5 Frames with the new Ricoh GRIII – by Stuart Andrews

Like many of you, I have been on a fairly tortuous and at times expensive (and weighty) journey with cameras. For me, this was largely resolved last year with the purchase of a good secondhand Leica MP and a 35mm Summicron lens. I say largely resolved because I like to carry a camera most of the time and whilst the MP is good for most things it is still fairly bulky and generally hopeless in low light.

My solution was to get a Ricoh GR, but since the 3rd version was anticipated I waited until it came to market. I have no use for a flash and the fact that it is smaller and higher resolution than its predecessor was enough for me.

I have to stress at this point that this isn’t intended as a camera review, but really an excuse to share some photos from a recent factory visit in West London.

Anyway, the main problem for me with digital is the availability of too many options. This time I have taken the deliberate step to set just three programme modes which can be accessed simply with the top dial. These are two high resolution black and white settings in aperture priority for normal and low light conditions ,and then a standard aperture priority setting. They all have the option of zone focusing which works really well.

I’ve had it for two weeks now and it hasn’t really left my jacket pocket. It came in particularly handy the other week on a visit to the Brompton Bike Factory in West London and the results are provided below. These are all taken as jpeg’s in a normal high resolution black and white settings and without any post production processing in lightroom.

I have to say the camera is quite good fun to use and this is particularly the case when you go with the design and use touch focusing on the back screen. I think it takes a decent picture, it is very dinky in the hand and really doesn’t draw a great deal of attention.

It isn’t prefect as it isn’t cheap, it is a bit fiddly to set up and it suffers quite markedly with missing focus in low light. However, if needed, you can overcome the latter issue with a bit of zone focusing.

So, so far so good! I hope you liked the pictures too.

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