FUN with Ricoh GR IV
Finally got my GR IV. I ordered directly from Ricoh USA when they said briefly they had them in stock as BHPhoto went to limbo with my preorder.
I am just two days with it as I write this so still coming up with things. A few quick thoughts:
- AF overall is better, but I found some situations where the GR IV wouldn't lock focus or lock appropriately that I thought were relatively easy. Distant neon sign. I don't quite recall the GRIIIx doing this.
- AF in day is decently fast
- AF at night still can be slower but decidedly better than what I remember of the GRIIIx (not same focal length)
- Battery sure feels a notch better
- Love from the get go the STD setting for color
- Grain options seem nice (only tried B&W, need to try color). You can set grain size, intensity.
- Built in memory I was afraid would be slow to write internally but it writes pretty fast
- LCD is probably the best I have seen for daylight use in brightness- if you turn to special sunny bright, and even in general with the auto-dim no more hassle of having to lower it to night shooting and bring back up in daylight. In terms of visibility and power this is like the GRIII series, I believe they are using a Sony WRGB panel (white-rgb) in which by adding white pixels they can increase contrast/brightness for daylight along with the thing-gapless glass or whatever that LCD tech is.
- IBIS works better, but I am not getting the 1'' IBIS Hand held shot that easily as some early "reviews" said. In some cases it's almost there with a notch blur but the shot still works. Still I can get some of those.
- Lens is quite sharp as usual
- Lens bokeh seems pretty great in the shots you have it - so far seeing pretty rounded bokeh-balls, no "cat eyes" bokeh.
- Would prefer a way to turn of the Ricoh's "accelerator" built in baked in raw noise reductoin
- Saw DXO Photolab will support it in November this year (from DXO's own website)
- Overall high iso image quality seems to have gone up. Hard to quantify, I guess by 1/2 a stop to maybe the 1 stop claim the company made (I would need a GRIII on hand to compare and Id on't have it)
- The new price (in USA) with tariffs does sting a bit considering it's a camera that you hope doesn't get dust as previous model as easily at least.
Ricoh's UI and usability continues to be a class cat. The camera design like the GRiii/GRiiix UI makes so much sense and presents its features in an accessible way without feeling like feature creep. It's like their camera/features have been tried by real photographers.
I am giving it a spin and see how it goes in my 30 day window, as I shoot a lot at night. Been shooting it in 4:3 ratio as I like that ratio and I used it a lot from my 4/3rds and m43rds days.
Using this camera so far has been like meeting an old friend (since I had used the original APSC GR before), but it's a faster more responsive friend
1 second shot:
- Ricardo
Finally got my GR IV. I ordered directly from Ricoh USA when they said briefly they had them in stock as BHPhoto went to limbo with my preorder.
I am just two days with it as I write this so still coming up with things. A few quick thoughts:
- AF overall is better, but I found some situations where the GR IV wouldn't lock focus or lock appropriately that I thought were relatively easy. Distant neon sign. I don't quite recall the GRIIIx doing this.
- AF in day is decently fast
- AF at night still can be slower but decidedly better than what I remember of the GRIIIx (not same focal length)
- Battery sure feels a notch better
- Love from the get go the STD setting for color
- Grain options seem nice (only tried B&W, need to try color). You can set grain size, intensity.
- Built in memory I was afraid would be slow to write internally but it writes pretty fast
- LCD is probably the best I have seen for daylight use in brightness- if you turn to special sunny bright, and even in general with the auto-dim no more hassle of having to lower it to night shooting and bring back up in daylight. In terms of visibility and power this is like the GRIII series, I believe they are using a Sony WRGB panel (white-rgb) in which by adding white pixels they can increase contrast/brightness for daylight along with the thing-gapless glass or whatever that LCD tech is.
- IBIS works better, but I am not getting the 1'' IBIS Hand held shot that easily as some early "reviews" said. In some cases it's almost there with a notch blur but the shot still works. Still I can get some of those.
- Lens is quite sharp as usual
- Lens bokeh seems pretty great in the shots you have it - so far seeing pretty rounded bokeh-balls, no "cat eyes" bokeh.
- Would prefer a way to turn of the Ricoh's "accelerator" built in baked in raw noise reductoin
- Saw DXO Photolab will support it in November this year (from DXO's own website)
- Overall high iso image quality seems to have gone up. Hard to quantify, I guess by 1/2 a stop to maybe the 1 stop claim the company made (I would need a GRIII on hand to compare and Id on't have it)
- The new price (in USA) with tariffs does sting a bit considering it's a camera that you hope doesn't get dust as previous model as easily at least.
Ricoh's UI and usability continues to be a class cat. The camera design like the GRiii/GRiiix UI makes so much sense and presents its features in an accessible way without feeling like feature creep. It's like their camera/features have been tried by real photographers.
I am giving it a spin and see how it goes in my 30 day window, as I shoot a lot at night. Been shooting it in 4:3 ratio as I like that ratio and I used it a lot from my 4/3rds and m43rds days.
Using this camera so far has been like meeting an old friend (since I had used the original APSC GR before), but it's a faster more responsive friend
1 second shot:
- Ricardo
