Only managed a few trial shots indoors before getting bogged down for a couple of hours trying to set up the camera for street shooting before going out for a late evening walk — didn't get out because the battery ran out. I'm waiting for the dealer to get a second battery.
My reference point for the setup is what I used on the GRDiv: M Mode with exposure compensation assigned to the rocker button: pressing the rocker button (in AV Priority) sets the shutter speed to the "optimal exposure, shown in the middle of exposure indicator (bar). I then adjust the shutter according to the exposure I want, as seen on the histogram and on the exposure bar. This adjustment, I always found was a fast and practical method.
Now, the GRiii has no rocker button, nor any other means that I could find for centering on the suggested "optimal exposure", to which the final adjustment could then be made. At this stage, the M Mode looks useless to me because all I can do is to move the indicator along the exposure indicator bar, which is slow in the absence of a way to center it first. Maybe I'm missing something but can't see that I am, having looked extensively at the user manual.
Next, I tried to Av Mode. The user manual states that If [Auto EV Compensation] is set to [On], the exposure is automatically compensated when the correct exposure cannot be achieved in Av or Tv mode. The way this works is if I pan the camera from the light side of a room he the dark one, the shutter speed decreases along this path. When I stop along this path, I can adjust the EV Compensation with the ADJ to what I want by looking at the histogram — but I would have wanted to see the exposure indicator bar as well. In other words, I would have preferred the M Mode with a centering facility. As far as I'm concerned, Ricoh has screwed up a great way for quick manual focus that the Gr iv had — I don't know if the GR II had this.
Does anyone know if there is a better setup for effective manual exposure adjustment than AV Mode with Auto EV Compensation together with with ADJ for manual EV/shutter adjustment, as I have just set up now?
For focusing I've set up the Fn button to change between AF-Touch and Set Snap Focus. In this way I can either use the touch screen to set the AF target or switch to Snap Focus in more dynamic situations.
The couple of test shots I was able to make have very good color and also are easily processed into dramatic B&W. Otherwise, all this trouble on setting up an exposure method wouldn't be worth it.
EDIT: Some progress: I've figured from the user manual that I can assign in M Mode the One Push AE in M Mode to the Fn. The centers the exposure for the suggested optimum.
Now I have to see if I can assign somewhere else the switch between AF-Touch and Set Snap Focus. Anyone know how to do this?
Mar 19, 2019 at 11:27 PM
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