still enjoying my grd1

[pappa]

Hi all

it's been a while since i have post something, by the way yesterday i had the great idea to use my grd1 for a walk and i have to say "the best thing of the day".
I had forgotten the black and white jpg style of this camera and compared to the standards of nowadays is something that still intrigue me.

Here some pictures







i hope you'll enjoy them too

Tommaso

 

[AustinOH]

Yes, I did enjoy these especially since I have not seen Grd 1 photos before.
I really liked #3 because of the composition, lovely contrast and a story in there somewhere.
The remaining two were also enjoyable.
It was interesting for me to see you set the ISO to 400 for all shots and used Aperture priority mode.
Thanks for posting Tommaso.

Austin

 

[Orol]

I like most #4. Also the #1 for the rose exhibits nice gray scale.

Peter

 

[Tom Caldwell]

Tommaso, you excellent images show me why I will never part with my GRD original. I used it as my family Christmas camera last year - simply because I could.

Forgive me if I will have one of my usual little rants about the GRD and some unecessary changes made to Ricoh product when they listen to a noisy section of their user community.

Back in the salad days of when it was still "new" I even experimented with it set to B&W and 1600 ISO even in good light so that I could get the grainy look - often in high key. Some guys might work images over in PP for this but the GRD can do it right out of the camera in B&W jpg.

Therefore the GRD might become old but its images never weary. One can see why it won prizes even though conventional camera reviews of the day criticized its images as "noisy".

A pity because Ricoh apparently "listened" to the advice of the non-GRD owners and the GRDII attempted to fix the noise issue and lost much of the the charm in the process.

As much as the GR presumably lost the very useful (but almost unknown) screen labelled function button pairing that was introduced on the GRDIV due to a similar level of carry on from a small section of their user base. Throw away up to eight soft function button pairs for one extra mechanical button and (no more) quick access to changing the snap focus distance. So much for those who don't read manuals - Ricoh did not help by leaving their function button pairs "empty" out of the box and relying on devoted users seizing their chance to leverage up the usefulness of that camera. Not a chance, mayhap many a GRDIV still has "empty" function button pairs? Function button pairing was a very good attempt to give more button variety on a camera without adding more external buttons over a limited body space - the sort of thing where you are having a touch screen without having a touch screen installed. Maybe the GRII will have a touch screen with user-configured direct function keys?

As much as FV-EV was introduced late in the life of the GRD to supersede their linked EV which worked so well as not to need a separate FV-EV setting. Once incorporated the continual reqyesting stopped as one would expect but I have since wondered who ever manages to manually balance their FV-EV with their normal EV setting in daily use. But there was no FV-EV in the original equipment and the rants suggested that it had to be introduced or the end of the world was nigh! At the time I proved conclusively that the amount of flash emitted varied with the standard EV control was compensated to the light necessary for good exposure. But of course we all need the right to over or under flash any exposure .... Separate manual flash settings I can understand.

For those still with an original GRD that did not have the very last firmware upgrade that added FV-EV I suggest to leave well enough alone.

My point being is that there are many things that can be improved in any camera but sometimes a noisy sectional interest can convince Ricoh to change something to their personal preference that is in reality a regressive step when other glaringly obvious things seem harder to get addressed. Maybe I am showing my own bias? (grin)

However a camera is still about that "way back when" preferred to show detail in B&W and had no effort made to suppress sensor generated noise which in effect came across just like grainy B&W film capture.

For years I was happy with the R4 as well to swap to B&W as soon as the ISO-going got tough - another camera that was capable of doing great B&W at higher ISO long after the colour capture became unusable. But then capturing in colour is everything .... is it not?

Tom