GRDII Settings/Workflow Poll

[Shane Phillips]

Hello everyone,

Its wonderful to have a new place to share, thank you. I have watched for years at DPreview, yet never felt comfortable posting there.

Like many of you, I too share the what I call the "Ricoh madness" the bug, the obsession, justifying to my wife that I need yet another camera, the dreaming in BW...you know.

With that said, I find myself pouring over posts related to the subtleties of the GRDII and the GX100, etc... I proudly own both. Reading, mind you not so much blog reading, that I don't find time to go out and actually shoot, but enough.

The new GRDII has become my go to, with its RAW write times, or lack there of, lovely freedom, I shoot constantly. GX100 lives in its case for now. For me the tool has to be fast.

Because of this, I amassed hundreds of RAWS and soon thousands. As I am sure many of us have, if not more. I have yet to process these images.

The impetuous for my first post is this, I am wondering what workflow settings users have found to work with so far. Sure its all subjective for style and tone, just looking for basic values here for sharpening, etc...any trends anyone has noticed with the new sensor with the GR lens that they often develope in RAW? Am sure there are many opinions on the old GRD and setting that evolved with time.

So I would like to poll 2 lines of thought for the GRDII, should anyone care to share their workflows/settings/ dare I say secrets!

1. JPEGS, we all know RAW processing takes time, we have jpegs that come like it or not, on a lazy day, what settings for NO POST PROCESSING, are you using, for color and black and white? The classic GRD look would be a nice setting for Ricoh to incorporate in a firmware update.
So, Jpegs straight from the camera, which settings for no post processing? I have experimented with sharpness at maximum with pleasant results, on both BW and color. Have not pixel peeped, just felt right.

2. RAW, I am a fan of Lightzone have used the others as well Aperture, Raw Developer, LR, CS etc...What go to sharpness values, in any application, workflow tips or tricks are you using for processing color? What levels, alien skin, high key, etc and for BW? Prefer working with Raw D? See any patterns emerging for GRDII? Has someone developed a home brew manual yet?

Look forward to reading any and all comments that come of this.

And hopefully soon, with bit of courage, and lack of procrastination eventually posting some of my work.

Thank you very much.

Shane-NYC

[Shane Phillips]

Hello,

No takers on the poll yet?

Okay, I am braver now, here are some images:

A few color and a few BW from both cams.

1. GX100 jpeg
2. GX100 Raw converted with Lightzone
3. GRDII jpeg
4. GRDII jpeg

Thanks.

Shane Phillips

[snowmouse]

Hi Shane, I am also new to the forum and to the camera - having read about the GRD II at the Leica forums (and later here, when the fans migrated), I placed an order and received mine yesterday (thanks to all of the proponents). So I can't help you yet.

However, you might look at this thread about workflow ideas:
http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-...-examples.html

Also, your pics look great - are you able to put larger versions up?

Welcome to the forum, Shane. I've started the following thread on the processing of GRD/GX100/GRD2 files that you might want to have a look at:

http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=293

—Mitch/Bangkok
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/