Towards the end of June this year I bought a Ricoh GRII, yes I was late to the party, but it's better to be late rather than never. The reason I bought one was the size and weight, I wanted a powerful camera that was every bit as good as my Fujifilm and the Ricoh more than fits that bill.
My first day with the camera was the end of June in Cambridge and in this blog, I wanted to give you my thoughts on the camera and share with you some of the photos.
This camera is perfect for the streets of Cambridge, nobody gives it a second look and this allows me to get up close. I thought that maybe the 28mm focal length might have been an issue, but I love it and really helps me get more of the scene in the photo. I started to think about this blog as I was going through the photos from the first 3 days of shooting with it. Normally I hate looking back at photos, well, that’s not 100% true, I guess what I mean is that when I find myself going back through my photos I see me changing my mind about them, however, this didn’t happen with the photos I took with this great camera. I found myself wondering why I hadn’t shared them, the photos also reminded me of the photos I was taking when I first started street photography. I would like to say that the photos are different from what I would normally take, but again I’m not sure that’s true, yes I like to shoot wide open and with the Ricoh, I’ve been shooting mostly at F8 and zone focusing at 2 meters.
The camera is the perfect tool when the sunlight is harsh, most photographers won’t shoot when the sun is at the highest point in the sky, but for me shooting with the Ricoh is when I’m getting the best looking photos. I love how the monochrome looks straight out of the camera, just look at the photo below and pay attention to how the sky looks:
I don’t know another camera that can give this look without editing the photo.
The best feature this camera has, which I love so much is the snap focus, this is just fantastic and I don’t understand why more cameras don’t have this feature. If you half-press the shutter button the camera will behave like every other camera out there, but, if you just press the button all the way down it will take the photo at the distance you have it set to, for me that’s 2 meters. This makes the photographing with the Ricoh fast and that’s perfect for my style of street photography.
The Ricoh is now my go-to camera and I don’t ever see me being without it, because of the weight and size it goes everywhere with me. Click here for more info on the Ricoh
