More ideas for the next GR-D

Ok I met up with Cristian from gr-diary and tried to come up with some ideas how Ricoh could make the GRD3.

Here are a few ideas we had :

* Keep the chasis as-is, perhaps make it a little taller if required.
* Remove the flash and bundle a small hotshoe flash
* next to the ON button, please a small monochome LCD screen that would echo the same menu's as the colour LCD screen.
o This could have metering information permenantly displayed. If one pushes the adjust button, it would display the first element of the ricoh menu and the front wheel would allow you to scroll though the values. The [O] button that normally toggles the framelines would have an additional function of illuminating the top LCD.
* Below the hotshoe, add a button that simply turns on or off the colour LCD display.
* make the lens protrude slightly more and add a manual focus ring
* Create a new OVF addon which would display information and focus


I will post of picture of what this could look like tonight :)

Under attack

Killer Squirrel : Epson RD1s / nokton classic 40mm f1.4

http://www.getdropbox.com/gallery/244826/1/squirrel?h=10c44a

341

First shot

GRD1 in Cannon street station

Buddies

Well this is what I would like

Well, I thought if we're going to have a OVF on a camera, make a bloody good one. I'm tired of cameras that have this but are so dark, awkward they become such a pain to use. I was in fact thinking of having a 1:1 view with frame lines. I quite like using this viewfinder as it doesn't require my eye to adjust to anything and I can have both eyes open. I don't think many people will like my drawing so I guess I'd be the only one buying one :)

A few things I thought of :

Putting the phase detection back on. 

Putting the ol' GRD1 wheel back on

Ditching the Flash

Ditching the AF assist light

Ditching the fully automatic mode and replace it with MY3

Having a real bright OVF with focus, shutter, aperture information visible within.

A small LCD screen on top that would show basic information such as shots remaining, but could be configured to show a list of things that could be toggled with a button. 

Trying to picture the next GRD

Well while I did not take a single picture today, i wanted to see what a GRD would like like with my ideas.  Really need to see if a GRD with RD1 controls looks sexy of not :)

Look up (at the big yellow skip)

Camera : GRD2

Not many updates this week. Took only the GRD2 today as i'm a bit cross with the GRD1 recently. It's got this problem where it will constantly crash on me. If I power it on and press the adjust wheel, 5 times out of ten the screen refresh rate will drop and none of the buttons will respond. Eventually the camera will shut itself down with the lens out. Chris suggested I use a newly formatted card as it should fix it. Will try this over the weekend. Over the years of using it It's never been like this so it may have developed an electrical fault :(

What I like on a camera

Outer dial : shots remaining
Left : White balance
Right : Picture quality
Bottom : Battery level

Nice use of space :)

EV compensation
Shutter speed
ISO
Cable release
Shutter button

Well I thought Id write a bit on stuff that make me want to buy a camera. My first expectation is feel and build quality. A plastic feel camera just feels bad. A nice black metal finish that looks industrial as oppose to brushed aluminium or shiny metal finish. A hand grip, preferably leather but this seems to be virtually impossible to find these days but a good soft rubber can do. Oh and the hand grip has to be proper and fat. none of these fancy so called hang rips that can be seen on a few new compact cameras recently. Physical controls that are visible on the camera even off. I think the RD1 has a fantastic layout of controls and at 1 glance i can check everything. Small and discreet and finally have interchangeable lenses. I would add pocket able but the RD1 fails miserably at this.
The GRD i feel has many of the qualities of the RD1 and many many qualities of its own. They share the same finish and build precision and both are very comfortable to use. The GRD fits in the pocket where the RD1 doesn't. The controls on the GRD are also superb because of the simplicity and the dual wheel, click wheel on the front allows you to set and view settings within seconds. I'm curious weather certain physical elements similar to the RD1 should be used with the next GR camera or not.

So many things to try

Well it seems there are a few nice things to try out there. Recently I've been using ACDsee pro 2.5 on a trial. While it seems to do everything I need it to do on a basic level it won't open RAW files from my RD1s. While in Photokina, I discovered the latest bibble 5 which looks very similar to lightroom as in the colour of the interface, kind of discreet style if you are familiar with combustion. Bibble won't open RAW files from the GRD however, but does open RAW from the RD1s :). This for me doesn't quite work though as I want 1 tool to run on the Q1 ultra that will do everything. 

I always found it a pain to work with images in Blogger. There is no tool I know of that will show me all the pictures I have uploaded and let me update or run basic manipulations on them. What I really need is an interface within ACDsee that works with google picasa web albums. 

I recently discovered dropbox. This little tool will create a folder on your desktop that will synchronise with their remote server running on amazon ec2 :) . This is actually great because I can organise pics with ACDsee and just drop all my pics i need publishing online to a specific folder. While I have not really done anything yet, i'm eager to test this out a bit. The advantage would be that instead of uploading pics to Blogger, i could just provide a link to my dropbox pubic folder to a specific pic. This will also ensure it's up to date and not re compressed by the server. 

...

