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Finally Joined the GXR Club

C

Campbell

Member
I'm enjoying my GR so much that I have finally bitten the bullet and bought a GXR + 50mm A12 + VF-2 Viewfinder + SC-75 Half Case and Strap; second-hand from Ffordes. So far I'm delighted with it. Judging by the file count it has done about 600 shots and is in perfect condition. There are some babies on the way in the family so I particularly wanted a 50mm equiv lens and having the macro facility is a real bonus for those tiny finger and toe shots.

The GXR joins my GR1s, GRD and GR - I just wish I still had my GX8 - and I'm sure I'll be in the market for a M Mount unit soon.
 
Congratulations on your purchase which I'm sure you will enjoy. I was also a late GXR convertee but I'm really pleased with the camera. Did you mail order or collect from Ffordes? The shop is about 15 miles from where I stay.

Richard
 
Hi Richard. I mail ordered. I'm down in the Midlands so collecting wasn't an option. I've spent a few hours now getting under the skin of the setup and functions - it's a complex little beast.

Atb... Paul
 
Paul,

There is a wealth of knowledge on the GXR among the forum members so fire off any questions you may have about the set-up and functions.

Richard
 
Paul,
Congratulations on joining the GXR club. The GXR system is unique and strangely addictive. I rashly sold off my GXR system last year when I was selling a lot of gear to finance my new Leica M240. Though I love the Leica I found that I was missing the GXR so my finances having recovered somewhat I recently was tempted by a very cheap deal of new GXR body +A16 zoom package and I also bought a second hand M mount unit so I am fully back in the Ricoh camp again.
The GXR is quite a complex system though logical enough once you get to know it. If you have not found them yet Gerd Walosek's pages on the Ricoh system are well worth a look. http://www.waloszek.de/gxr_e.php
 
Thank you Archie. I'm planning to pick up an M-Mount module next pay day and I'll be sure to check out Gerd Walosek's pages.
 
Hi Paul,
I'm still using the GXR a my main camera, though I admit to still being tempted by the GR...not that would instead of, more an add-on!
Andy
 
Me too! I was offered a GXR / lens combo by someone on this very forum a few months ago, but for one reason and another had to decline, but have now taken the plunge and am getting great photos! The main reason I plumped for a GXR was the size / versatility. I cycle-tour a lot, as well as county-walking and it's great to have a quality camera with me, popped in my pocket. I tried a dslr for a while and although its a fairly compact example (Nikon D40) it was just too bulky for comfort.
I'd like to ask you folks, without wishing to kick a hornets nest ( ;-) ) - what is your favourite photo editor - I'm using iPhoto at the mo' and while it does pretty much what I think I need, I'm wondering what else is well-thought-of.
 
For processing I have used a combination.

Thumbs+ from Cerious Software (I am serious) as a thumbnail indexing program - it does quite a lot of useful things as well, but is not powerful enough to be the "compleat angler" but the place to go for rotating, resizing and reorientating. It also shells out very easily to other programs do it makes a very good go-to start-up program.

I have shelling out from Thumb+ set to two programs: Photobrush and Photo-Paint.

Photobrush from Mediachance is also a golden oldie - a very economically priced editor with a surprising number of features. It is not a toy. It does not do editing layers (yet) and you cannot see the area where the tools are working and that frustrates me quite a lot and this is why I use Photo-Paint for the hard stuff. But Photobrush is a very powerful tool otherwise and does a huge amount of work. It has been on version 5.3 for some years now and I have not really found that an upgrade is necessary short of it becoming a full-house layering tool. Photobrush can use Adobe Plug-ins and I mainly use Lucis Art in conjunction with it.

Photopaint from Corel - now a bit fossilised - I don't know when it was last updated but my older version works fine. I was an early adopter of Corel Draw and the interface to Photopaint was very similar and this helped bridge the gap. Like all very deep editing programs Photopaint takes a while to master but does layers and has editing tools which can be feathered and unlike Photobrush you know exactly where the tool is working and it can be used with pixel level precision. Photopaint also takes Adobe Plugins and I can run Lucis Art from within it.

