Ricoh GRD II arrived

The courier dropped a parcel on my doorstep this morning, the new Ricoh GRD II.

It was immediately out of the box, battery on charge and beckoning me to get out and take some photos.

Unfortunately the day job got in the way and I'm hoping to get out tomorrow and start the process of evaluation and writing a mini review.

First impressions are, its small, black, has a very solid feel, seems quite responsive, DNGs are large (only 100 on a 2Gb SD card), IQ looks very good, noise is surprisingly low (up to about 400 ISO) and it has a wealth of usable and well thought-out features.

No doubt about it, this will be going everywhere with me over the next few months!

Given the DNG filesize, I decided to order a 8Gb Sandisk SDHC and will be snapping away liberally in no time.

As my review begins to take shape, I'll post up some links to DNGs, for those who may be interested.

Some say its the 5D of compacts, I must confess it's looking that way!

John_Nevill said:

First impressions are, its small, black, has a very solid feel, seems quite responsive, DNGs are large (only 100 on a 2Gb SD card), IQ looks very good, noise is surprisingly low (up to about 400 ISO) and it has a wealth of usable and well thought-out features. .............

Some say its the 5D of compacts, I must confess it's looking that way!

Click to expand...

Congrats John,

The immediate question would be how does it compare with other wide angle capable cameras like the Canon G9 or any corresponding darling you know of that shoots RAw and can fit in one's pocket.

Asher

Asher,

The GRD II having a fixed 28mm lens obviously isn't as dexterous as the G9, but it looks very sharp corner to corner, negligible vignetting, no CA and nice and contrasty.

The ISO 80 and 100 DNGs are extremely detailed, show good gradation, albeit with a tad of noise. But let's put it into context, this is a 10mp compact with 1/1.75" CCD, amazing!

Edit: Forgot to mention, the G9 only goes to 35mm!

Here's a test image from the GRD II, ISO 80, f/4, auto exposure. No adjustments in LR, straight 640px conversion.



The DNG can be found here, be gentle with the bandwidth its 14.4MB.

I've started pulling together some images to see how the GRD II performs and was looking at it's rather unique noise characteristics.

I can now see why the GRD's are becoming favourites amongst B&W shooters.

Take a look at this 2x crop taken at 1600 ISO. It's almost painterly, with somewhat irregular noise patterns. Fascinating!

Just started to go through my GRD II images from New York last weekend and thought I'd post a few.

First off a night shot at 1/125s, f/2.4, ISO400, -0.7EV



Second, a silhouette under central park bridge, 1/30s. f/4, ISO154, -0.3 EV



Third, Jumping the lights on Broadway, 1/500s, f/2.8, ISO100. -0.7EV

Part two.....

Grand Central station, 4s, f7.1, ISO 80



A cliché Empire State, 1/1150s, f/5, ISO100, -0.7EV



Finally, Ground Zero, 1/1150s, f/5.6, ISO100, -0.7EV

Hi John

What a fabulous set of pictures.. amazing what you can do with a small pocketable camera. Just goes to prove that you don't need to go "loaded for bear" to get some terrific shots Did you shoot these in RAW or just JPG?

John

John_Nevill said:

Third, Jumping the lights on Broadway, 1/500s, f/2.8, ISO100. -0.7EV

Click to expand...

I like the images. The above one (I initially thought it was a one-legged man hopping across) has a Henri Cartier-Bresson kind of quality about it, a bit like:

.

Well done, it was a productive trip in multiple ways.

Bart

Nice images John!

Many thanks guys.

I really wanted to test how diverse I could be with just a fixed lens. I must thank Asher for kickstarting this approach with his 5D and 50mm philosophy.

It was a real challenge, yes the GRD II has its limitations and I've found most of them. Most of the shots have had little PP, apart from toning and cropping. All were shot in raw(dng).

Bart, I'm not sure about putting my images is the HCB class, but it does share similarities.

What I liked about New York is the timeless quality of the buildings and streets. OK they aren't aged Norman castles, but one can get a feel for 20s/30s. Ellis island was thoroughly interesting, I even found my namesake on the wall.

Wouldn't it be great to go back to the pre war New York era with a camera of sorts....I digress!

Did I miss using my dSLR?, of course I did. I saw so many interesting shapes, shadows and light patterns, I wish I had the 70-200mm at times. But there's always a next time.

Now to finish the edits.

Having owned Ricoh’s new GRD II for just over a month and shot well ~1000 images with it, I've finally got round to writing a hands on review of this unique little compact camera.


I initially thought I would publish a few pages, however it quickly grew to 20 odd pages, so I have since packaged it as a PDF file and made it available as a download - Ricoh GRD II Review.

Feel free to question and comment on any aspect.

I finally finished the initial image edits of my weekend break in New York with the GRD II.

Feel free to browse my New York gallery

C&C welcome!

This camera is far better than I imagined.

Thanks for all the sharing.

You New york B&W picture is exceptional and Bart's apt reflection on Bresson. im post #9 above, is a great educational point. Someone with a zoom camera might very well have not gotten this vision! A fixed lens calibrates the brain so that it extends though the lens.


I personally believe that such fine lens compacts are going to take a progressively important part of the market and quality trumps pixel/zoom marketing mania. Good job. We thirst for more embedded images.

Asher