Crossing the Street

GXR A12, f2.8, 1/620, ISO 200, RAW, 50mm

Razor Wire

GXR A12, f3.2, 1/100, ISO 200, RAW, 28mm

Broad Trip

Today was more about driving along the Broads and seeing different places and towns. This is aseries with some pictures from the trip.

Welcome to Blickling Hall

Since it's been a long weekend I decided to go to Norfolk and visit a few places there. The first place on the list was Blickling Hall and it's what today's series is all about.

I decided to take the GXR with both A12 modules with me since it's a great travel combo, small, light and with very good image quality. I can't wait to get the GXR Mount A12 so I can use some other focal lengths when needed.

Red Eye

GF1, f4.0, 1/80, ISO 200, RAW, 90mm (Leica f2.8 45mm macro)


I took this while walking around Greenwich park in between the rain showers.

Today, I have also posted the answers from the GXR Mount A12 Q&A with Ricoh, you can read them here.

Hidden Texting

GRD, f2.4, 1/15, ISO 1600, JPG b&w

Meetup in Greenwich

GH2, f2.8, 1/250, ISO 160, RAW, 90mm (Leica f2.8 45mm)

Today, I had the pleasure of meeting up with friend and fellow blogger Björn in Greenwich for some photography and beers. He had his GH2 and GF2 with him so I got to use the GH2 with the Leica f2.8 45mm macro lens. I had my Epson RD1 along and took a few pictures with it but handed Björn the M lenses to try on the GF2.
It was a great meet and we had some people amused by all the cameras and lenses on the table.

I decided to post pictures from both the RD1 and GH2 and one picture to show a bit the different character.

GH2, f6.3, 1/4000, ISO 160, RAW, 90mm (Leica f2.8 45mm)

RD1, 1/1553, ISO 200, RAW, 42mm (Ricoh GR f2.8 28mm L)

GH2, f5.6, 1/2500, ISO 160, RAW, 90mm (Leica f2.8 45mm)

RD1, 1/194, ISO 400, RAW, 42mm (Ricoh GR f2.8 28mm L)

Walk in the Park

GF1, f4.0, 1/800, ISO 200, RAW, 90mm (Leica f2.8 45mm macro)

Drop

GF1, f2.8, 1/125, ISO 800, RAW, 90mm (Leica f2.8 45mm macro)

Crane

GRD III, f11.0, 1/1070, ISO 64, JPG cross process

Sheffield Park

This is a series from my visit to Sheffield Park today.
All pictures are taken with the Epson R-D1 and the Ricoh GR f2.8 28mm L lens and the last one with the Voigtländer Super Wide-Heliar f4.5 15mm L lens.

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RD1, f11.0, 1/2000, ISO 200, RAW, 42mm (Ricoh GR f2.8 28mm L)

New and Old

GF1, f8.0, 1/2500, ISO 100, RAW 3:2, 56mm (Ricoh GR f2.8 28mm L)

Walk the Line

RD1, f2.8, 1/104, ISO 200, RAW, 42mm (Ricoh GR f2.8 28mm L)

Burning Sky

GF1, f4.0, 1/80, ISO 100, RAW, 56mm (Ricoh GR f2.8 28mm L)

Heavy Machine

iPhone 4, f2.4, ISO 80, JPG, Hipstamatic app

Emergency Telephone

GXR S10, f4.9, 1/189, ISO 100, RAW, 50mm

Flying Away

GXR S10, f5.0, 1/440, ISO 100, RAW, 72mm

GXR Mount A12 Preview

Today, I got the chance to try the new GXR Mount A12 module. So let me start by first saying a big thanks to Ricoh for letting me use the unit.

While the weather was grey and rainy and I only had a few hours of shooting but it was great to be able to finally see it and use it to take pictures.
I brought two of my Voigtlander lenses with me, the Voigtländer Nokton f1.4 35mm, the Voigtländer Super-Wide Heliar f4.5 15mm and Ricoh gave me the Ricoh XR Rikenon f1.2 55mm for K mount with a m-mount adapter. This gave me from wide-angle over normal to portrait a good kit to use the module for a wide range of pictures.

Read below for my full first impressions and to see some sample pictures taken with the lenses, please note that the module was still a pre-production unit with unfinished firmware.

Watching the Show

GXR S10, f4.4, 1/2, ISO 800, RAW, 72mm

Kunst

GXR S10, f4.1, 1/153, ISO 200,  RAW, 35mm

Watching over the Wharf

iPhone 4, f2.4, ISO 80, JPG, Hipstamatic app

Reading the News

GXR S10, f4.4, 1/470, ISO 100, RAW, 72mm


Reading the news in London for the past days has not been very nice with all the riots going on, the streets on my way home were all deserted with shops closed but at least the pubs were open. No matter how bad it gets, nothing will stop you from getting a pint in Britain.

