Note that this is a preview of a “pre-production” model of the Pentax – Ricoh GR running non-final firmware.
Pentax GR
STORES
£
600.00
On the outside: a practical design
At first glance, this camera doesn’t exactly seem to shake up the world of the Ricoh GR. The design and controls are hardly revolutionary—but that’s no bad thing. It’s only when you actually get a real-life 2013 GR in your hands that you realise how light and compact it is. In fact, it slips into a jacket pocket just as easily as the Coolpix A. That said, the GR still feels sturdy and robust. Plus, grip is a cut above anything else on the market. The rubbery material covering the handle is particularly effective. You don’t need to clench your fingers tightly to keep hold of the camera body—a wrist strap and a couple of fingers will do the job.
Switching to a GR after having spent time with the Coolpix A isn’t particularly flattering on Nikon’s expert compact. In fact, the more we used the GR, the more we started to notice what was missing and/or could be improved in the Coolpix A. For example, the GR’s lockable mode-selection dial is a real treat, and the dial’s “Video” setting means that you don’t have to go hunting through the menus to shoot movies like in the Coolpix.
In TAv mode, the front settings thumb-wheel changes aperture while the thumb-wheel on the back of the camera (“ADJ. ISO”) changes shutter speed. Then you can leave it to the GR to choose the right sensitivity setting.
As its name suggests, the “ADJ. ISO” thumb-wheel is first and foremost used for adjusting ISO settings. But it does much more than that! Depending what shooting mode you’re in, this handy clickable control puts the white balance settings, focus modes (AF, MF, Subject tracking, Snapshot, Infinity), exposure modes, image format or aspect ratio (3:2, 4:3, 1:1) at your very fingertips.
You flip between options in these sub-menus using the “+” and “-” buttons placed handily under the thumb. This set-up makes the GR particularly intuitive and user-friendly, as you can control the camera with just two fingers.
If that all sounds far too simple, then don’t forget that the GR is packed with loads of advanced customisation options. In fact, you can customise pretty much everything here. For example, noise reduction can be set in relation to ISO range, the focus distance in “Snapshot” mode can be user-set and the self-timer can be customised.
The display has a high resolution and is nice and responsive with onscreen action. It also has wide viewing angles. In manual focusing mode, the focal length and the depth of field are displayed onscreen—something you don’t get with the Coolpix A. The GR also detects which way round you’re using the camera, moving the various bits of onscreen info accordingly—including the electronic level. That’s a really nice touch. However, we found the electronic level a bit too demanding, as it was pretty hard to get a perfectly horizontal position with the camera hand-held.
On the whole, the GR is a very nice camera to handle. Even though the model we saw wasn’t 100% final, it’s still safe to say that the GR has all it takes to outshine even heavyweight expert compacts on handling.
That said, there’s still some room for improvement. For example, the GR is only supplied with a USB cable and a USB-to-mains charger, as is the way with all too many cameras nowadays (we prefer a stand-alone battery charger so you can leave a spare battery charging while out snapping). On this front, Nikon’s Coolpix A is more practical, as it comes with a proper battery charger. Another annoying thing about the GR is that there’s no battery charging light.
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On the inside: technical prowess
The “Effect” button on the side of the GR offers access to a selection of creative filters, which can even be used when the camera is shooting RAW only. After giving these a go, we’d like to say thank you, thank you and thank you again to Pentax/Ricoh for using the DNG format here, as you don’t need to wait for Lightroom updates or use proprietary software to open the resulting files. And that’s especially handy for product testers like us! You therefore won’t have to wait for the camera to gain compatibility with your favourite editing software, which has often been the way with expert compacts over the last few years.
Lightroom definitely recognises the creative filters, as it previews them before import. However, it’s impossible to find them once actually imported. Thankfully, there’s a way round this thanks to a second clever feature of this camera—RAW shots can be processed directly in the GR. This doesn’t completely ruin quality, and it means that you can make different versions of the same shot with all the available filters. So that’s exactly what we did.
Original – Black and White – BW (TE)
High Contrast BW- Cross Process – Positive Film
Bleach Bypass – Miniaturize – High Key.
Original – Black and White – BW (TE)
High Contrast BW- Cross Process – Positive Film
Bleach Bypass – Miniaturize – High Key.
To round off this (very promising) first hands-on with the GR, let’s take a look at its ISO test results compared with the Nikon Coolpix A.
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ISO settings performance: GR
ISO settings performance: Coolpix A
The GR has two more ISO settings than the Coolpix A, reaching up to 25600 ISO. Although the GR generally does a good job, we have to admit that Nikon’s image processing engine performs slightly better, keeping granular noise finer and less fuzzy-looking. All in all, the Coolpix A wins on electronics.
But when it comes to lenses, the sample shots below speak for themselves—the GR’s 28 mm lens is more consistent, keeping quality and sharpness more even over the frame. This lens is a very nice piece of kit.
Note that we haven’t yet run the GR through any responsiveness tests—we’ll save that for the full review—but it certainly felt promising during out hands-on. In fact, it may turn out to be speedier than the Coolpix A (stay tuned for the actual lab results).
Pentax-Ricoh GR: Hands-On Preview
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