This morning my GR sample finally arrived, taking it out and turning it on gave me a very familiar feeling. While on paper the GR is slightly bigger and heavier than the previous GRDs, when you have it in your hand it just feels right and you forget it's a new camera.
The day has been haze and grey mostly so not ideal to go out shooting, instead I spent some time to go into the menus and set the camera up, the new menus are nice and as usual very efficient but I doubt I will ever see them again now that I set the GR up as I like.
By late afternoon I had to go out and take some pictures. In use the GR is simply fantastic, everything has been improved and refined from the previous generations, the start up time, shot to shot time, AF, write time have all been improved and are now at least twice as fast when compared with the GRD IV or the GXR A12 28mm.
The image quality is equally great and beats the GXR A12-M in terms of noise, dynamic range and even detail (now I really want thus sensor in a new M mount module!). Even the JPGs (usually a poor showing from Ricoh) are excellent and the b&w JPGs almost rival the GRD I JPGs although they lack the film look due to the sensor being cleaner and having a higher dynamic range.
I will write more and post a full review in the coming days and weeks but for now I am hugely impressed, despite being sceptical at first.
This is a series of pictures I took during my walk, I wanted to show a varied selection of images so I hope you like them.
