Ricoh GR IIIx Experience

Hello! I’m Chris and this is METAGAME, a blog/newsletter in which I explore photography (travel, street), tech/gadgets, productivity, and everything else I’m passionate about at the time. In other words: documenting things that are important to me and that excite me – in hope they will also be interesting to others.

The newsletter is episodic and comes in seasons — you can read season one here.

Season two will be coming later this year. And this… treat this as a belated Lunar New Year Special.

Ricoh GR IIIx made me not care about smartphone cameras anymore.

When I look at my iPhone camera roll this is what I see: pictures of my cat, pictures of food, random screenshots, and document scans. It has become more of a photographic notepad than a photo album. I don’t take “real” photos with my phone anymore. Not since I got GR3x in October 2021.

It’s the camera I take with me everywhere I go. Fits in my work bag, in my smallest bag, or no bag at all — I can fit in my pocket! And that one attribute — its size — let’s me take more of those real photos. Ones I care about: daily life documentary, street photography whenever I'm out and about, and quick snaps while on a walk with my wife.

Ricoh GR is a perfect camera for that.

And since it allows me to care less about the quality and capabilities of my phone camera, I hope it will help me skip a few more iPhone upgrade cycles and save money in the process (it may even pay for itself this way!)

What I like about this camera

Size. Throw it in your bag and you won’t feel any additional weight. Walk around the city for hours with it and your arm won’t get sore (the battery will give up before you feel any discomfort – more on that later). There is no excuse not to take it with you everywhere. And often it will be the best camera you have on you (while you leave your full-frame bodies at home or hotel room).

Innocuous and unassuming. With it, you look like a clueless tourist. And that’s a good thing! — at least as far as candid street photography is concerned. Stealthy!

Punching above its weight. It’s easy to mistake it for an amateur point-and-shoot. But it's far from it! APS-C sensor, image stabilization, sharp lens (no anti-moire filter), DNG raw files, internal memory for forgot-my-SD-card emergencies, USB-C connectivity, photo geo-tagging (through an app).

It’s like having Fuji X100V on you at all times — but without the bulk and the vintage look & feel.

Built-in ND filter. Helps me keep the lens wide open even on a bright day.

Software support. It was good out of the box and only got better over the past ~16 months. Through six firmware updates in that time this camera received improved autofocus, new focus options (new snap focus distance, new autofocus mode), and new film simulation / JPG profile.

Hardware and ergonomics. Perfect for one-handed photography. You can carry your grocery bag in one hand and still be shooting!

Film look. No smart-phony computational over-processing. Your photos can look digital and processed — but it’s always your choice to make them look so. The defaults do try to mimic film.

Price. Reasonable! You can get it new under US$1,000. GR III (the older, 28 mm lens version) even lower than that (Us$800-ish).

It takes away my excuses. It’s always with me — with no extra effort. And having a dedicated street photography (/documentary) camera on me at all times transforms my approach. There are no excuses left, I am always ready to shoot and always looking closely.

What I dislike about this camera

40 mm focal length. In hindsight, I should’ve gone with GR III — 28 mm equivalent. Like 11” iPad is not a good compromise between iPad mini and 12.9” Pro, 40 mm is not a good compromise between a wide angle and a (short) tele.

I was hoping for extra bokeh and subject separation while shooting wide open on this ~standard lens, but 2.8 max aperture on a crop sensor rarely gets there.

For me, 40mm is not wide enough to introduce this wide-angle dynamic into the frame, and not tight enough for nice bokeh, subject separation, and perspective compression. Too much in-between, too compromised.

But that’s me an my focal length preferences. Your mileage may vary.

Lens speed. I like my shots to have at least some out of focus areas — even on my 28 mm Summicron (see the picture below). But 2.8 max aperture on GR's crop lens doesn’t make it easy. That’s the price I have to pay for this form factor.

And yes, I almost always shoot wide open.

Battery life. It’s not great. Better get used to turning your camera off in between shots. (Thankfully, the startup time is short.) I’m getting ~100-200 shots on a single charge. Carrying extra batteries becomes a must (they're tiny, though).

Filter attachment system. You need a separate adapter to attach any filters. I get that it’s due to lens design and there’s not an easy way to engineer around this problem. But I like my diffusion filters (Moment Cinebloom and Tiffen Glimmerglass filters are permanent fixtures on all my lenses) — and attaching them to Ricoh makes the whole package overly bulky (relative to GR without those attachments; relative to other cameras it's still tiny). It’s losing its main advantage this way.

Low light performance. ISO 3200 is somewhat useable. 6400 and above — the noise becomes noticeable and too distracting for me to be comfortable with it. And autofocus can struggle and hunt in the low light — I wish I had mastered the snap focus function to get around that, but I’m not there yet.

Document the things that are meaningful to you and do it in a beautiful way. — these words of Hong Kong street photographer Ivan Chow have stuck with me and became my guiding principle. And Ricoh GR feels like it's been created to do just that. Minimal enough to be always ready to document things without effort – and so capable that it allows you to take great photos. All that's left, is to look closely for beautiful moments to capture. It's a fantastic everyday companion.

— Chris