Ricoh Ricoh GR III

@MoonMind, one of the best parts about separating my pro kit from my fun stuff was the ability to justify buying and selling to try things out for fun. It was a lot easier once I didn't have to worry about not having reliable gear for work AND with m4/3 stuff I wasn't talking about swapping out a $2,000+ lens or body. And I was usually pretty good at breaking even.
 
@MoonMind, one of the best parts about separating my pro kit from my fun stuff was the ability to justify buying and selling to try things out for fun. It was a lot easier once I didn't have to worry about not having reliable gear for work AND with m4/3 stuff I wasn't talking about swapping out a $2,000+ lens or body. And I was usually pretty good at breaking even.
David, thanks for that. My "work" gear has actually not so much changed as shifted - with the main thing being the acquistion of the Z6 (while getting rid of all APS-C gear and quite a few lenses), but in principle, the kit is stable. The *only* thing I'm contemplating is actually moving on the D750 - but apart from depreciation, there's no reason to do that quickly: It's a known quantity and works as reliably as ever. I'm just a little surprised how thoroughly the Z6 has taken over as the main workhorse.

The GR III, while clearly being a "nice to have" camera, presents me with a much bigger conundrum: Whenever I pick it up, I'm hooked. Whenever I put it away, I don't seem to miss it. Yet I find it very hard to imagine it not being available to me. No real reasoning involved ...

M.
 
The GR III, while clearly being a "nice to have" camera, presents me with a much bigger conundrum: Whenever I pick it up, I'm hooked. Whenever I put it away, I don't seem to miss it. Yet I find it very hard to imagine it not being available to me. No real reasoning involved ...

M.

Matt, - wow - that is just a perfect description of how I feel about mine. Love it when I shoot with it (simplicity, quickness), but it doesn’t pull me to shoot with it. Maybe if I did a lot of street work, they would help, but it’s mostly used in family/travel settings when I want to go very light. Otherwise, I grab my Sony for “serious” shooting and top IQ.

But, I’m afraid to be without the GR, because when you need/want it, you need/want it.
 
David, thanks for that. My "work" gear has actually not so much changed as shifted - with the main thing being the acquistion of the Z6 (while getting rid of all APS-C gear and quite a few lenses), but in principle, the kit is stable. The *only* thing I'm contemplating is actually moving on the D750 - but apart from depreciation, there's no reason to do that quickly: It's a known quantity and works as reliably as ever. I'm just a little surprised how thoroughly the Z6 has taken over as the main workhorse.

The GR III, while clearly being a "nice to have" camera, presents me with a much bigger conundrum: Whenever I pick it up, I'm hooked. Whenever I put it away, I don't seem to miss it. Yet I find it very hard to imagine it not being available to me. No real reasoning involved ...

M.
I was having a conversation with @Jonathan F/2 about this just the other day. The IR flash assist that Nikon DSLRs and flashes offer is something mirrorless still hasn't been able to replace. It's why if I were still shooting events today I'd still have the DSLRs.
 
I was having a conversation with @Jonathan F/2 about this just the other day. The IR flash assist that Nikon DSLRs and flashes offer is something mirrorless still hasn't been able to replace. It's why if I were still shooting events today I'd still have the DSLRs.
Should have mentioned that, too! My whole lighting system revolves around Nikon at the moment, but I've migrated to third-party lights (Elinchrom and Godox), so I could probably (for the most part) switch camera brands. But it works, and it's very convenient - and the dedicated on-camera flashguns are great, too.

P.S. Carrying the GR III at the moment - I want to get to the bottom of this weird relationship :rolleyes:

M.
 
David, thanks for that. My "work" gear has actually not so much changed as shifted - with the main thing being the acquistion of the Z6 (while getting rid of all APS-C gear and quite a few lenses), but in principle, the kit is stable.
M.


“Work” as in main income...?

If so, may I ask what your job is...?
 
