First Ricoh HK Meetup

Today, was the first Ricoh meetup in Hong Kong so let me start by saying thanks to Nevin and Laikok for organising this meetup.
There were only 20 seats available but over 100 applications for this meetup.

Unlike the last London meetup we had a wider variety of Ricoh cameras with the GRD cameras being the most prominent, followed by the GXR with M mount and then some GX200 and CX cameras.

There was a relaxed atmosphere and some games and speeches held by some of the local bloggers, including Nevin.
Since my Cantonese is none existent I could not follow all of it but it was great to talk to some of the people attending.

As a treat for the people joining this meetup Ricoh released some information about the upcoming GXR zoom module.
The official announcement will be on Monday so you have to wait till then for all the details but you can get a very good idea what to expect from reading my last London meetup report.

With this my holiday is over and tomorrow will be my flight back to London.

3rd Ricohforum Meetup

After the 3rd Ricoh meetup has been postponed we have rescheduled it for today.

Unfortunately Pavel could not make it for this meetup but this time we had both Tohru from Ricoh and Frazer from Alpha Digital attending. It has been great to see both again, especially together at a meet up.


The Bridge Lounge was as usual a great venue to meetup since despite the central location it is a very quiet and relaxed place in the moning to simply have some coffee and chat about cameras and photography.


It is always great to meet new people with the same interests, this time it was mostly GRD III and GRD II users attending. People enjoyed themselves and could share tips about the GRDs but also try the GXR system with all threee modules available for it.
Unfortunately only a few of the people who signed up for the meetup actually came, this is a shame and not so good considering both Tohru and Frazer had to travel in to London for this meetup.



For the last meetup we had a walk scheduled with stops along the way but this time I decided to see what people were up to and only had a final location planned with the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station. We took the long way there and went over Borough Market and the Tate Modern and back to Tower Bridge before heading towards Wapping.

500th Post :-)

CX1, f3.3, 1/32, ISO 1600, JPG, 28mm

Today, I reached my 500th post on my blog. I would not have thought I will get to 500 posts and certainly not by posting every day.

It was great so far and since starting the blog a lot has happened. I met some great people and fellow bloggers (see blogroll), have met some great people from Ricoh at Photokina 2008 and other occasions, had a factory tour kindly arranged by Ricoh and organized not one but two unofficial and one official Ricoh meet-ups in London and another one is coming up in just two days, I even started to write my own reviews about Ricoh cameras and accessories.

I really enjoy posting here and the comments I have recieved from people, both on the blog and via email, are what keep me going so thanks to all of you.

Everything started with the Ricoh GRD, that I carried around every day and just needed a reason to make use of it every day. This blog provides me with a very good reason to keep taking pictures and post here every day.

Macau Meet-up

If you're in Hong Kong a visit to Macau is a must and it only takes 1h on the ferry. It is very different from HK and feels more like a Mediterranean city by day and like a mini Las Vegas by night. This is only if you stick to the main roads though. Step into the small side streets and it all changes though, it loses the glitzy facade and Mediterranean feel and remains the Chinese small city character. I find it quite fascinating and think it definitely deserves a slightly longer photographic excursion next time.
More pictures from the side streets as usual on my Dropbox gallery here.


One of the best things about going to Macau was the chance to meet fellow blogger and Ricoh GRD lover Mike (http://www.photoblog.com/eelekim). We got in touch through my blog and exchanged some tips and observations about the GRDs. He is also the only person I know to own not only most books written about the GRD but also the blue anniversary edition GRD I. It was great to meet him and spend some time talking about the GRDs. Unfortunately we did not have much time but we'll definitely keep in touch and meet up next time. This made it the first unofficial 'Ricoh Macau meet up' ;), next time we'll try to organize an official meet up.

Ricoh Diary

Ok, the post today will serve more as an announcement for a few things.

First, a big thank you to Ricoh for sending me the GX200 and R10 for review. I will try to write a comprehensive review of each camera in it's own right and also compare it with the other Ricoh cameras. This will all be done in the next weeks depending on time and more on weather.

Second, the Ricohforum meet-up is approaching so be sure to check out the thread or the details on my Wordpress blog. We will have someone from Ricoh and a few other guests taking part in it so it should be very interesting. Post in the forum if you're coming or if you want to forward any feedback or questions to Ricoh.

And third, I've had a quick look through some pictures for my low light/high ISO comparison and the results are very interesting. Will post a first teaser soon on my Wordpress blog.