I have always been a fan of the Ricoh GR series of camera. Unfortunately, they are on the fragile side - or at least when left in my hands. The first GR II suffered a malfunction on the lens mount after 3 years. So I bought a second unit.
Last a couple of Ramadhan back, I accidentally dropped the camera, damaging the kens cover. I was not able to completely close the lens, exposing the lens glasses to the elements. So, I could not take it out much longer. Then came the announcement that Ricoh would be launching a mark III of the Digital GR.
The new update retained much of the old specs, with sensible improvements. It also shrunk in size, making the already small GR II even smaller, despite retaining the APS-C size sensor. But now, the resolution is bumped up to 24 MP. The lens also had some improvement, reportedly sharper. And now, it has a sensor-based image stabilising system. The lens remains 28mm equivalent with a maximum aperture of f2.8.
That however meant battery life suffered - hence the need for an extra battery pack, which I bought as part of the package. The new iteration also dd away with the built-in flash. This was a shame since I used plenty of them before for fill-ins.
I had only managed to use the camera twice so far, still undecided if processing the RAW file would be worth the hassle. The camera definitely is capable of capturing amazing images despite the tiny package. It needed getting used to as I tended to put it near my face expecting it to have a viewfinder.
The colours seemed to be muted on the RAW captures, needing plenty of tweaking. Using Lightroom, the jpeg photos really have the richness which the RAW files appear to be missing.
More experimentation and hopefully some chance to take the camera out in the next few days ...