Mitch Alland
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 p.4 #19 · Pre-order now: Ricoh GR III | |
TMaG82 wrote:
The GRIII is ever so slightly faster to focus than the II, but not to the point where it would be considered a speed demon. The addition of PDAF isn't that much of a help, especially since it has to move the entire lens assembly. When it locks, it's accurate, but you'll see it rack back and forth before locking. When taking pictures in an arcade, it struggled to focus on my daughter playing. Eventually when it focused and took the picture, the results were as fine as I could expect from a 2.8 APS-C, just the process of taking the picture was glacially slow. Comparatively the a6400 with the 20mm f/2.8 in a different setting (but also low light), had no issues with focusing. The GRIII is considerably sharper than the 20mm f/2.8 pancake though. Seems like we can't have both, there's tradeoffs. Either sharp and slow or fast and soft. ...Show more →
I beg to differ on your conclusion that the tradeoff between sharpness and camera speed is "Either sharp and slow or fast and soft". That is only true for anyone who wants to use autofocus all the time for any type of photography, including street photography — and photographing your daughter playing in an arcade. Even cameras with state-of-the-art autofocus speed like the Nikon 850 are not ideal for this type of photography: autofocus is just a dumb auto-mechanism to focus the lens, whose success still depends on the photographer telling it what to focus on. For street photography zone focusing — the systematic pre-focusing of a lens at specific distance and aperture to achieve a sharp image — is preferable. That is what Weege's dictum, "f/8 and be there" is all about. And that is what Ricoh's Snap Focus is. When using Snap Focus on the GR III there is as little shutter lag as with a Leica rangefinder camera. Actually, I have always thought of Ricoh's GRD and the digital GR cameras as today's "Barnack" cameras — because of their easy of one-handed shooting.
By no means do I think that the GR III is for everybody. I like it for the ease of one-hand shooting and for it's size, which allows it to be put into a pocket or worn on a belt. In an earlier thread I mentioned that I miss neither a viewfinder nor an articulated LCD monitor. These two items seem to be routine comments by hack blog reviewers, one of them stating that an articulated LCD is good for discreet hip-shots — believe me a photographer holding an small camera at his or her hip while looking down on articulated LCD monitor extended horizontally attracts as much attention as one looking through a viewfinder. Not to mention that adding an EVF and an articulated LCD monitor would significantly require incasing the size of this camera.
The first picture below was below was literally a walk-by hip-shot: I was holding the camera at my right side, with my thumb on shutter, which I pressed when I saw the waiter extending his arm. To shoot the second picture, I simply pointed the camera ahead of me to get the low viewpoint. Incidentally, I normally would have used Snap Focus at 1.5m for these shots, but here used auto-focus to try it out. The GR III is fast in daylight with some contrast, but struggles in low light.
The third picture is another example of using the 50mm crop, which I'm finding very useful. In this case, the autofocus was fine because of the contrast of the light — this was shoot in converation and is not a posed portrait.The fourth picture, shot at 1/13 sec, shows the effectiveness of the IBIS of the GR III. Finally, the last picture, is a street portrait taken with the 50mm EFOV crop facility. Again, in this intense, high-contrast light, the autofocus is fast. (In this one, I've added grain in LR.)
Ricoh GR III | ISO 400 | f/6.3 | 1/800 sec
Paris
Ricoh GR III | ISO 400 | f/6.3 | 1/1000 sec
Paris
Ricoh GR III | ISO 800 | f/2.8 | 1/40 sec | 50mm EFOV facility
Potomac, MD
Ricoh GR III | ISO 200 | f/4.5 | 1/13 sec
Paris
Ricoh GR III | ISO 400 | f/11 | 1/640 sec | 50mm EFOV facility
Paris
Edited on Apr 14, 2019 at 03:00 PM · View previous versions
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