Ricoh has announced the GXR Mount A12 module today:
Cristian Sorega Photography: Ricoh GXR Mount A12 Announced
Here are some of my thoughts on it.
- The probably biggest news in the press release and another first in digital cameras as far as I am aware are the two shutter methods. A newly developed focal plane shutter (1/4000 sec. to 180 sec.) and electronic shutter (1/8000 sec. to 1 sec.). This is big news in my view and the ability to either use a physical or electronic shutter makes this module unique and very versatile.
- Ricoh is using a custom sensor with very light AA filter and micro lenses optimized for M lenses so it should produce a very good image quality even with wideangle M lenses, this usually poses a problem on the RD1 and also my GF1.
- The MF implementation was a big concern since Ricoh announced the module because it was not very well implemented in their other modules (as you can read in my review of the GXR A12 28mm module). Here Ricoh has again listened to the complaints and feedback and implemented a sort of peaking function which works great on the Sony NEX cameras and enhanced the normal magnification assist so I am very happy to see this being implemented. MF should work very well with this and be even easier than using a RF patch.
- Another great feature is being able to not only to add the lens data in the EXIF information but also read this easy from an SD card, shame it does not look like it can read the lens information from coding on the lens but overall this should not really be a problem if you can store your settings on an SD card and have easy access to them.
- The lens checking device is a great idea, who else other than Ricoh would get the idea for such a simple yet very usefull tool, it should work great for the colapsible Leica lenses which are always a bit of a concern to mount on other cameras.
In addition to what you can read in the press release here are some other interesting details I got from Ricoh.
- The Low ISO 100 setting will be available but will suffer from lower dynamic range.
- In S-mode the camera can raise the ISO when set to Auto or Auto-High.
- You can set if you want the shutter to close or remain open when you power the camera off!
You hear this Panasonic!! I have mentioned this when I first saw the G1 at Photokina and it's still not implemented, Ricoh shows how to do this right.
This sounds great and I can't wait to get one.
I should also get more details from Ricoh in reply to my Q&A with them.