Take The Long Way Home

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R0002816RICOH GR (18.3mm, f/4, 1/250 sec, ISO100)

In my last blog post from Vietnam I mentioned that I changed to the Ricoh GR to take some more shots. Here they are right after another Fuji XP1 shot:

DSCF1852FUJIFILM X-Pro1 (35mm, f/4, 1/750 sec, ISO200)
 R0002807RICOH GR (18.3mm, f/4, 1/180 sec, ISO100)
 R0002809RICOH GR (18.3mm, f/4, 1/200 sec, ISO100)

The Ricoh GR has a crazy sharp “28mm” lens and a 16MP APS-C sensor without low pass filter. That’s the recipe to challenge full frame cameras. But despite its fantastic image quality the Ricoh GR is super small and light. So everything is perfect? No. Beside it shortcomings mentioned in my comparison review, Three of a kind ( RX100 vs X100 vs GR ), the biggest drawback is the lack of a viewfinder. Something that wasn’t a big deal for me a couple of months ago but now it is.

Getting older is not for wimps.

R0002812RICOH GR (18.3mm, f/4, 1/400 sec, ISO100)
 R0002824RICOH GR (18.3mm, f/4, 1/320 sec, ISO100)
 R0002829RICOH GR (18.3mm, f/4, 1/500 sec, ISO100)

But that it has no viewfinder is also one of its biggest advantages. The Ricoh GR just looks like an ordinary compact camera. Small, black with a small built in lens. And even more important: you look like the average pocket camera shooter when you take pictures with it.  No peeking through a viewfinder which is very suspicious today. Instead you hold your camera at arms length like all the other digicam or smartphone shooters.

Stealth seems to be a big topic among street shooters. If this is your ultimate goal you need to shoot by using the screen on the back of your camera. Look through a viewfinder and you look like a pro-photographer.

A very long day comes to its end. Well almost. Just another 4 hours drive back to Hanoi. I arrived in the hotel at 11pm. Just in time to have a late dinner.

Instead of spending a day on the pool to relax from a long working week I left hotel at 7am and came back at 11pm, I had nothing but a small, strange looking burger and some cookies, I spent 8 hours on bumpy and dusty roads filled with fast driving buses and trucks but it was well worth it. What a trip! I can rest when I’m on my plane back home.

R0002837RICOH GR (18.3mm, f/4, 1/50 sec, ISO100)
 R0002845RICOH GR (18.3mm, f/4, 1/750 sec, ISO100)