greetings and aloha !
Drum Roll Please ! Introducing a familiar face, reincarnated a few times, each incarnation looking similar with sensor sizes getting larger and more dynamic, the compact Ricoh Pentax GR. (cheers from the crowd!) Here to share first impressions, while I won’t be going into too much details on the specs, instead will be focusing on the usability and real life making photographs situations.
Build quality solid with minimal toggles and buttons. Worked flawlessly over the two weeks working with this compact camera. First frame above, selfie. camera worked quick on focus indoors straight out of camera w/ no photoshop adjustments as all images i’m displaying. Below is the camera, rather small compared with the pocketwizard on it. by the way, i shot some tests of 1/2000 flash sync w/ the Pocketwizard, wish i had more time to make some outdoor portraits. ricoh company link
Moving on to the hands on. the footprint of the camera, very compact to carry around. In addition, the camera turns on in an instant and is ready to use without any delay. This is especially helpful when making photographs of a 3-year old or making images of spontaneous street scenes. Above, camera focused on the middle with window light coming from my back, focus was spot on. 46MB files not bad for a point & shoot pocket sized camera.
Overall the ergonomics facilitate one hand operation and quick snaps. All controls laid out intuitively and even though I didn’t read the manual, the camera is user friendly, just by fiddling around was able to navigate and use camera effectively. Above image as we’re going thru a car wash, great back light metering, camera set on Program, metering well with highlights intact without being blown out. definite plus here !
Above image, i darkened the sky a little.
One ‘con’ is the lowlight focusing with the camera searching. Maybe the engineers could build in a small LED light. Easy fix.
Exposures were spot on allowing the photographer to fine tune exposure on the fly by using the up/down rear toggle on the rigt hand side with your thumb while still being poised for image making.
The rear screen is exceptionally sharp, almost sharper than my nikonD800, allowing the user to assess composition and focus.
Conclusion, great camera, great design with above average imaging. I would put it into the ‘buy’ category, especially when you don’ t want to schlep your five-pound camera around your neck and need images that you can print. Speaking of prints, I have personally seen shows in the Ricoh galleries in Tokyo’s Ginza up to over 5-foot by 8-foot prints, and that was the previous series of Ricoh GR. This is the latest ricoh GR that the prints even larger could be done ! have fun ! thanks for reading thru ! mahalo !
Corylum's Photo Blog 