Fun with Ricoh GRD

Thanks for these. It's good to be reminded that LA and Times Square have a lot in common, except the weather.:tongue:

I like the New York's Finest with the bowling pin and the lion mask the best. I'm sure you all had great fun!

 

Thanks for posting Amin. Lovely B & W and nice colour. I'm tempted to get a GRDIII rather than the Canon S95/LX5 as a back up cam but not many people post colour pictures and that's what I want to see! I know it does great black and whites :smile: I used to have the GX100 and loved the realistic colours I got from it, no oversaturated greens and blues to be seen.

 

Nice sharp high quality images!!! Some of these compacts can show DSLR's a thing or two!! Nice to see images from other cameras that are not so popular. Nice one!!

 

Nice pics! One of the things the original GRD is, is definitely fun. I sold mine to get a E-P1 which is much more versatile, but I love the GRD. Too bad the GXR+28mm module is way beyond my budget!

 

Impressive - and thanks for adding in your beautiful color shot - as well as for that link!

 

Thanks Amin, the tulips look amazing! The colours are very nice too, particularly the greens. Your pics have done nothing to quell my desire for this camera  ( I'm watching one on ebay at the moment!

 

Last year Ricoh Europe gave me a GRDIII in Novmber and I used this little beast in Cyprus. Shooting digital with a D300 the first impression was "Hmmmm Toys'R Us"...cam - light, small, but.....it's a streetmachine and a tiger. The menues had been too many for my old brain so I tried to get through the dungeons of setting points.....a X1 compare to the Ricoh is a real Simpson's cam.....
However, here a few pics:

Ricoh GRD3 - a set on Flickr

For me it was hard to shoot cats, trees and other non-street-stuff but I wanted to deliver some pics for the gentlemen in the office.....The cam is back but i miss it and only the fact that I'm so in love with my Pen the resistance is big enough to hold my money in my pocket....
If possible try to get the book about the GRDIII from an afficionado Christian Sorega in the UK, his pics and the explanations about the features is worth reading, here his blog - phantastic:

Ricoh GR-Diary

Cheers
Bernd

 

Just some personal favorites of mine-


_1083626ACR by Steve Lang, on Flickr


_1083674ACR by Steve Lang, on Flickr

View attachment 31155
_1083429 by Steve Lang, on Flickr


_0018254ACR by Steve Lang, on Flickr


_0018412ACR by Steve Lang, on Flickr


_0018282ACR by Steve Lang, on Flickr


_0018088ACR by Steve Lang, on Flickr

Seeing all these images reminds me of what a great camera the GRD was for capturing day-to-day moments...sigh. Makes me wonder if I should go back to it, I had switched to an E-P1 which is great in its own way, but still. We have a Canon Rebel as our general family cam, so for budgetary purposes I only keep 1 compact at a time for myself.

The E-P1 has it all over the old GRD in terms of technical image quality. But for candid snaps the GRD is great, and I don't mind noise level at ISO 400, or even 800 in B&W. The JPEG processing in this cam is just so unique, nothing else is like it. The high ISO images simply look like heavy noise grain, of course detail is lost because of it but subjectively the images don't look digitally harsh or smudged, they just look like heavily pushed film. I tell myself the E-P1 is better for getting great quality images (and IBIS is great), but it's not like I'm printing a bunch of 8 x 10's anyway.

I wish I could meld the GRD I and GRD III together into a super GRD, it would have stuff like fast lens, adjustable snap focus mode, and selectable custom modes of GRD III, with JPEG processing of GRD I. I would love a GXR but its beyond my budget right now.

 

Thanks Steve. I can see why you miss it. I really like the tricycle picture.

 

I can see why you are feeling nostalgic, Steve, just by looking at these photos.

I didn't know much of anything about these Ricoh cameras until I came on to Serious Compacts, however the more I have read and the more I see of photographs taken with these cameras the more they intrigue me. Each one of these pictures stands beautifully on its own. Have to agree about that tricycle shot - love the intensity and movement...but your first also pulls at me as do the others.

You could add that one of your family lying by the couch with Santa Claus and the Christmas tree lights to Peter's thread if you felt like it - Christmas past is AOK.

 

Thanks for the kind comments guys. Also, LOL at silverbullet who had a somewhat similar PEN vs. Ricoh conundrum...

One more unique aspect of the original GRD is that it has both phase and contrast AF (later GRD's don't.) You can actually just use the phase detection by doing a complete full press of the shutter (essentially no AF lag), and the phase detection will get the AF right more often than not (also aided by small sensor DOF of course.)

The startup time of the camera is not fast by modern standards (but not that bad either), but you can easily turn off the LCD and snap pics with the phase detection and estimating field of view (I am pretty good at doing this with 28mm.) With the small size and discrete styling, no one knows you're even taking pics (except my kids who have gotten too smart.)

 

The GRD III is the small sensor compact that I have with me the most. I have a slew of others including the Canon G10 and S90, and yet I keep picking up the GRD III. I love the way it renders colour, the sharpness of its lens, and the feel in my hand.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/archiver/4504096830/" title="GRD III - The Time Traveller by Archiver, on Flickr"> "340" height="500" alt="GRD III - The Time Traveller" /></a>

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/archiver/4011012524/" title="GRD3 - State Library 1 by Archiver, on Flickr"> "500" height="375" alt="GRD3 - State Library 1" /></a>

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/archiver/4011014024/" title="GRD3 - Strike by Archiver, on Flickr"> "500" height="375" alt="GRD3 - Strike" /></a>

 

I don't blame you! So many great cameras - and this one is another that keeps grabbing me with its crystal clear clarity! I have to keep repeating to myself "less is more"...

So Archiver if you had to choose just one of these small compacts to keep, which one would it be? Or is that too difficult a choice to make?

 

Well, first I have to stop myself from buying a GXR with the new 28mm module! The fact that the X100 is another six months away is helping with that.  

For better or worse, I currently have these small sensor cameras:

- Canon S45
- Canon S70
- Casio EX-Z750
- Fuji F30
- Canon G7
- Canon G10
- Canon S90
- Ricoh GRD III

If I absolutely had to make a choice and keep just one, it would most likely be the GRD III. Why? Even though the S90 is more versatile, has zoom, creates much better video, it doesn't have the same kind of feel or image quality as the GRD III. I find that the Ricoh produces images that are somehow richer and more natural, even with heavy PP, than the S90. Every Canon compact from the G7 onwards creates more 'plasticky' images than those previous. Even when I process the S90 raws in Lightroom, they don't have the same kind of richness or malleability as the Ricoh DNG's.

Don't even try to ask me to choose from my large sensor cameras!  

 

Appreciate your answer, Archiver. I'm glad you really don't have to have just one.

 

A very macro GRD3 shot

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/8076775@N02/5568682161/" title="R0014607crop by meaning_of_light, on Flickr"> "1024" height="785" alt="R0014607crop" /></a>

 

Very  , Will.

 

Thanks

It's the finger grip part of a Muji biro in case anyone is curious.