Ricoh GR Digital III

I decided to pull the trigger on a Ricoh GR Digital III for around $150 on Ebay. Currently, I use my Samsung S9+ to fill the day-to-day point-and-shoot role, while my Canon 700D (T5i) is my primary camera. But, ahead of a New Orleans trip coming up, I decided I wanted an actual camera to fill the point-and-shoot role.

Canon Powershot

I used to have an old Canon Powershot that fit comfortably in my pocket and went with me everywhere. I don’t recall the model, though I believe it was an SX, and I no longer have the camera. Moreover, I rather unfortunately lost all of the images taken on that device save for the few that were posted to various social media accounts over the years.

I over-saturated all of my photos and processed the JPGs so many times that the photos are almost unrecognizable at this point. The camera was purchased right after I separated from the military and right before I went to Afghanistan to contract. So, most of the photos I took during that time were of my travels in Kuwait, Dubai, Afghanistan, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, and Korea.

 

 

Smartphone Cameras

I was pretty later to the smartphone game and didn’t purchase my first smartphone until I moved back to Korea in 2012. I bought a Galaxy S2, about 3 months before the S3 came out, and the image quality on that camera seemed roughly equivalent to my Canon.

 

Needless to say, at this point I began using my smartphone as a day-to-day point-and-shoot camera, and my Canon saw less and less use. Eventually, I would move across the world (again) to 2 states and three homes before I regained an interest in photography. And that brings us to today…

Ricoh GR Digital III Initial Impressions

The Ricoh GRD III was released before my old Canon, but I believe it cost quite a bit more than my Canon did at the time. The image quality, to my eyes, is not as good as the Canon was but the images have a different feel to them. I actually enjoy the images produced by the GRD III although I am still struggling with the settings on this device. I haven’t been able to figure out the focusing just yet, and the aperture priority doesn’t seem to work well for me. Further, I’ve noticed that some of my images have what appear to be burned pixels so the sensor may be failing on this old camera. Low light images are very noisy (I notice considerable noise at ISO 400) but they do look rather good in black and white. Also, the noise itself isn’t terribly off-putting to my eye. Overall, for an easily pocketable $150 camera I’m not too disappointed with this device.

 

 

Conclusions

If I could find my old Canon Powershot, I probably wouldn’t have purchased the Ricoh GRD III. I mostly wanted an actual camera for my upcoming trip because, although it takes amazing images, the S9+ can be a pain to use when you try to change the shutter speed and end up in “selfie” mode. Additionally, if the GRII wasn’t going for around $5-600 I would probably have bought that over the GRD III. But, after handling the Ricoh my initial impressions are that the settings are going to take some time getting used to. After I shoot with this for a while I’ll decide whether I want to upgrade to the GR II or a different platform like the Fuji x70. Or, I might just go film rangefinder for my day-to-day point-and-shoot camera. Regardless, at $150 I think the GRD III was a great buy.