The Ricoh GR IIIx
Directly jump to my settings & presets here: LINK
I always leave the house with a camera. For that reason, I own a small selection of point-n-shoots, both digital and analogue. I just prefer the way colours look from a larger sensor over phone shots, albeit the iPhone 16 Pro has impressed me.
As a Fuji Colour fan, I own the Fuji XF10 which produced stunning images. Unfortunately, it’s build quality is rather bad, so it hasn’t really held up well (buttons became stuck etc). It lived from September 2019 until April 2023. But that’s for another post. So, in 2023 I got myself a Ricoh GR IIIx. I did get the 40mm x version to change it up a bit and because I anticipated phones getting better and at some point covering the 28mm space well. Also, I’m a heavy user of panoramic images, for which longer focal lengths always look better and you can compensate for the narrow angle of view.
Thoughts
After almost two years of ownership, the camera still performs incredibly well. I dropped it a couple of times, which it took well but once. For some reason, in some settings, there is sort of a very fast vibration (akin to a phone vibration motor) just before the shutter releases. It doesn’t impact the image at all though, so it’s fine. Feels like a software error as it’s setting specific though, not sure.
The camera is definitively not easy to use because of its lacklustre stock settings. Right out of the box, pictures look meh. Coming from a Fujifilm camera, the default film simulations are objectively worse. Only after I had spent 6-9 months with it and dialled my settings in, I finally settled into a comfortable process using it.
The Good: responsiveness, IBIS and image quality
- Usability / responsiveness
- The lens, insane sharpness wide open
- IBIS is amazing to have an such a camera
- USB-C charging
- DNG capture
The Bad: “no” video, no flash, no weather sealing
- No weather sealing, would be comforting. Smartphones can dive nowadays
- the video mode lol
- No flash
- IBIS makes the camera feel vulnerable, e.g. noises when jogging. No doubt worth the trade-off though, but could there be a physical sensor lock?
And the Meh: auto focus and the iOS companion app
There are two main “meh” things about this camera. First, the auto focus. While it performs well-ish in well lit scenarios, as soon as it is a bit dimmer you have to be very careful about focus point selection. Here, the snap focus really starts to shine. For example, taking landscape pictures in lower light is a breeze because I just set the snap focus to infinity and don’t have to worry about focus hunting anymore at all.
The second meh thing is the app. It’s light years better than Fuji’s app but doesn’t come close to Leica’s. The app is not bad, connecting to the camera almost always works on first try through Bluetooth, scrolling through the images is responsive and the transfers are quick. A lot of functionality is missing though, like: transferring all of today’s pictures, transferring in a custom resolution, video transfers, automatic transfers, etc. Unfortunately, the GPS tagging feature sucks as it draws significantly more power from both camera and phone than the Fuji’s app and it stops working randomly - it’s unusable. In a smartphone world, a camera’s companion app is really, really important. I’d shell out 20-50EUR extra for an impeccably well made app easily.
My Ideal Ricoh GR 4
While already being really good, I still have a few things I’d love to see in a GR4.
- Return of the in-body flash
- Replace the M / Tv / Av / P settings on the mode dial with U4 / U5 / U6 / Full Auto
- Better AF. Put a LiDAR in?
- An usable movie mode. 4K, HVEC with a decent bitrate uncropped. Make the IBIS work well in the mode and AF decent
- Tilty screen for waist level shooting. No flippy please.
- Some weather sealing, although I’ve yet to encounter a problem
- Fix some software annoyances, but I hope those’ll be fixed for the current generation as well.
- And of course a full-frame sensor ;)
Camera Settings and Film Recipes
As a huge fan of the camera, I regularly “develop” new settings / recipes for it. I published them all here on my blog: https://blog.nimar-blume.de/posts/my-ricoh-gr-iiix-setup/.
