Ricoh GR Digital camera review
December 04, 2005First impressions
Firmware 1.08 (updated from 1.04)
The first impression when I took the camera out of box was—wow, what a nice build quality! And it was smaller and lighter than I imagined from pictures that I have seen on the Internet.
After playing with the camera a bit, my initial impression is that it is a mixed bag. Especially firmware (in camera software) seems to be “work in progress”. Price is too high for a camera with these issues/lacking features.
Following is the list things that I have noticed when playing with the camera. I’ll update the list as I use the camera more.
Physical construction
As already said, seems great at first. However after some use I have complains about poor buttons. Rear buttons, especially arrows, give very little feedback, are too flat and recessed, so they are difficult to press gently. In contrary, the rear ADJ wheel/button is like from another planet—it’s button function is deep and feels a bit cheap (rough). Shutter release button is also not for my taste—too deep play in phase 1 (focus).
LCD screen is quite poor, very reflective. Can’t compete with Sony’s matte screens.
Autofocus motor sound is pretty annoying and noticeable, high-pitched “prrrr” sound.
There is NO rotation sensor that is common in most digicams today.
Nice very small battery charger for 110-240V.
Leica’s 24mm external viewfinder gives pretty accurate framing. The frame-lines are somewhere between 24 and 28mm, but amazingly usable on this camera.
Functions/firmware
Focus in “SPOT AF” mode is slower than in “MULTI AF” mode. It does not lock very well indoors (dimmer light). Usually spot focusing has been better than multi in other cameras that I have used.
Now this “feature” steals the show: If “AF AUX. LIGHT” is ON (default setting), the red focusing aid lamp will be lit to aid focus when there is less light, but on all cases the focus is much slower than when “AF AUX. LIGHT” is OFF. You read me right, in usual semi-dim indoor situation, focusing is slower with focusing aid lamp than without it. You’ll hear long “prrrr” focusing motor noise but when you switch the light off, you’ll have much quicker focus, something like “pr” or “prr”. Perhaps the light will help in total darkness, though. :P
“ISO: AUTO” mode is… I don’t know… amazing? Amazingly stupid? Basically it does not work well, because it only chooses up to 200 (?). User’s Manual comes to help here: "In Wide-angle Zoom mode, when the ISO Sensitivity is set to Auto, equivalent to ISO125 with flash or ISO60-160 without flash." But, this camera has no zoom!? Just writing fault from another Caplio camera manual? But the question about how the “ISO: AUTO” mode is supposed to work still remains. I’d like to see a menu setting where I can select what is the lower shutter speed until it will choose next ISO, something like 1/15 seconds or so.
In “ISO: AUTO” mode you actually have no any info at what ISO your picture was taken. When you choose manual ISO setting, you’ll see it on screen and for taken pictures it is also displayed. But when in “ISO: AUTO” mode, there is no actual ISO number displayed for taken pictures.
“FOCUS: MF” ie. manual focus is just something completely different that I imagined I’ll get. What you get is an on screen “loupe” that helps you to focus by arrow keys. What you don’t get is distance scale in meters/feets to preset distances like 1m or 2m. There is separate “FOCUS: SNAP” mode that is preset to 3m and infinity mode, but I’d like to prefocus to 2m. Basically you can focus manually but you have no clue about current focus point in meters, you just have on screen “loupe” that is supposed to tell you what is in focus and what is not. This implementation has little use in *that* kind of camera.
Pressing “ADJ” wheel/button will show list of white balance presets and list of ISO values. While you can scroll front wheel to continuously loop through ISO list (when on last value, choosing “next” will jump to start of the list), in the white balance list it will not loop, ie. if you reach the end of the list, pressing “next” will not jump to start of the list but you’ll need to “reverse” back to start one by one. From usability point of view, all menus and lists should be looping (see Panasonic), so it is easy to get back to start of the list from the end by pressing “next”.
It is NOT possible to switch off shutter sound. It is a sound file imitating shutter of “real” camera. Update: I was wrong about this. It can be done under VOL. SETTINGS menu by turning volume off.
Color balance of image you see on LCD in live preview and final images are different. Live view is warmer, more realistic color balance but final images have pretty strong lilac color cast.
LCD screen does not reflect actual exposure very well, you may end up pictures that are a lot of brighter or darker.
There is NO flash compensation.
For USB connectivity with a computer there are 2 modes, “ORIGINAL” and “MASS STORAGE”. The first one requires Ricoh WIA drivers to be installed to download images from the camera to computer. The latter is standard USB mass storage mode that does not require any drivers to be installed and the camera will be accessible using a drive letter in Windows Explorer. However, the mass storage computer connectivity mode is read-only, that means you can see and download images from camera, but can’t delete them. Also, to update camera’s firmware you’ll need to switch to “ORIGINAL” mode and that requires Ricoh driver to be installed.
When macro mode is active and you switch to image playback mode using Playback button, then return from image playback mode to shooting mode, macro mode is not active any more.
It is not possible to switch LCD screen completely off. There is so called “Synchro-Monitor mode” when LCD is off until you press the shutter button, then the display is switched on until shot has been taken. It is a nice feature, however, when using external viewfinder it would be helpful to switch LCD off completely. Imagine taking pictures in dark room using external viewfinder display switched “off” and each time you half-press the shutter button your face will be lit for some time by light from LCD, disturbing other people and indeed telling them that you are just taking a picture.
