Street settings and setting ideas

[wimvangrinsven]

Wim, are you using my camera? Sure seems familiar to me...

I must be influenced by you and Wouter then

 

[Wouter]

I must be influenced by you and Wouter then

Don't blame me! When it comes to influence it can only be Don :roll: And when it comes to the TAv mode I just suggest to put black tape on it and just ignore it. Like any previous GR camera it is just meant to be used in A(v) mode. That might not be the Philly method, but how we do things in my part of the Netherlands.

 

[400tx]

I find focusing to be a non-issue. Snap works great and if I want the auto focus to work there is a button for it.

I'm curious how people are working with manual exposure.

 

[Tom Caldwell]

I find focusing to be a non-issue. Snap works great and if I want the auto focus to work there is a button for it.

I'm curious how people are working with manual exposure.

So am I. I have never had any real need to use MF with any GRD nor the GR so far.

However it is a reasonable proposition that with an aps-c sensor good MF should be becoming "more necessary" even if we can still live without it. If Ricoh satisfies the wishes of some and makes more fixed focal length bodies for the GR then the time will come when that good MF would be welcomed. Maybe the workaround of toggling MF alone to fix focus once focus had been found by AF would be enough - especially now that pinpoint auto focus is offered. Together with being able to relocate the focus point around the screen a GR user might never need to have the joy of using MF on any GR.

That said and having no real personal need for using MF outside my MF lenses on my GXR-M (where it is a happy discipline) I set out to try the MF set up on the GR. This is as much like some like beating themself with sticks because there is fun in it when they stop doing it.

Exhibit A: Ricoh now provide four methods of focus peaking on the GR. I have worked out that Modes 1 & 2 are similar to those on the GXR. Mode 3 & 4 are simply the same in negative. It seems obvious that the negatives are supplied first because it was easy, and secondly they might assist alternately at different ends of the light and background specifications. Now the hard part ~ setting up and using forms of focus peaking on the GR is tricky. I have worked out the method now, but it took a little time for something that is of minimal use. The focus peaking can be set up to work much the same as on the GXR including magnified screen mode when it is more useful. But it is far too complex and slow. One might wish for the ability to set it up to be invoked as commonly configured on the GXR. As it is Ricoh has tried to meld the features of magnified centre screen, full screen, mode switching, moving focus point and implementation all into one routine. Hardly elegant.

Surely this is a straight indictment of making multiple camera models - how can they get the GXR so right and the GR so wrong in this regard? The GXR system gives a consistent well thought out interface across multiple "cameras".

A side benefit of the focus peaking is that I have found that using Mode2 and a clearviewer can show auto focus and framing details in bright light well after the lcd will have given up showing the photographer very much at all.

Exhibit B: MF on the GR is not very mechanically pleasant. I wold like some feedback on the use of the front wheel. Those that have the GXR will note that the GXR front wheel actually sits protruding quite nicely from a flat top plate ledge. It does this in a manner where the flat of the index finger can roll easily and precisely over it. It works tolerably well. However the wheel on the GR protrudes seemingly in half-apology out of an angled-edge plate. The only way I can work it is to run my finger along the limited area that protrudes which is a far smaller area of the circumference of the wheel. To make it more annoying I can only use the edge of the wheel and cannot easily get my index finger on the serrated flats of the wheel.

As far as I can see this wheel is exactly the same since the original GRD and on the GRD models they have always protruded through an angled edge and depended on index fingers running on the edge of the wheel rather than the finger-flat on the serrated edge. Also the slightly notchy action is universal and on the GXR as well.

In practice though the GXR wheel is reasonably intiuitive and accurate in use. The wheel on the GR is not user friendly at all and certainly the "unfriendliness" is made worse by the fact that on the GR it is recessed about 1.5mm deeper from the front plate that it is on the GRDIV and consequently just that little bit more finger-tippy. I don't know if my particular GR is badly assembled but the wheel sits to the rear of the cut-out slot which does not add to comfort of use.

Therefore if we have to use a small-diameter rotating front wheel to focus a lens via sight driven manual focus then at the very least it should be less ratchetty and more easy accessed.

The "pain" of using a badly organised mechanical part is not condusive to using it. I sincerely doubt that any GRD/GR user might use manual focus except at a very last resort. Few truly like self-flagellation.

Ricoh provides so many other useful means of achieving focus on the GR - getting up an accurate and intuitive, pleasant to use, MF must be their last frontier of ergonomics.

Tom