Anyone got a Ricoh GR Digital????

[Paul_Gardner]

Has anyone tried the GPS interface, and how well does it work?

[John_Carolan]

Got my GR on Saturday, extremely pleased with it so far, it really is fun and intuitive to use, I've put a 'mini-review' on DPreview here reproduced below. BTW I couldn't see any mention of GPS options in the manual, although I know it was mentioned in the press release.
Mini-review:
"Excellent pocketable compact design, about the size of an audio cassette box, very light, well put together all metal construction apart from the pop up flash which is plastic as is the battery compartment door. Great big bright LCD screen, firm positive feel buttons. The main mode/control dial has a lock so cannot be accidentally moved, excellent 'adj' control wheel under your thumb which can be pressed and/or rotated to access menus, and a front control dial for aperture or other functions. Very intelligent control layout.

Power on time is a little over a second, focus/lag time is good, maybe a tenth of a second? I'm able to grab the GR out of my pocket, power on, take a shot and put it away in about 4 or 5 seconds. Fast enough for me. Image quality is great, nice graininess to images -a different look compared to all other digicams I've seen, beautiful wa lens. I'm confident I could go to 16x12 prints. Noise is not an issue up to 200 iso. 400 sometimes needs work, 800/1600 are just fine in b&w or with noise ninja etc. Prefer the grainy high iso on the GR to the 'painted' smudged look of the Fuji F11, the only other high iso compact competitor I'm aware of.

Problems
Sometimes auto focus locks on a peripheral object rather than where the on-screen cross hairs are positioned, suspect this is due to light/contrast levels of the peripheral object. Something I've encountered with all AF systems to some extent. Not a big deal, only happens sometimes in difficult light situations.

RAW write times are very slow approx 8 secs per file, which is a pity, as it makes using RAW unviable for me, fortunately the fine jpegs are excellent and artifact free. It would have been nice to be able to routinely use RAW but it's just too slow."

[Paul_Gardner]

I got to looking around some more and it turns out that it is the G3 that supports the GPS. It even has its own GPS receiver.

http://www.geospatialexperts.com/ricoh.html

[JanBos]

I have a question about Ricoh GRd Adobe RGB settings:

When I set the camera to sRGB it is recorded in EXIF, when set in Adobe RGB it is not.

When I set Photoshop to Adobe RGB and try to open a file that is shot at Adobe RGB, I get the message that it does not have a profile.

Do I make a mistake, or is something else wrong?

Greetings,
Jan Bos

[John_Carolan]

I've got my GR set to AdobeRGB (re p.144 in the manual) but Photoshop does see this correctly and prompts me accordingly when I open the file. Although I see what you mean about the EXIF info, the colourspace section where it says sRGB if you have this as your colourspace is blank with the AdobeRGB files, although I noticed that in Photoshop if you click file>file info>advanced>adobe photoshop properties you can see the colourspace information there, at least with my set up I can.

No idea why your photoshop isn't acting the same way as mine. Are you using any applications to transfer the image files from your camera/SD card to your computer that might be stripping/corrupting the EXIF data? I just use a cardreader and windows explorer to transfer the files ( I'm not a fan of the Ricoh software).

[Sean_Reid]

Post deleted by Mike_Sturk

[Bob_Krist]

Hi Sean: I'm sure your review is excellent but isn't this forum for the "free" exchange of ideas and opinions? I'm not sure, but a more appropriate place to plug a pay-per-view website might be in the Trading Post area. There's a lot of folks sharing their experience and expertise on these boards gratis.

As a columnist for Outdoor Photographer, and before that, Popular Photography, I understand only too well the way you can get inundated with folks wanting free advice, and I don't blame you for charging for it. In fact, I applaud you for not giving it away for free....just not on this forum. Everyone here bought their GRD (I just bought mine from the place that loaned you yours) and is sharing their thoughts and experiences freely.

If you'd like to hear more of my opinion, just e-mail me a Visa or Mastercard number! :-) If anyone else wants my opinion of this excellent little camera, it'll be on the house! Bob Krist