There is dedicated “SCENE" mode in the mode dial. So far the scenes you can take are “TEXT MODE” (can take black & white TIFF file as photocopy of text) and “RECORD SOUND” (records WAV file with unlimited length but low sound level to record ambient sounds properly). Does this kind of functions really need a separate mode dial entry (on *this* camera)?
If you leave your camera in RECORD SOUND scene mode and turn it off, then the next time you turn it on again, the lens will be extended to shooting position and then right away the lens will be moved back to the camera body, after what your sound recording screen is presented. Why move the lens in this mode at all if it is not used? It would be nice that the lens remains in the body all the time when the camera is started in RECORD SOUND mode, making it easier to use as a “tape recorder”.
These are my early observations. IMO the list it too long for a camera that pretends to be “semi-professional” and useful tool. I can’t comment about image quality since I have not used it that much. However, early impressions are that it is still one of these “crappy digitals with tiny 8MP sensors”, although there is much less chromatic aberrations and lens distortion than other small digitals (very good lens but poor sensor). I’ll continue to add my findings to this list.
Update: December 8, 2005
Manual focus mode FOCUS: MF does not save your focus setting between sessions, so if you switch off your camera, the focus is in infinity the next time you start the camera.
There is also a software bug in FOCUS:MF mode, first complained by Ib Bentzen in dpreview.com forum—the camera allows you to focus “past infinity" rendering pictures blurry. Here is what happens: 1) Start the camera in FOCUS: MF mode, don’t press any other buttons, just take a picture. It will be sharp. 2) Now try this: press Left Arrow button to display manual focus scale, you see slider is in infinity position. Press Zoom In button. Even you seem to be in the infinity position you hear the focusing motor to move the lens further (it only happens once and for short time). Slider display will not change, it is still in infinity. Now take another picture, it will be blurry, although the slider still displays infinity. If you try to Zoom Out a bit, the slider will still be on the infinity position, but now you can again take sharp picture.
The USB cable supplied with the camera is rather poor—it is rigid and not flexible. The camera is not heavy, so the cable will easily turn your camera “face down” or “back down” with it rigidity if the camera is standing on its bottom and you are trying to connect the other end to computer. Learn from Sony.
File writing to memory card is very slow: fine JPEG takes about 3+ seconds and RAW about 12+ with Sandisk Ultra II SD card. Some people have reported that there is some 30% improvement when using certain ultra high speed Panasonic-branded cards, however, it is still painfully slow and shows that the problem is not card but the camera. Even my Ultra II card is able to save about 10 MB/sec, so RAW could potentially save in about 1-2 seconds instead of 12.
SCENE: TEXT MODE allows you to capture 1-bit TIFF file (black and white with no shades), like a photocopy. Ricoh propbably never thought about this but that mode can be used to make some pretty cool artistic images. You can play with DENSITY setting, selecting DEEP will show some more detail. Unortunately in that mode you can’t select 3:2 aspect ratio, only 4:3. I would like to use 3:2 in that mode as well. Other point is that 3:2 looks more like A4 format paper than 4:3 format, if that scene mode is for copying text and documents.
Update: December 12, 2005
I’m now backing up some of my rants with pictorial evidence.
Histogram problem. Camera in Av mode, ISO 100, IMG SET: NORMAL, PHOTOMETRY: MULTI. The first image of series shows live preview of the scene. I have applied pretty high (-2 EV) exposure compensation to avoid overexposing the sky. Histogram looks OK, highlights not clipped. Now the second image shows the same scene but now I have pressed shutter release half way down, so exposure is locked and shutter speed is calculated. Histogram is similar, so I can now take the picture. However, the final image comes out about 1,5 EV overexposed compared to the initial preview and locked histogram. It is possible that the camera shows preview histogram without taking into account image processing settings selected in menus and thus the final image will be that much different. But that big difference is unacceptable, IMO, and these params should be taken into account, et least roughly, if there is not enough processing power in the camera.
Inconsistent exposure in Av mode. Next series shows inconsistent exposure in Av mode with different ISO values. Camera on tripod, IMG SET: NORMAL, PHOTOMETRY: MULTI, compensation -1,3EV. I only changed ISO setting between the shots, however, they still look pretty different. The camera produced high ISO images are overexposed compared to low ISO images, ISO 800 and 1600 images have the same shutter speed.
Update: January 6, 2006
Just short update from Morocco. I really dont like the GR and got also Panasonic DMC-LX1 as replacement. Picture quality is actually better with GR (more film like, less color noise, more detail) but LX1 is not so erratic and I can get more consitent results (white balance, exposure). I also tested the GR with Panasonic 1GB Pro High Speed SD card and file saving got only marginally faster. Handling of LX1 is actually pretty good. The good thing is that both cameras actually use exactly the same battery and charger. I also like 16:9 aspect ratio and very detailed video, although there is very big banding issue when you shoot to the sun.
Update: April 20, 2006
Now have used the Panasonic DMC-LX1 for a few months in Africa and the camera is better than I expected (except high ISO, but IS function compensates that somewhat).