproduction in my mind is a major issue, that means everything must be post processed if you don't shoot, in this case, in jpg. The A is out of my range, the GR is already a bit beyond it and if I am looking towards the lesser of the evils, low light performance and accurate color IS important to me.

*Note I have already compromised on the lack of zoom and what I consider a rather distant macro 10cm?? that is more like an average close-up, not at all like the IV.
 
I'm sure that, once the GR is learned by the person using it, one can at least mitigate the blown highlights. Not that I'm happy hearing about them. But what bothers me a bit more is the erratic and uncertain auto-focus in low light. Frankly, one reason I pre-ordered an $800, 28mm, f/2.8, non-zoom compact with an APS-C sensor is to get good results in low light. Or perhaps Ming is overstating this issue. The camera was pre-production but Ming thinks the firmware is pretty close to final. He still calls both the GR and the Nikon A "excellent" in his summary. I have to think about this.
 
But what bothers me a bit more is the erratic and uncertain auto-focus in low light. Frankly, one reason I pre-ordered an $800, 28mm, f/2.8, non-zoom compact with an APS-C sensor is to get good results in low light.

Same here and I don't want to wait six months for an update.
 
But what bothers me a bit more is the erratic and uncertain auto-focus in low light. Frankly, one reason I pre-ordered an $800, 28mm, f/2.8, non-zoom compact with an APS-C sensor is to get good results in low light.

Exactly, I'm in the same situation. Already sold my RX100, maybe I should have waited. On the other hand, Ricoh has been pretty responsive bringing out fixes and new features in firmware updates, so there is still hope. I guess I have to wait until I can test the camera in person and make a determination whether it's good enough.

I was really hoping for this review to be conclusive. If I could turn off the screen on the Nikon, the choice would be more difficult. I rented the Nikon for a week, so I know that I could live with its other shortcomings.

-Thomas
 
For me, the question is now whether to cancel my GR pre-order. It's not like I can't buy one down the road if firmware updates make a big difference. Right now, I am leaning strongly in this direction, especially since some unexpected expenses came up this week. And it's not like I can't get decent low-light results with my E-PM2 - or even my GX1 - with the 20mm f/1.7 or 14mm f/2.5. Not as compact as the GR, of course, but workable.
 
For me, the question is now whether to cancel my GR pre-order. It's not like I can't buy one down the road if firmware updates make a big difference. Right now, I am leaning strongly in this direction, especially since some unexpected expenses came up this week. And it's not like I can't get decent low-light results with my E-PM2 - or even my GX1 - with the 20mm f/1.7 or 14mm f/2.5. Not as compact as the GR, of course, but workable.

I was thinking the exact same thing! Or sort of. I'm thinking about just picking up a EPL5 and slapping the 14/2.5 on it as my "small' walk around camera. It would save me a couple of hundreds of dollars over the GR. And definitely a whole lot more over the A.

Alternatively, I've been tempted with the NEX6 recently ... weird temptation that just came out of nowhere!

Or maybe I'll just wait for the pre-order. Gulp!
 
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