Ricoh GR now just announced, The Phoblographer published the first impression of Ricoh GR camera.
From Phoblographer:
Wow–that’s all I had to say when I got out of the meeting. Ricoh’s cameras have always had a small following of respect and this should significantly increase that level of followers. The older film cameras are still spoken about in some street photography circles, and this new refresh should satisfy a lot of shooters.
Ricoh GR Price:
The price for Ricoh GR is $799.95.
Ricoh GR Specs:
- 16MP APS-C sized sensor with no low pass filter
- 28mm equivalent field of view due to the fixed prime lens
- f2.8 aperture to f16
- 1/4000th to 300 seconds
- ISO 100-25,600 native
- SD card storage
- 4fps shooting
- 1080p HD video
- Release Date: Late May, 2013
Ricoh GR Features:
Build Quality
The Ricoh GR is built exceptionally solid–upon first holding we thought that it was nearly on par with the X100s in terms of ruggedness. The camera does not feel heavy and it conforms to the hand quite well. I can personally imagine shooting around in the streets of NYC with this camera using a Diana Flash in the shoe to capture street scenes.
Ease of Use
The Ricoh GR is, for the most part, very straight forward. We found it easiest to operate in aperture priority because of the fact that there is only one exposure dial on the camera. The camera has lots of menus in the same way and fashion that previous Ricoh cameras have had. However, they’re extremely simple to navigate despite there being lots of them.
Autofocus
We saw this camera in an extremely dimly lit bar in midtown Manhattan. The autofocus wasn’t the strongest in this lighting, but I’ve surely seen better. However, this was a prototype that was nearly fine–and Ricoh stated that the firmware wasn’t the final version.
Image Quality
We spent our time with a prototype of the camera, and so we couldn’t put a card in the camera to bring images home. However, the image quality that we saw wasn’t too bad on the back of the LCD screen. Due to there being no low pass filter, lots of detail was clearly visible in areas with specular highlights (like when capturing an image of candles.)
