A GReat little camera
Easily overlooked when most people are shopping for a ‘good’ travel camera, the GR is a great little tool that won’t break the bank, especially since they are now going for under $450 USD on eBay.
Unlike the most point and shoot cameras with tiny little sensors, the GR comes with an APS-C sized sensor, similar in size to what you’d find on the Nikon D7200, Canon 60D (thanks for the catch, Mark!), and delivers amazing image performance for something this compact
Ricoh really hit this one out of the ballpark — if you think this is a weird focal length, here’s something to think about — it’s a 28mm lens that covers pretty much a similar field of view as your mobile phone (the iPhone at least).
Shoot RAW? Great, cos this little guy spits out those images in Adobe’s universal DNG format. And in AdobeRGB colour space too.
Not a fan of post-processing? Ricoh’s hit it out of the ballpark with this one — the dramatic black and white and the positive film presets have got some serious mojo.
A friend of mine was in Dubai just awhile back and shot some crazy Daido Moriyama-like images — check out his work at http://www.monotanphotos.com/
Image quality and size aside, the other thing I love about this camera is being able to charge it using a USB cable. I rarely travel without my XiaoMi 16000 mAh USB power bank, and I keep this little guy charged and ready to go with the included USB cable. Of course, you’re SOL if you lose the cable, but given how cheap you can get them for on eBay, there’s little reason not to buy a few spares and toss them into every bag you own.
Battery life is pretty good — I’ve never run out of juice except when I used the Eye-Fi cards, which put a huge drain on the battery. The alternative is to carry around a camera connection kit or a USB OTG cable (for Android users).