Ricoh GXR Review - A12 50mm

The A12 50mm f2.5 module was one of the two modules released with the GXR body at launch. When it was released it suffered from quite a few performance problems with the AF and screen freeze but thanks to Ricoh's great support all of the initial problems have been fixed in subsequent firmware updates. This is the 3rd part of my ongoing GXR review and will focus on how the A12 50mm module performs now with the latest firmware update.

Short Fuji X100 Impressions

Today, I had a little bit of time to take some pictures with the Fuji X100 so I thought I post my first impressions.
First, the design is great and I still want one just for that, you can see that the Fuji engineers had a great time designing the camera.
The camera is quiet and it's fast to change settings using the dials on the camera, this is unless the camera is writing to the card where you're out of luck and need to wait till it finishes. The rangefimder style controls are all very well thought out, aside from the silly and useless focus-by-wire ring.

The firmware and operational speed is something where Fuji needs to out some serious work into, they need to buy a GXR and see how to implement controls and how a proper firmware looks like.

There are no real deal breakers ther but some things are simply more cumbersome than they need to be for no obvious reason.
For example changing ISO using the FN button, in OVF mode you can simply press the button and change through the ISO settings with the rocker switch on the back but not so in EVF or LCD mode where you need to use the directional pad to choose the ISO from a list. This makes absolutely no sense and is not even consistent with the much better way of doing this when using the OVF. There are quite a lot of things like this, all of them should be easy enough to fix in firmware so I hope Fuji actually does so.

The biggest problem however is the slow write time which basically locks the camera but not compltely since some things you can still change but not others, again without any reason why it needs to be like this or any indication what you can change and why you can't change the other settings.
Next to this is my hated screen freeze when focusing using the LCD or EVF and the very slow refresh times of the EVF and LCD in anything but good light. Another funny thing is that the speed of the MF ring goes in hand with the screen refresh rate so it's actually faster in good light than in low light for some reason only Fuji knows.

I really like the camera and if I would not have the GXR here I would be very tempted to get one despite the apparent beta firmware on it. I will still look to get one at some point because I love the look of it and the OVF is really cool and so much better than the one in the RD1.

I hope I will be able to test it more and maybe even do a quick review on it, or maybe I should just publish a list with firmware bugs and inconsistencies with suggestions of how to fix them for Fuji. I guess using Ricoh cameras spoils one to expect only well thought out and customizable cameras ;).

By the Pond

GXR A12, f2.8, 1/111, ISO 200, RAW, 28mm

Ricoh GXR Mount A12 Announced

Today Ricoh has officially announced the long awaited GXR Mount A12 module allowing GXR users to mount M lenses on the GXR and by doing this Ricoh has managed to be the first consumer digital camera to separate the Body from the sensor and lens.

I am very happy to see this module and think it is exactly what is needed to show people more of the full potential of the GXR system.

You can read the press release below but here are some of the things I find most interesting and want to comment on.

- The probably biggest news in the press release and another first in digital cameras as far as I am aware are the two shutter methods. A newly developed focal plane shutter (1/4000 sec. to 180 sec.) and electronic shutter (1/8000 sec. to 1 sec.). This is big news in my view and the ability to either use a physical or electronic shutter makes this module unique and very versatile.

- Ricoh is using a custom sensor with no AA filter and micro lenses optimized for M lenses so it should produce a very good image quality even with wideangle M lenses, this usually poses a problem on the RD1 and also my GF1.

- The MF implementation was a big concern since Ricoh announced the module because it was not very well implemented in their other modules (as you can read in my review of the GXR A12 28mm module). Here Ricoh has again listened to the complaints and feedback and implemented a sort of peaking function which works great on the Sony NEX cameras and enhanced the normal magnification assist so I am very happy to see this being implemented. MF should work very well with this and be even easier than using a RF patch.

- Another great feature is being able to not only to add the lens data in the EXIF information but also read this easy from an SD card, shame it does not look like it can read the lens information from coding on the lens but overall this should not really be a problem if you can store your settings on an SD card and have easy access to them.

- The lens checking device is a great idea, who else other than Ricoh would get the idea for such a simple yet very usefull tool, it should work great for the colapsible Leica lenses which are always a bit of a concern to mount on other cameras.

In addition to what you can read in the press release here are some other interesting details I got from Ricoh.

- The Low ISO 100 setting will be available but will suffer from lower dynamic range.

- In S-mode the camera can raise the ISO when set to Auto or Auto-High.

- You can set if you want the shutter to close or remain open when you power the camera off!
You hear this Panasonic!! I have mentioned this when I first saw the G1 at Photokina and it's still not implemented, Ricoh shows how to do this right.

Read on for the full press release

London View

GF1, f6.3, 1/400, ISO 100, RAW 16:9, 22mm