kenleewrites in 日本

I was undecided at first, between the Canon G11 and this Ricoh GR Digital III.

Both are excellent cameras, but when I asked myself,

“Which camera would I have more fun with?”

The answer was pretty obvious.

I’ve been a Ricoh fan ever since I bought the R8 almost 3 years ago.

But now I’ve gone hardcore. The GR has a cult following in Japan and I’m now an initiate in the cult of GR. (As if being in the cult of Apple wasn’t enough.)

I’m not going to talk specs and profess of what a technically impossible marvel the camera is or is not. Instead, what I’m going to talk about is how much fun I’ve been having with this camera.

First off, I really like how it feels in my hand.

Although it’s pocketable, I like to hold it. Holding it isn’t such a bad thing too.

A camera in your hand is worth 2 in your pockets. ^^.

I’m not clumsy, so the odds of me dropping (?!?) aren’t very high – haven’t dropped it once… yet.

I do have a modified shoulder strap. I don’t like shoulder straps that takes forever to remove and to put back on.

So I went to Tokyu Hands and looked for some hook-clips. What are there called? I even had a hard time describing it to the store clerk. When he eventually found what I was looking for, I asked him and he said “plastic clip”.

I was looking for something smaller. But these were the smallest I could find.

Do you have a strap on your camera?

I like how the controls are organized on the GR. If you’re in manual, adjusting aperture or shutter speed is just a turn of the dial. Really easy to play around in the respective priority modes. Loosely translates to more room to experiment.

In my opinion, programmed mode is sufficient for most shots. Let the camera churn out the optimum parameters while you just adjust exposure.

The F1.9 28mm prime lens is a thing of beauty. It’s really fast!

Thanks to the wide aperture, this camera works wonders in low light.

It’s a prime lens, so there’s no optical zoom.

If you’re interested in the differences between a prime and a zoom lens, here is a good read. Here is another!

Prime lens are known to teach you how to frame your shots. Because you can’t zoom, you’re made to move closer to or further away from your subject.

From my experience, this is not always a bad thing. Depending on what you’re shooting, moving the camera around will change the angle from which the shot will be taken. This change in angle will show you things that standing still and zooming in/out doesn’t.

If you own a slr or dslr, you simply can’t do without a prime lens. It’s so much fun to shoot with.

Being able to shoot 1cm away from the subject in macro mode is just amazing.

Furthermore, prior to this camera, I never thought that shooting in black and white was so much fun!

There are so much more features on the GR that I’ve yet to explore and experiment with.

It will take time, but I think this is the beginning of a long affair. ^^.

Fun might be subjective – you might not agree with what I see as fun.

But don’t you think camera reviews should included an afterword that talks about whether the camera is fun to use?

Falling in love with this camera was something that I did not expect.

Related posts... maybe:

1. Super-Secret Spy Lens
2. Ricoh GXR
3. Ricoh CX2
4. Ricoh R8
5. Olympus E-P1

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