New Camera Ricoh GR III + quick review

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written by owen on 2023-Feb-12.

*I should have published this revew from Sept2020 but better late than never?

After roughly 6 months of online searching I settled on the Ricoh GR III a fixed 28mm point and shoot camera. Of course no piece of equipment is perfect there is a high chance of dust getting into the lens, the battery life is poor, overheats on hot days and it will probably die if I drop it. But guess what? No one lives forever.

So far I am loving the speed of the camera and the extra resolution. 24 mp is double that of the previous camera. Plus the quality of the APSC sensor means that I miss fewer shots. Over the pass weeks of having the camera I already filled my SD card because I am shooting in RAW+JPEG which is a new problem I discovered with the new camera; the image files are HUGE. The raw file is 30+ mb and the jpeg is 10mb (6000x4000px).

All these issues together I had to invest in a few accessories to go along with the new camera;

32 gig HS-1 SD Card
JJC metal lens cap - to reduce the dust
2 Wasabi Batteries and charger - I like external wall chargers, the ricoh only comes with a usbc cable charger to charge the camera while its plugged into a socket - I am not about that risky life.
JJC thumb grip - makes a world of difference - buy it right away.
JJC stick on UV filter - more dust protection,
JJC LCD screen protector - scratch prove the touchscreen

Everything was bought on Amazon and should be easy to find by searching. Add a comment below if you need specific answers. That is a long list, lol but the only accessory you really need to buy right away is the thumb grip and the wasabi batteries. The ricoh comes with 2 gigs of built in storage so you can live without an SD card for a little bit.

I mentioned the dust concerns so some accessories I bought after using the camera for a couple weeks;

JJC Cleaning kit - I wanted the rubber dust blower because they say you should not use your mouth to blow dust off the lens.
UNI SD card reader with usbc+full usb. - for reading the above card because I wanted something that could both connect to a phone as well as computer.
JJC Auto lens cap - bought the to test it out

The ricoh has wifi which is useful for transferring images to a phone but I am old school so I take the SD card out of the camera which is why I bought the card reader.

Other reviewers suggested I get a Fujifilm X100V but that camera is practically twice the price of the Ricoh GR3 and it is NOT COMPACT. Shipping and Import Fees to Jamaica would have literally killed my budget. Plus it's the size of a brick.

The ricoh gr3 is a unique camera; no zoom, no flash and no view finder. Having no zoom is something I am getting accustomed to and the 28mm focal length is weird and wide. The camera is certainly not for everyone but personally a hip shooter like myself is having a blast. I can now enjoy advanced features like spray and pray, exposure bracketing, high contrast black and white, chimping, double exposure photography, in camera raw editing, cropping, resizing just to name a few of the things I could not do on my previous Canon powershot. I dont even need a computer.

The downsides of the camera include; it will get hot if you spend a long time in raw development or you have it on for long periods on a hot day. These are things I have grown accustomed to. I usually take a couple shots at a time and then turn the camera off. Most times I am shooting with the LCD off. Because of the dust issue I keep it in a bag whenever I get home. Or with a lens cap on if I have it in my pocket. Worrying about dust is constant because I live in a dry dusty climate.

Conclusion

Overall I like the camera and have been using it for 2 years so far exclusively. I have taken 33,000 pictures with it since I bought it, which is a record in my book.