Brick lane

Went chilling around brick lane today and took a few pics. Stopped of at Blackheath pond beforehand say hello to the ducks and see if they like the taste of a ricoh :) Had the GRD1 and RD1 with me this time

Ricohforum meetup

There will be another Ricohforum meet up in London announced in the Ricohforum. This follows our recent meet up with Ricoh employees at Photokina last month. Would be terrific to meet other enthusiasts to discuss cameras, techniques, work flows for example and then go off to take some pics! :)
Please visit this thread for more information : http://www.ricohforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1824&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

Billions

Camera : GRD2

Well I didn't get up to much for lunch again and opted for a simple sandwich. As usual I walked pass the usual headlines that are worse than ever. Sometimes I wish I had more time to snap during the day instead of making sure servers are up.

Comedy night

Tonight I went along to a friends comedy evening. It was very good. 

http://whatwho.tv

That same morning I was wondering if I should bring along the f1.4 and took the q1 charger instead. Shot at a too low iso and most of the pics are a bit too blurry.

Man and bird

Camera : Epson RD1s
Lens : Voigtlander Color Skopar 21mm f4

Working late

Camera : Epson RD1s
Lens : Voigtlander Nokton classic S.C 40mm F 1.4

I decided to work a bit later today and recable some switches. Night time is where the RD1 is great or maybe all credit to the nokton 1.4 :)

Canary wharf with the GRD2

Camera : Ricoh GR Digital II

It's been quite a while since I've used the GRD2 so I decided to not use the RD1 so much yesterday. I used to be in this place every day a few years ago and it felt weird coming back here again. It's an interesting place to take pictures of modern stuff. I still can't believe this tall buildings are closed to the public who would like to go to the top take some pictures. I wonder how many sky scrapers in London the tourist is actually allowed in...

Kit

  * Sony DSC-F505V

  * Nikon D70s

  * Ricoh GR Digital

  * Ricoh GR Digital II

  * Hello Kitty disposable camera

  * Ricoh GR1s

  * Epson RD1s

I thought id take a pic of my cameras. I have to say i like all except the rubbish sony camera I bought 8 years ago on the far left. The Nikon D70s is ok but really to heavy and bulky to carry around. The 2 GRD are just superb. The GR1 is the best looking camera in the world, i just wish they would make a GR1d. The RD1s although as heavy as 3 GRD has a wonderful feel and build quality and classic camera controls.

no sd card = no pics

I was really looking forward to updating my blog today and took some pics i thought would be really nice. Sadly when opening up my card slot it was empty :(. so even if the dial is great on this camera i need to remember to check it more often. Ah well i will use an older pic for today. 

after work sky

The sky looked quite inspiring today. i did not take many pics today so i will add some more pictures to my photokina post

photokina snaps

Camera : Epson RD1s
Lens : Voigtlander Nokton classic S.C 40mm F 1.4
Settings : ISO200 . 1/97s.


Camera : Epson RD1s
Lens : Voigtlander Nokton classic S.C 40mm F 1.4
Settings : ISO200 / 1/676s

Camera : Epson RD1s
Lens : Voigtlander Nokton classic S.C 40mm F 1.4
Settings : ISO200 / 1/208s

Camera : Epson RD1s
Lens : Voigtlander Nokton classic S.C 40mm F 1.4
Settings : ISO200 / 1/676s

Photokina

Well, i ve just been to photokina after several months of anticipation. Finally another chance to meet up with the Ricoh staff. our last meet up was in Japan where we checked out the picture gallery from their last contest. I was also very eager to see how the new micro 4/3 system was since the recent announcement of the G1 and see if it would be a sort of modern day epson rd1 with controls similar to a ricoh that would accept interchangeable lenses, this way my voigtlander lenses could be mounted with an adaptor. next on my list was the olympus digital pen or whatever they decide to call their new ultra small interchangeable camera.

I was quite impressed with the panasonic G1 and it s EVF. on almost all cameras i have tested, the evf i find useless and uncomfortable to see with. manually focusing is also usually quite an exercise, however on the G1 its really quite usable and crisp. would have preferred an absence of any viewfinder all together and it to be sold as an accessory a bit like the Ricoh GX100.
The controls are quite OK and even if i prefer old school controls like the RD1 i could learn to like them. they added a push wheel and i am a big fan of wheels for controlling aperture and shutter. the wheel can even be pushed.the refresh rate of the screen leave the competition behind and is very very fast, maybe a bit too fast. they adopted a LCD folding feature like the rd1 that in my opinion is a bit pointless as you need the menu to make adjustments. on the RD1 it makes sense because all the controls are physical. perhaps its intended for another purpose.

At the Ricoh booth we had the chance to discuss cameras and our view of possible improvements of the GR series of cameras. I think the biggest points that came out of the meeting was the rocker switch in replacement of the GRD1 wheel and differences in jpeg quality. this subject is covered in every possible detail in the Ricoh gr diary. Ricoh staff are extremely friendly people who listen very carefully to their customer base.

The Olympus digital pen prototype looks almost too good to be true. it looks for now like a silver version of the sigma dp2 except the lens is changeable. if the interface is good, i may buy this camera or perhaps Ricoh will surprise me with the GRD3.

more to follow...