Closer Look

GRD II, f2.4, 1/50, ISO 100, RAW, 21mm

After a 5h journey with the Shinkansen from Hiroshima I got back to Tokyo today. After some last minute shopping I went to Ginza to have a look at the '7th Ricoh Exhibition'. It was very nice and well worth the visit. Ricoh decided to print and display not only the winning pictures but all entries (about 1,100). This was great news since it included my picture and pictures from Wouter and Pavel.
Another cool thing was the posibility to see prints from almost every Ricoh camera. An interesting observation at this that for the displayed A4 prints straight out of the camera the jpgs from the GRD, GX100 and GX8 were best followed by the R6 and R4. The GRD II jpgs looked even at this small size smeared. While processing the RAW from the GRDs and GX100 will produce better prints (Ricoh have a few A1 prints of the GRD I at Yodobashi on display and these do look impressive), I was very surprised at how well the Rx cameras performed.
There were also some bigger prints from various photographers on display and a few were from the R8 and looked pretty good considering the camera. I am sure for holiday snapshots and normal use the R8 will deliver for most people. It is a very popular camera in Japan and seems to do well considering all the shelf space it recieves at the big camera stores and there were always people trying them out.
Before I drift off too much let me get back to the exhibition report. The Ricoh representatives were really nice and quite surprised to see non-japanese showing up. Were particulary impressed to see me walking in with both GRDs and started laughing when I showed them my GR1 ;). Now I am 'officially' a extreme Ricoh user :). This prompted me to log a few compliments but also complaints about the GRD II with them. The focus priority got noticed but a fix is unclear, unfortunatelly the phase detection will not come back in the next cameras :(. Regarding my complaint regarding the rear wheel versus the rocker switch now they were reluctant but saw my point and said "maybe" to bring back the wheel. It does not look like they will put real leather on the handgrip though. I asked this because they had thee really cool new GRD bag on display made out of very nice leather. The GB-1 bag is really cool but the price is with around £180 a bit high even for the great all leather finish. Well, since I did not really speak Japanese and their English was limited we just continued to have some small talk and looked at my picture before I left. Overall a very nice experience and as mentioned before well worth the visit. Was really impressed that Ricoh really printed all entries of the competition. Also with the lack of advertising or brand placement at the exhibition. There was only one Ricoh logo at the entrance and a small table with current camera models plus accessories, even the Pictures only mentioned GR Digital etc. and never Ricoh.