20.01.10
Diamond wide boy
Since hanging up my Hasselblads for commercial shoots and embracing the digital world, I have been looking for a camera to finish off a shoot. Sounds strange? Well, let me explain. When shooting portraits, I’m always looking for ‘the moment’ when I can get closest to capturing who the person in front of me really is; the moment when an image of what someone is wearing becomes a portrait. With the Hasselblads I would work to this end, and – I’d like to think – occasionally achieve my end goal, but I would always end the shoot by picking up a 35mm Nikon and ‘sketching’. It was a moment for both myself and the subject to relax and have some fun, playing with angles, lenses and approach.
With my move to shooting digital, my sketching tool became my main tool and I have not since been able to find another camera to finish off the shoot in the freewheeling way I like. That is, until I got my hands on the Ricoh GRIII.
The moment I received it, it felt right. The body has been increased in size just enough to allow for a larger screen (up from 2.7in to 3in in size and 230k to 920k in resolution) and to ensure easy control use. The weight has been increased by 20g and the reintroduced matt-finish surfaces mean that it is not only beautifully balanced, but it also looks incredible (especially when that additional lens is fitted). In fact, it looks so good that, before I had even started working with it, the: “What camera is that?” question started coming thick and fast.So far, so good. So I decided to take it on a commissioned shoot to give it my ultimate small camera test: can it ‘sketch’?
The shoot was for a portrait of a musician/composer that would be used in an A3-size magazine for a major international auction house – a client with high expectations. It was a challenge, which, to be honest, I did not expect the GRIII to be able to live up to. Shooting on RAW at 400 ISO, its increase in maximum aperture from f/2.4 to f/1.9 provided exactly the right amount of flexibility I needed without image quality being affected. Its new CCD sensor measures approximately 7.6mm x 5.7mm and is therefore only a small increase on its predecessor, and remains
considerably smaller than those in the Sigma DP range. However, its image quality is excellent, with a fantastic colour palette, which is rich and warm. Electrical and chroma noise is well controlled and, although the higher ISO remains at 1600, a new lower 64 has been added. All this plus a screen that offers 92,000 dots VGA, an all-new 10MP sensor that is even more sensitive than its predecessor, the GRII. Add a fast AF function with a ‘full press snap mode', and you've got one hell of a pocket rocket.
Ricoh GRIII Spec
Effective pixels Approx 10 million
Image sensor 1/1.7in CCD
Focal Length F/6mm (equivalent to 28mm for 35mm film cameras)
f-aperture F/1.9-F/9 (exposure control with both aperture and ND filter when F/8-F11
Displays in auto shooting mode
Shooting distance Approx 30cm-infinity
Macro Approx 1cm-infinity
Lens construction Eight elements in six groups (aspheric lens: two elements and two surfaces)
Digital zoom Approx 4.0x
Auto resize zoom Approx 5.7x (VGA images)
Movie 1/30-1/2,000 sec
Built-in flash range Approx 20cm-3m (ISO Auto)
Monitor 3in transparent LCD (approx 920,000 dots)
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