Design
It's certainly an inconspicuous camera, this Ricoh. With little to no badging identifying its brand on the front, and just a small sliver of silver under the 3-inch LCD screen at the back touting the brand name, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this camera wants to be a bit incognito. It's an all-black box, with a rubberised grip on the right-hand side protruding from the diminutive frame that adds a reasonable amount of bulk, weighing it down accordingly for one-handed shooters. It's 208g (with battery) which is positively behemoth-like for a compact camera.
Elsewhere, there's a small flash nestled at the top corner that pops out only when needed via a dedicated switch on the side. The hotshoe is covered with a small plastic piece that can be removed to attach a viewfinder or external flash, and a standard shutter and power button can be found nearby.
We were slightly bemused by the small button at the top of the GR next to the mode dial, it's fairly inconspicuous and only came to our attention when we turned the mode dial and it refused to budge. Thinking that initially there was something wrong with the dial, we pushed the small button down and realised it releases the dial. It's an interesting design quirk that's at first frustrating, and then useful.
Just underneath there's a small elongated button that looks like it should be the zoom rocker (but the GR has no zoom, it's a fixed focal-length lens). Instead this button can be assigned for either the digital zoom, or it's used for zooming in and out during playback mode. The GR also has a four-way directional pad and a small smattering of other functional buttons. Exposure compensation is handled by a small dial that sits at the top of the back plate, a Ricoh-specific design. A control wheel at the front is positioned nicely for changing aperture or zooming in and out when in playback mode. At the bottom is a slot for the battery and SD/SDHC cards.
Features
For the first time since 2005 in a GR Digital camera, the lens in the GR III has finally been updated. It's now a 28mm fixed focal-length lens, with a pleasingly wide maximum aperture of f/1.9. Digital zoom, rather than optical, is on board, and in macro mode the Ricoh is able to focus as close as 1cm to the subject — more on this later. In terms of shooting options, there's automatic and scene modes, three spaces for preset or custom settings, and the complete PASM control. There have been changes inside too, with a new 10-megapixel CCD sensor that Ricoh claims produces superior images at higher ISO levels than its predecessor.
The GR Digital III has also stolen a couple of nifty features from the CX1 — like the high-resolution 920,000-dot screen, the extended dynamic range double-shot mode, and the multi-pattern white balance. The screen also has an anti-reflection coating that makes it easier to see in bright light. An internal electronic level is also part of the interface which helps show when the camera is level.
The Ricoh is able to record images in JPEG and RAW. Included in the box are the following items for your shooting pleasure: a battery charger, USB cable, AV cable, wrist strap and software. Video capability is unfortunately limited to VGA-quality clips, accessible through the scene menu which only has three other options to choose from — dynamic range mode, skew correct, text and movie.
Performance
There are many claims that this camera is quicker than its predecessors, like the GR Digital II, so we were slightly perturbed to find that the camera starts up in 1.7 seconds — not exactly the quickest in its class. It takes a further second for the camera to respond and take its first shot, a total time of 2.7 seconds. That said, it's considerably quicker than the 4.4 seconds we clocked for power on to first shot for the Digital II. Things are also bright in continuous shooting mode, with the camera managing to capture a full-resolution JPEG shot every 0.62 second on average.
As we mentioned before in our review of the CX1, the GR Digital III's screen is simply stunning to look at thanks to its increased resolution and anti-reflective coating. Colours appear vivid and pop off the screen. The menu interface takes some getting used to, in terms of finding the tweakable shooting settings you need frequently, such as ISO, but once you've acquainted yourself it becomes easier. There's also the option to customise options according to your shooting style by putting them in the custom slots on the mode dial.
Image quality
The GR Digital III produced reasonable results under automatic white balance, using the multi-pattern setting, though in JPEG mode images still needed a slight fix post-production to make the scene fully true to life in terms of genuine white. In the other preset modes, the camera performed relatively well, but stumbled a bit under the fluorescent setting, adding a slight yellow cast.
Most shots exhibited a lovely sharpness at reduced magnification, and when reviewing them on the screen. Occasional highlights would blow out in tricky lighting situations, and there was a small amount of chromatic aberration on areas of high contrast detail, but nothing untoward and certainly not as bad as what we've seen on other compact cameras. Images at full magnification appeared a bit softer than we would have liked, but still very usable and clear — a testament to the Ricoh's small level of processing on JPEG files. Colour saturation was accurate and not too punchy, which was very pleasing overall.
In terms of its noise profile, it performed much better than what we've seen on previous Ricoh cameras, with noticeable grain appearing at ISO 400 but not seriously impinging on image quality until ISO 1600. There are options to turn on noise reduction, but we performed our tests with this setting turned off. Even ISO 800 could deliver a reasonable 4x6-inch print without too much of an issue. We applaud Ricoh for achieving such a good result considering the relatively poor performance of their previous compact cameras in the noise department.
Click image to enlarge (Credit: CBSi)
Macro performance was very impressive, with the lens picking up minute detail that we didn't even notice — check out the tiny amount of dust on Mario's hat that's barely discernible to the naked eye.
Macro mode is pretty great, showing up all this unnoticed detail. (Credit: CBSi)
Conclusion
There's a lot to like about the Ricoh GR Digital III if you're a prosumer photographer looking for a lot of features in a small package. However, this is a camera that will only appeal to a certain number of photographers because it has a fixed lens (this means there's no zooming, there's manual controls and a fairly conservative design), which equals niche appeal. Don't buy this camera if you're just looking for a point-and-shoot experience: this is a camera that can challenge you.
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