Zoom lenses have become so ubiquitous in cameras these days that a lot of people take them for granted, despite the fact that they have no trouble using a one-time-use camera at a wedding or on an action-packed vacation. Ricoh is banking that there are enough people who can skip the convenience of a zoom lens. In fact, it is so confident that it has introduced the GR Digital II, a follow up to their first foray into the fixed-focal-length digital world, which was known as the GR Digital.
Design
The GR Digital II sports a 28mm-equivalent lens, which feeds light to a 10.1-megapixel CCD sensor, while a 2.7-inch LCD screen on the back lets you frame your shot. Instead of a built-in optical viewfinder, Ricoh offers a couple of accessory viewfinders that occupy the hot shoe: one (the GV-2) provides a 28mm field of view for the built-in lens; The other (the GV-1) can span 21-28mm, making it a perfect companion for the wide-angle conversion lens (the GW-1), which turns the built-in lens into a 21mm-equivalent. There's also a telephoto conversion lens (The GT-1), which narrows the field of view to an equivalent of 40mm. Both lens converters require the use of the main lens adapter (GH-1), which also ships with a lens hood, to cut down on any flare you might encounter when using the built-in lens.
The conversion lens system on the GR Digital II is a bit clunky. We found it difficult to remove the ring that covers the main adapter's bayonet mount at first (though it loosened a bit in time), and we had some trouble fitting the main adapter onto the camera. The lenses screw onto the adapter, so that wasn't difficult, but a better bayonet mount for the adapter would be a good idea. Also, the ring that covers the bayonet mount when the adapter's not in use feels very flimsy. Worst of all, the tiny pop-up flash becomes partially blocked when you use either of the conversion lenses.
Features
For a camera that costs as much as the GR Digital II does, it's a bit absurd that they didn't just build in a viewfinder. However, anyone accustomed to street photography with a rangefinder will find Ricoh's approach familiar, since the wide-angle lenses used in street photography usually require optional shoe-mounted viewfinders on those cameras.
Because there's no zoom lens, the GR Digital II doesn't need a zoom rocker, so don't be fooled by the rocker switch they put where you'd normally find the zoom control. Instead, this rocker provides quick access to the camera's exposure compensation control when shooting, or zoom during playback. A nifty side-to-side rocking switch also lets you access exposure compensation, as well as white balance and ISO. Ricoh includes full manual exposure, along with aperture-priority and program mode. Strangely, they didn't include shutter-priority, though you can shift the exposure in program mode -- something that some cameras don't allow.
For a compact camera, there's a fair amount of customisation available in the GR Digital II. There are two customisable shooting modes: you can set the zoom rocker to access many other functions if you don't want to use it for exposure compensation, and you can do the same with the function button on the left of the four-way keypad you use to navigate the menus.
Performance
The GR Digital II didn't blow us away with its performance, but wasn't painfully slow either. The main area it could speed up is at start-up. The camera took 4.4 seconds to start up and capture its first JPEG. Subsequent JPEGs took 1.4 seconds between shots with the flash turned off and 1.8 seconds with the flash turned on. It took 2.1 seconds between RAW shots, which is quite fast for a compact camera, though it still might feel a bit slow in practice. Shutter lag measured 0.7 second in our high contrast test and 1.3 seconds in our low contrast test, which mimic bright and dim shooting conditions respectively. Continuous shooting yielded an average of 2.3 frames per second.
(Smaller bars indicate better performance)
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Typical shot-to-shot time | |
Time to first shot | |
Shutter lag (typical) |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
Image quality
Images from the GR Digital II are nice, but not nearly as nice as they should be for a camera of this price. According to our colour accuracy lab test, the colours aren't quite as accurate as most compact cameras, though they still look natural, so most users should still be pleased with the results. More pressing is that the images aren't all that sharp. We've seen sharper results from cameras that cost half as much as this one. Given that the lens is a fixed focal length and that it extends from the camera body, which gives more leeway for the designers to include a nicer lens, the GR Digital II just doesn't deliver what it should in this case. They really should've gone with a completely internal lens, which would've made the camera faster at start-up.
The camera's noise performance isn't very pretty either. Even at its lowest sensitivity setting, the GR Digital II has some minor noise, though you likely won't notice it in prints. It doesn't become very noticeable until ISO 200, though that's still not stellar performance in today's compact camera market. However, there isn't much sharpness or shadow detail lost to noise at ISO 200. By ISO 400 noise detracts noticeably from the images, a large amount of sharpness is lost and shadow detail begins its precipitous demise. At ISO 800 noise is quite heavy and most of the sharpness and shadow detail is gone. Conditions only get worse at the camera's top sensitivity of ISO 1,600. We suggest staying below ISO 400 if possible on this camera and wouldn't suggest using ISO 800 or ISO 1,600 at all.
Sony's top T-series models and Canon's most expensive compact models tend to deliver sharper images and don't nearly cost as much as this Ricoh. Of course, they don't have manual exposure controls, and the ones on this Ricoh are quite nice. They also don't have hot shoes, though we can't imagine how unwieldy the Ricoh would be with a hot-shoe flash on top of it. Given its price, we'd have to point someone toward the Fujifilm FinePix F50fd before telling them to buy this Ricoh. The Fuji is just as small and pocketable, has similarly high-level manual exposure controls, sensor-shift image stabilisation, a 3x optical zoom lens, and at AU$499, retails for half the price of the GR Digital II.
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