I've had some time to play with the JPEG settings, and tailor them a bit to my liking. One thing I've found is that Positive Film looks more like the GRII if you decrease the saturation by one. The Hi-Contrast B&W mode especially has a customizable filter effect, which I had previously set up to my liking for a sort of Daido Moriyama-esque look, but I sent my camera in for servicing, and when I got it back, the settings were erased, and I hadn't recorded them prior to sending it in. So I fiddled with it some more, and now I have it set to something a bit different from last time, but which I'm pretty happy with. It's more like what I've been shooting and developing with film. Here is what my "filter effect" in Hi B&W is set to:

IMG_20200104_210444.jpg
Join to see EXIF info for this image (if available)


Small changes in these sliders have a pretty big effect. When combined with a few other tweaks, this B&W mode can get pretty filmic in my estimation. I set contrast to +3, sharpness to -2, clarity to -3 and grain to level 1, in addition to whatever other tweaks look good for the specific image, like highlight and shadow contrast levels. The negative sharpness and clarity may seem counterintuitive, but it's how I take the digital "look" out of the image. Here's an example below:

R0000443.JPG
Join to see EXIF info for this image (if available)


The grain effect can get pretty overboard pretty fast, but I like the way level 1 looks. It's not the same as the GRII version of hi-contrast B&W, but I think it's a lot more versatile.
 
@agentlossing Andrew, thanks a lot for that, I really admire you (and others) for your stamina to make the little camera work for you. I struggle a bit, but I may just have a minor revelation that might help (me).

First, let me say that I'm a RAW shooter, so I don't attack the problem by tweaking the JPEG settings, but anyway, I like both the Positive Film and the High Contrast B&W settings as a baseline for the look I'm after, so I have set up two more or less identical modes, one for colour, one for black and white, the rest is done in post. But I agree that there's quite a bit of merit to getting things right in-camera.

The thing I am struggling with the most are the results I get when using multisegment metering - this leads to blown-out highlights far too often, especially if I don't have time to apply exposure compensation. That's actually nothing new - it was the same with the old GR: Bad highlight handling ruined quite a few shots. However, someone on this board (can't remember who, unfortunately) pointed me towards spot metering with highlight protection, and in my first tests, this seems to work really well. Shadow recovery with the GR III's RAW files is very good, too, so things can be adjusted in post without too much trouble - but anyway, most images look quite nice SOOC now.

I have quite high hopes for this approach to work out.

M.
 
Last edited:
Not sure if this has been discussed (I didn't have time to re-read through the thread). But one thing I'm dealing with on the Pen F is that I have to use the Oly Workspace application to get the results I'm seeing from in camera processing. Then export that to a TIFF before importing into Lightroom. I'm hoping that at some point I'll be able to find / create a profile that comes close to the JPeg processing. But until then that's what I have to do in order to get the results I want from my RAWs. I even get the full color wheel control like I was adjusting things in camera.

1578233616850.png


Is there a Ricoh App might help the processing?
 
@agentlossing Andrew, thanks a lot for that, I really admire you (and others) for your stamina to make the little camera work for you. I struggle a bit, but I may just have a minor revelation that might help (me).

First, let me say that I'm a RAW shooter, so I don't attack the problem by tweaking the JPEG settings, but anyway, I like both the Positive Film and the High Contrast B&W settings as a baseline for the look I'm after, so I have set up two more or less identical modes, one for colour, one for black and white, the rest is done in post. But I agree that there's quite a bit of merit to getting things right in-camera.

The thing I am struggling with the most are the results I get when using multisegment metering - this leads to blown-out highlights far too often, especially if I don't have time to apply exposure compensation. That's actually nothing new - it was the same with the old GR: Bad highlight handling ruined quite few shots. However, someone on this board (can't remember who, unfortunately) pointed me towards spot metering with highlight protection, and in my first tests, this seems to work really well. Shadow recovery with the GR III's RAW files is very good, too, so things can be adjusted in post without too much trouble - but anyway, most images look quite nice SOOC now.

