In summary
A traditionalist’s digicam with a compact body that is beautifully designed and built, and accepts some handy accessories. Imaging performance is above average.Fixed focal length lens notwithstanding, Ricoh’s GR Digital camera is a serious bit of gear with plenty to attract quality-focused photographers who want a pocketable camera. Designed on the basis of the 9-year-old Ricoh GR film camera it combines an elegantly constructed and well-built body with a fast (f/2.4), high-quality lens and high-resolution CCD sensor. The camera’s magnesium-alloy chassis is rubber-coated to provide a secure grip and it sports a bright 2.5-inch monitor and well-designed control layout. . . [more]
Full review
Fixed focal length lens notwithstanding, Ricoh’s GR Digital camera is a serious bit of gear with plenty to attract quality-focused photographers who want a pocketable camera. Designed on the basis of the 9-year-old Ricoh GR film camera, it combines an elegantly constructed and well-built body with a fast (f2.4), high-quality lens and high-resolution CCD sensor. The camera’s magnesium-alloy chassis is rubber-coated to provide a secure grip, and it sports a bright 2.5-inch monitor and well-designed control layout.
No viewfinder is provided but an optional GV-1 external viewfinder can be mounted on the hot-shoe on the top panel, which also accepts an add-on flash. A nifty little pop-up flash sits beside this hot-shoe, fitting flush with the top panel. To the right are the power button, shutter release and mode dial, the latter offering six settings: movie, auto, P, A, M and Scene (with settings for text and sound recording). You have to press a button to unlock the mode dial, reducing the risk of setting the wrong mode inadvertently.
The battery and memory card slot into a compartment in the base of the camera beside the central tripod mount. Front and rear dial wheels allow settings like apertures and shutter speeds to be adjusted quickly and provide access to the various scene modes and playback functions. The up-down dial is also used for program shift.
The GR Digital can capture images in JPEG format and is among the first cameras to support Adobe’s ‘universal’ DNG RAW format. Movies are recorded with sound at 30 frames/second but with a top resolution of only 320 x 240 pixels. A Scene mode is provided for recording text or sound files. Text files are recorded as 8M- or 3M-sized TIFFs with three ‘density’ options: Deep, Normal and Light.
Surprisingly for a compact digicam, the GR Digital supports ISO sensitivities up to 1600, although the top setting on the test camera was so affected by both colour and dark pattern noise as to be virtually unusable. We recommend reserving this and the ISO 800 setting for emergency use only. Low light shots were noise-free up to ISO 400 but noise-affected beyond that point, although no stuck pixels were detected.
Like other high-end cameras from Ricoh, the GR Digital offers several battery options. The camera comes with a rechargeable lithium-ion battery but also accepts AAA NiMH or alkaline batteries – although the latter don’t last long, especially when flash is used. The test camera’s built-in flash was relatively weak but the hot-shoe has an X-contact that accepts external flash units, so it’s easily supplemented.
On test, the GR Digital produced images that were sharp and colourful, without being over-saturated. Overall contrast was a tad high, causing highlights to become blown out in bright conditions and a low level of shadow noise was detected. Image files were otherwise clean with few signs of over-processing. Imatest evaluation showed resolution to be slightly lower than expected, although this seldom showed up in actual shots. Low-to-moderate lateral chromatic aberration was found in many test shots
The test camera’s pre-set and manual white balance modes produced close-to-accurate colour rendition, with the auto setting failing to completely eliminate the colour casts of incandescent and fluorescent lighting.Capture lag times varied hugely, depending on how much the AF system had to ‘hunt’ for focus. The worst case was 2.3 seconds while, at best, focus and capture were achieved within 0.2 seconds. With pre-focusing, shutter lag averaged 0.1 seconds. The burst mode recorded four high-resolution JPEGs at 0.4 second intervals and the camera took just under five seconds to process the burst.
Although the add-on viewfinder wasn’t supplied for evaluation, it seems to be big and bright and would definitely be worthwhile for outdoor use in bright conditions, where the LCD becomes difficult to use. The wide conversion lens, which extends the field of view to 21mm equivalent, was supplied with hood and adapter. All were easy to fit and reasonably effective. Definitely a purist’s camera, the Ricoh GR Digital harks back to the days when rangefinder cameras were the rage. However, it also brings all the advantages of the 21st century digital world to photographers with an eye to tradition. [27]
Specifications
Image sensor: 7.18 x 5.32mm CCD with 8.3 million photosites (8.13 megapixels effective)
Lens: 5.9 mm f2.4 lens (28mm in 35mm format)
Zoom ratio: 1x optical, 4x digital
Dimensions (wxhxd): 107 x 58 x 25mm
Weight: 170g (without battery, card and strap)
Image formats: Stills – JPEG (Exif 2.21), RAW (DNG); Text – TIFF (MMR Method ITU-T.6); Movies – AVI (Open DML Motion JPEG Format Compliant)/WAV (QVGA at 30fps)
Shutter speed range: 180, 120, 60, 30, 15, 8, 4, 2, 1 to 1/2000 seconds
Focus system/range: External Passive / CCD method AF; range 30 cm to infinity, macro to 1.5cm
Exposure metering/control: TTL-CCD 256-segment multi, centre-weighted and spot metering; P, A and M modes plus
White balance: Auto, Daylight, Overcast, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Manual Setting, Detail
Flash modes/range (ISO auto): Auto, Flash Off, Forced flash, Slow synchro, Red-eye reduction; range 0.2 to 3.0m
ISO range: Auto, ISO 64, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600
Sequence shooting: 2.5fps for 4 high-resolution JPEGs
Storage Media: 26MB internal memory plus SD card slot; internal memory holds 1 RAW image, 8 high-resolution JPEG files or up to 277 VGA shots.
Viewfinder: Optional external viewfinder
LCD monitor: 2.5-inch cold polysilicone TFT LCD (210,000 pixels)
Power supply: DB-60 rechargeable lithium-ion battery or 2x AAA cells.
Retailers
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Rating
RRP: $999
Rating (out of 10):
- Build: 9
- Ease of use: 8.5
- Image quality: 8.5
- OVERALL: 8