By Levent

I’ve been using the Ricoh GR II for a little over two weeks now and I must say that it is an excellent camera. For me the primary thing that I needed was a pocket camera with a fast wide-angle lens, easy to use manual controls (shutter speed, ISO, f-Stop, etc.) that can shoot in low light and in the RAW format.

The Canon G9 was way too big and bulky and although it had a nice ISO dial on the top of the camera, I didn’t like the fact that I had to cycle between the f-Stop and Shutter speed on the menu to change the settings.

The Leica D-Lux 3 (also sold under the Panasonic name as the LX-2) was about the same size as the Ricoh. It is an excellent camera, but I really did not like the joystick system for the manual settings and it lacked a hot shoe, an optical viewfinder and you could not attach a filter to the lens.

The Ricoh has an excellent 28mm wide angle lens with very little distortion. This lens does NOT zoom, but for my uses this is unnecessary. Although, I do have the option of attaching a converters that can make the lens into a 21mm or a 40mm. With the addition of a ($50) lens hood adaptor I could add a circular polarizer filter. The processing engine in the Ricoh camera along with the fast f 2.4 lens allows for excellent photos in low light and at high ISO levels. The camera takes about four seconds to record a RAW file to the SD card. But because of a memory buffer, you can instantly take a second RAW photo as the first photo is still being written to the SD card. The Ricoh has a hot shoe, which allows you to mount an flash unit or some excellent optical viewfinders above the lens. And finally, for me the best part of the Ricoh is the little control wheel in the front and the control lever in the back of the camera. This allows me (during the Manual Mode) to instantly control the f-Stop with my right index finger as the thumb controls the Shutter Speed (in the same manner as a Nikon DSLR).

All in all, this is a great pocket camera that has some very professional features. It DOES have a full auto mode, but it does NOT have the many program modes of the consumer cameras such as landscape, portrait, sports, etc.

This is a very expensive pocket camera, that is capable of a very fine image. Because of its manual controls I would recommend it to anyone who loves the technical aspects of photography.

But in the hands of a beginner it is perhaps too much of a camera and I think it would be a bad camera to give to your grandmother, unless of course your grandmother was Annie Leibovitz.

By Coronet Blue (California)

This is a very nice camera, with a ton of little tweaks that show Ricoh has again listened to users. But the image quality is virtually identical to the previous model so it’s hard to justify the price.

The camera is beautifully made and in this respect, essentially identical to the GR-1 film cameras. The flash on mine isn’t loose although it is a manual pop-up which is a mixed blessing, in my opinion.

As with the original GRD, the lens is quite good. There are cheaper cameras with zoom lenses that are sharper in the center but if they go down to a 28mm equivalent, the corners are awful, whereas the performance on this Ricoh stays good, right to the corners. Most point and shoots solve the poor quality/wide angle problem by not going there, which is probably just as well. Consumers, by and large, don’t know the difference, as they think they will need a telephoto to shoot a charging Rhino vs. needing a wide angle to photograph a birthday party in a small room.

How’s the image quality? Identical to the original GR-Digital but with one advantage: the newer camera writes RAW files with reasonable speed and since RAW does give a bit of extra detail, you could say the GRD II is better in that it makes it practical to shoot RAW. No, the GR Digital II does not give the quality of the GR-1, but the GR-1 is a film camera. An iPod doesn’t sound as good as a McIntosh stereo system but we’re in the digital world now. Three things matter: (1) convenience, (2) convenience and (3) convenience. Things like lenses optimized for a specific focal length, and tripods are so yesterday.

GRD II feature changes:

Good
–Writes RAW in a few seconds
–Buffer allows writing a second RAW immediately after first (but not a third)
–Fabulous new LCD, extremely bright and clear
–Battery retaining clip
–Two, top-mounted “my settings” for instant recall of personal settings.
–Faster preview.
–Preview auto rotates shots taken vertically
–Terrific, easy to access menus. Even better than previous GRD. Faster, too.
–”High ISO” options to cap off maximum ISO (helpful with noise).

Bad
–Price.
–Same (small) sized sensor as previous camera creates unsolvable high-ISO noise problem.
–Focus sometimes slower than on original GR Digital (different mechanism–see photos of front of cameras)

Neutral
–Auto leveling indicator. Works, but only for rotation (easily corrected in Photoshop). Does not indicate if camera is tilted up/down or if parallel to subject.
–Skew correction. Believe it or not, camera attempts to straighten tilted subjects but usually says “recognition failed”.
–Switchable noise reduction. Haven’t tried this.
–Manual, pop up flash. Can’t go off by accident but also slows you down when you need it.
–On screen, depth-of-field indicator. Clever idea but I’m not sure I see the need.
–Wheel on rear of camera replaced by spring loaded switch. A wash, as far as I can tell.
–10 megapixels vs. 8.

The fact is, these days, most people WON’T buy a camera with a fixed focal length lens, no matter how good so don’t expect one from Canon or Nikon anytime soon. Olympus tends to be a wild card so you never know. Sigma has promised one but with their quality, I’d be very cautious.

It should be obvious that this is not an all-purpose camera, nor is it for everyone. I wouldn’t have bought it, but I found I used my first GR Digital much more than my Elph or even my SLRs. Its fun! Unless you are going to use film, you won’t get better quality with a wide angle in any camera close to this size.

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