I have tried Photoshop several times and on each occasion have rejected it as offering no more than Photopaint and being much harder to get to grips with. But the worst thing about Photoshop is how long it takes to load. My habit of shelling into programs from Thumbs+ means that I select an image from there and then work on it from the program of my choice. The economical Photobrush loads my selected image in a twinkle of the eye and Photopaint after a noticeable but still acceptable pause. Photoshop simply goes on and on and on and a cup of coffee later .... Obviously you are meant to get into Photoshop and stay there, I find the interface "clunky" as well but I have no doubt that this is the perfect program for experts but the process of becoming that expert is simply too much an obstacle for me.

Until last week I have been a user of Capture One for processing my raw files. It used to have a very clunky interface and no obvious work flow direction. But it did improve and by Version 7 it has become a very smooth and useful program. Unfortunately Capture One is overwhelmed by its emphasis on studio use with tethered cameras and digital backs. Even front line Nikon and Canon dslr cameras are something of an afterthought and the "you and I" common or garden DNG files are only looked after on an as needs basis. Consequently there seems no support for Sony ARW files, the Ricoh GR "reds" were magenta skies on Capture One 6 which was 32-bit and the colour profiles were simply not upgraded when this version was simply abandoned when moving to the 64-bit Capture One 7. A first blow for me happily chunking along with my old 32-bit Vista machine. But I did eventually move my processing on to a 64-bit iMac and started using Capture One 7 on it. As I have been experimenting with a Panasonic GM1 (which I liken as a "prototype" for the Ricoh GXRII) I thought I would process its RW2 files on the iMac using Capture One 7. As past experience suggested that Capture One was not strong on "odd" raw file formats I took the precaution of translating them to DNG first. Well Capture One 7 not only refused to find and read 78% of the files (I tried several different ways) but "translated" them as a very unsaturated and not natural "DNG Neutral". This I could fix as for some reason they had a colour profile for the Panasonic GX7 which to all extents and purposes is the GM1's big brother. But the EXIF for the lens in use did not make the translation either. A query to Phase One support confirmed that they did not support RW2 or even DNG files translated form them.

So I tried the latest Rawtherapee in 64 bit form. Not only did it read all the translated DNG files correctly but also the native RW2 files and applying the correct colour profiles along the way. I have also found that it has matured into an excellent program since I last looked at it.

I retain a little fondness for Capture One as It does now have a nice interface but as I am unlikely to be using tethered studio cameras any time real soon I am afraid it is on the back-burner until the software jocks at Phase One get their socks on and start looking after the common man with a camera.

Tom
 
The GXR is announced at the end of life, but there is still some some new, and of course on the second-hand market.
How will be done the after-sales service? And will there be a successor in this intelligent concept?
 
Gyl":pnabjvkl said:
The GXR is announced at the end of life, but there is still some some new, and of course on the second-hand market.
How will be done the after-sales service? And will there be a successor in this intelligent concept?
Click to expand...

As far as I know Ricoh service centres are still supporting and repairing the GXR. I might be worth a comment here by others.

If there are new GXR cameras still for sale then they should still be covered by manufacturers warranty at least in country of sale.

Of course it does get to the point where buying a spare body or module might be cheaper than having it repaired. I don't think that point has yet been reached for anything but the most serious repair. However at the moment buying an S10 or P10 module must be cheaper than anything other than the most simple repair.

Prices for the remaining stocks seem all over the place with some asking fairly high prices with the occasional flurry of bargain stock reduction sales. Certainly the cheaper ones seem to sell very quickly which indicates that there is a lot of general respect for the GXR and also that existing owners "thoroughly sold" on their GXR are stocking up on spares while they can.

To any way of thinking the GXR for its age must have a higher than normal percentage of units still on active use. In other words - "a classic camera in the make".

Tom
 
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