I have quite high hopes for this approach to work out.

M.
Highlight weighted metering has been a revelation to me, and technically when you use this metering mode you are already using a sort of "spot" meter, just with the camera automatically selecting the brightest bits for the spot area. As an example of how useful I find it, I walked around some and shot yesterday, which was overcast, admittedly, but once I dialed in a good exposure comp, I only needed to change it for one or two shots. Much as I like shooting manual with a GR, A mode with this metering mode and auto ISO gets there so much faster much of the time.

I typically shoot RAW only, but the results I get determine whether I take it to the computer to do the PP. For simple snapshots like I've been posting in the January thread, I just use the in camera processing. I actually like the grainy look of the high ISO noise, if I treat it just right it looks pretty good to me. But LR and (even more) DXO do a better job with files for sure.
 
Not sure if this has been discussed (I didn't have time to re-read through the thread). But one thing I'm dealing with on the Pen F is that I have to use the Oly Workspace application to get the results I'm seeing from in camera processing. Then export that to a TIFF before importing into Lightroom. I'm hoping that at some point I'll be able to find / create a profile that comes close to the JPeg processing. But until then that's what I have to do in order to get the results I want from my RAWs. I even get the full color wheel control like I was adjusting things in camera.

View attachment 211334

Is there a Ricoh App might help the processing?
Sadly no, nothing put out by Ricoh for approximating the in camera look.
 
I use touch to focus and release a lot too, that's how I typically have the touchscreen set up. I believe the camera still allows you to use it this way with both focus and release even when it's set to snap focus, which gives you two very distinct "AF" modes at the same time (I don't use full press snap - I find jamming the shutter button down at the right pressure and speed is hard to be consistent about, and I think I confuse the camera sometimes trying).

While I'm sure the above photo was developed from RAW on desktop software since you mentioned that's how you're using the files, I feel that both images processed that way and camera JPEG files both show very rich shadows. I think that's one of the strengths of how Ricoh tuned this sensor, so to speak. Shadows feel deep, like there is latent information still there when you can barely see it. I don't know exactly how to describe this, only that I see it a lot in Leica digital files, and coming from M4/3 sensors I could never get quite the look I wanted out of shadows, at least not without some work.
 
While I'm sure the above photo was developed from RAW on desktop software since you mentioned that's how you're using the files, I feel that both images processed that way and camera JPEG files both show very rich shadows.
The image is processed - but from JPEG ("Positive Film" preset), using Polarr; I like how gentle the small changes I usually make to the images are applied by Polarr. In this case, I let the shadows in the foreground drop away on purpose (to accentuate the single leaf in the out-of-focus foreground). But you're right there - the JPEGs don't lag a lot behind the RAW files in terms of latitude, at the very least a lot less so than with other cameras (like the Canon G1X III and the Olympus E-M5 III - both great cameras that produce pleasing JPEGs, but the GR's are more versatile).

Your comparison with the Leica files matches with my own experience - the thing is, the center-weighted metering of the Leicas seems to deliver mostly what I expect, and yes, you definitely have to watch those highlights. Shadows clean up beautifully even if underexposed by several stops (I work down to -3 EV sometimes). The M10 is wonderful that way ... That said, I'd love to have the highlight recovery capabilities of my trusted D750 - that camera makes shooting in any type of light worry-free (even more so than the Z6 - in spite of the I.B.I.S. and objectively better low light performance, except for AF). But I guess you just can't have it all - and it's more important to know how to work your gear than wish for anything different. Carrying the D750 is a no-no in most situations - whereas the GR III can go with me wherever I go.

I'm a lot more at piece now with my having bought the camera - I think I've found a way of using it that is really satisfying. I just need to get round to using it for street/documentary shots, too.

M.
 
Back
Top