It has arrived! A few days ago I bought a lovely condition Ricoh GRD on eBay (right down to the perfect boxes and manuals, which I always find an extra nice surprise!) and with it made a big decision about my future photographic exploits. You see, if you’ve been popping backwards and forwards to methinksperchance.net and the blog this last year you will have probably noticed the photographs and the blog posts spiralling into very small, sporadic fits and starts. Partly to blame is starting my job I’m sure, but in general it has to be said I’ve hit somewhat of a brick wall, photographically speaking. For various reasons – lack of time, lack of commitment etc etc – I’ve really not picked up a camera properly aside from the 4 days in September when I was on the 10CR with James, something that, at the beginning of the new year I am not happy about…
Moving into 2008 I decided that this situation and the negativity that seems to have been part of my photography in recent times – I don’t really know where it’s come from, as I still love photography, but it is there – had to go and instead be replaced with more enthusiasm, more learning and above all, more photographs! I had for a while pondered the idea of taking my XA2 (My 10Cr saviour) to work with me and having an everyday camera, but although the concept was great, the stumbling blocks of developing/posting my HP5 off and scanning the rolls in once they arrived back just seemed too much hassle, even for me and my penchant for film… that penchant making it even more difficult for me to admit that a good digital P&S would be the perfect solution to walk in to 2008 with.
After a good bit of wrangling I decided to go for it, and immediately homed in on that dark horse that is the Fuji F30/31, before gradually spiralling out to cameras like the Sony N1/N2 and, briefly as it was way out of budget, the Panasonic LX2. The big stumbling block with most cameras however – aside from the Fuji – was the noise, or more accurately the way each one handled it’s noise. At ISO 400 the N1 looked as though someone had smeared jam over the lens and, with variations in the style of this noise reduction pretty much every other compact I looked at was the same. This of course drew me back to the F30 (which is phenomenally good in low light for a regular P&S) but, snob that I am I just couldn’t gel with it’s very boxy, silvery, run-of-the-mill looks. I know that it’s the results and not what the camera looks like that matters, but I’ve always been affected by the camera I’m holding. My 20D, my T90, my Salyut, even my Xa2 all have an aura that taps into my subconscious and – sad as it sounds – makes me feel like a “proper” photographer… with this small boost in confidence, (and I hate to admit being so fickle) better photos usually follow. So, here I was, staring at a great camera that took care of all my needs… and I wouldn’t buy it because it was too shiny.
Stuck to know what to do, I decided to have another look around in case by some stroke of fate I’d missed a camera even more perfect than the F30. On a whim I decided to search for Ricoh GRDs on eBay, mainly because before my conversion to a digital everyday camera I had contemplated – well, ok, ” As soon as I get a ‘proper’ job & become solvent I am getting a Ricoh GR1. Guaranteed.” may count as a little bit more than contemplated – a Ricoh GR1, it’s semi-classic analogue father… Imagine my surprise – and the heart palpitations and hyperventilating that soon followed – then, when I found a GRD & incredibly cool hotshoe viewfinder at a price I could stretch to. I almost went bananas…
Dragging myself back to some semblance of sensibleness, I popped over to dpreview to check out the specs, the overall opinion and, most importantly, how it performed in the example shots. It was here that I realised that, despite it performing “worse” and costing more than the Fuji F30, I was going to have to have this camera. I say worse in inverted commas, because although the Ricoh GRD sports some quite extensive noise (especially at high ISOs) compared to the Fuji, the noise is lovely. I love grain in film and I’m very finicky when it comes to digital noise – I’ve never seen any digital noise that even comes close to a nice shot in HP5 – but I like my 20D @ 400ISO and I liked the almost completely unprocessed noise from the Ricoh – it was a close to film as I could possibly have wanted in a digital P&S, and I was sold on it all over again.
The Ricoh – and, luckily, a nice 2GB Sandisk Ultra II SD (to match my 2GB Sandisk Ultra II CF, sad or what!?) – arrived this morning and I have been nothing but pleasantly surprised the more I use it. Little concepts like alternative uses for the digital zoom button if you decide to turn it off in the settings, jog dials like D/SLRs which can even be configured depending on which way you like to turn them to go up in values, and quick-menus that can be customised to access the things you deem most important all add up to a camera that feels like it has had oodles of thought put into it.
The next step is of course to stop waxing lyrical about it’s design and how it feels and get out with it and take some photos, and with an aura like this cameras, that isn’t going to be hard…
