Chartwell

I went to Chartwell, Winston Churchill's home, for a trip and took the GXR Mount A12 with the Ricoh GR and the Voigtländer Heliar lenses. The biggest problem with rangefinder lenses are their limited close focus abilities which are not very good to take close-ups of anything.
I also played around a bit with the high contrast b&w scene mode for fun but ended up quite liking the pictures. I was not hugely inspired so this is not one of my best series but I decides to post the 5 pictures anyway.

Flying in the Clouds

GXR P10, f11.2, 1/1320, ISO 100, JPG high contrast b&w

10

GXR A12 28mm, f2.8, 1/217, ISO 400, JPG high contrast b&w

Industry at Dusk

GXR P10, f4.6, 1/14, ISO 800, JPG b&w, 200mm

Backlit

GRD III, f8.0, 1/1070, ISO 64, JPG high contrast b&w

On Friday, Ricoh has released another function enhancing firmware update for the GRD III (you can download it here). I only got around to install it today but went for a quick walk right after to try it out.

First thing, it is really cool that Ricoh has added the 'High Contrast B&W' and the 'Cross Process' modes to the GRD III (I hope we will soon see these in the GXR modules, too). The downside is that Ricoh has not added these under the image settings so they cna easily be used in any mode and also alongside shooting RAW but have instead opted to add these as scane modes. This is ok to have some fun but it limits the usability a lot since you can not only not shoot RAW alongside but you have to live with full Auto mode here.

So while I applaud Ricoh for adding these modes to the GRD III, I hope they can make these modes more usefull by moving them where they belong under the image settings. Still, how many manufacturers keep releasing function enhancing firmware updates for their cameras so what Ricoh is doing is excellent.