Ricoh GR Digital II

Ricoh GR Digital II, Elegant Point & Shoot 10mp Digital Camera, 4x Digital Zoom, 2.7" LCD


Ricoh GR Digital II

Excellent Camera for Users Who Like Manual Controls
I've been using the Ricoh GR II for a little over two weeks now and I must say that it is an excellent camera. For me the primary thing that I needed was a pocket camera with a fast wide-angle lens, easy to use manual controls (shutter speed, ISO, f-Stop, etc.) that can shoot in low light and in the RAW format.

The Canon G9 was way too big and bulky and although it had a nice ISO dial on the top of the camera, I didn't like the fact that I had to cycle between the f-Stop and Shutter speed on the menu to change the settings.

The Leica D-Lux 3 (also sold under the Panasonic name as the LX-2) was about the same size as the Ricoh. It is an excellent camera, but I really did not like the joystick system for the manual settings and it lacked a hot shoe, an optical viewfinder and you could not attach a filter to the lens.

The Ricoh has an excellent 28mm wide angle lens with very little distortion. This lens does NOT zoom, but for my uses this is unnecessary. Although, I do have the option of attaching a converters that can make the lens into a 21mm or a 40mm. With the addition of a ($50) lens hood adaptor I could add a circular polarizer filter. The processing engine in the Ricoh camera along with the fast f 2.4 lens allows for excellent photos in low light and at high ISO levels. The camera takes about four seconds to record a RAW file to the SD card. But because of a memory buffer, you can instantly take a second RAW photo as the first photo is still being written to the SD card. The Ricoh has a hot shoe, which allows you to mount an flash unit or some excellent optical viewfinders above the lens. And finally, for me the best part of the Ricoh is the little control wheel in the front and the control lever in the back of the camera. This allows me (during the Manual Mode) to instantly control the f-Stop with my right index finger as the thumb controls the Shutter Speed (in the same manner as a Nikon DSLR).

All in all, this is a great pocket camera that has some very professional features. It DOES have a full auto mode, but it does NOT have the many program modes of the consumer cameras such as landscape, portrait, sports, etc.

This is a very expensive pocket camera, that is capable of a very fine image. Because of its manual controls I would recommend it to anyone who loves the technical aspects of photography.

But in the hands of a beginner it is perhaps too much of a camera and I think it would be a bad camera to give to your grandmother, unless of course your grandmother was Annie Leibovitz.

It has a magnesium alloy body, which is used only on high-end SLR camera. It uses a fixed focal-length lens, fast and bright. It offers a lot of manual functions, providing the user with more freedom and flexibility. It doesn't have any optical zoom, due to the fixed lens. It doesn't have image stabilization.

The multi-award winning GR DIGITAL was launched as the successor to the GR Series of 35mm compact film cameras (first released in 1996) popular for their superb image quality. Its depictive performance that satisfied even professional photographers was condensedinto a compact 25-mm thin magnesium alloy body has been highly accepted by a wide range of users including high-end amateur and professional photographers in the two years since its release. The new GR DIGITAL II retains the concept of the GR DIGITAL that is the idea of being a high image quality compact camera that achieves excellent resolving power from edge to edge, low noise, and low color aberration. It tops that off with, expressive power, operability, and expandability for even higher image quality. The GR DIGITAL II is equipped with the newly developed GR ENGINE II image processing engine to keep the excellent resolution, tone characteristics, and color saturation of the GR DIGITAL, while achieving dramatic reduction in noise. With the addition of an acceleration sensor, the GR DIGITAL II could be equipped with an electronic level function that allows usersto know if the camera is level while looking at the LCD monitor. Adjusting levelness when taking pictures of buildings or scenery takes further advantage of the characteristics of GR LENS with its small distortion. With the level indicator display on the LCD monitor, composing photos with horizontal or vertical lines visible