One of the few things I hate about the GRD3

I've spent the last couple of weeks getting used to the GRD3, and for the most part have been very impressed with it. Noise is low, control is great and the images have a surprising amount of DR for a small camera. However, today I finally came across something I find really annoying.

As it says in the manual, on auto mode a neutral density (ND) filter is used to obtain apertures between f8 and f11 and that makes sense in terms of limiting diffraction.What I don't understand is why this isn't available in any other mode! I mean, for a camera that bases its reputation on being so easily customised, why on earth would the engineers restrict a useful feature to the camera's only idiot mode? The Canon G7,G9 and G10 all have ND filters that can be activated by the user at will, and can be really useful when you want to get a longer exposure while maintaining control over the aperture and shutter speed.

Since it's there already and is automatically activated by the camera, I'm assuming this is something Ricoh could change with a firmware update. Is anyone else annoyed by this seemingly crippled feature?
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I have a strong suspicion that it's because the ND filter is too small to cover the wide open apertures. In other words, that it's physically usable only with f8 and above.

I think Will Foreman, who already stripped down and rebuild several cameras (including GRD), could probably answer this question? Will, are you here?

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Ricoh Film & Digital Forum
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I've got a dead G7 somewhere. I'll have a look...

Pavel Kudrys said:

I have a strong suspicion that it's because the ND filter is too small to cover the wide open apertures. In other words, that it's physically usable only with f8 and above.

Click to expand...

Even if that is true, why isn't it available in non-auto modes? Even simply being able to set aperture to (pseudo-)f/11 (faked by the filter) in A or M modes could be useful sometimes.

To be honest, any aperture above F4.5 (5.6) is useless in small sensor cameras. F4.5 seems to be sharpest aperture in case of GRDIII and anything above suffers with diffraction effect. In other words, pictures become visibly softer with higher aperture numbers (smaller hole). The truth is, that GRDIII lens deals extremely well with this problem. The loss of sharpness is not so dramatic at f5.6 or f6.3 and even F9 from GRDIII is way too sharper than F8 from LX3 (yes, I did direct comparison).

Small sensor cameras (1/1.7") are simply incapable of using higher aperture numbers. For apertures like f8 or f11 you need at least 4/3 sensor, where the diffraction starts to appear around f11.

I agree it would be great to have user selectable ND filter (especially now with somewhat more sensitive GRDIII), but there is simply no reasonable point for apertures like f8 or f11 in case of small GRDIII sensor.

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Ricoh Film & Digital Forum
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The big exception to this otherwise valid point is the use of the aperture to control DOF for macro shots. And the GRD3 really shines for macros

Pavel Kudrys said:

To be honest, any aperture above F4.5 (5.6) is useless in small sensor cameras. F4.5 seems to be sharpest aperture in case of GRDIII and anything above suffers with diffraction effect.

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Ricoh Film & Digital Forum
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Click to expand...

The Ricoh GRDIII has the usual excellent interface. But it is full of go-faster 'tricks'.

These take a bit of learning but as I assimilate them I am increasingly pleased.

It took a fair bit of patience with the manual to discover all the nuances (often not fully explained in the manual) and I have already relayed many of them back to this forum.

However unless used regularly they will have to be re-learned. One such is the switch to PASM temporarily from within a My mode - firstly you have to switch the facility=On, then in My mode you press Menu then up arrow then click - it is that easy. Serious manipulators of their camera will immediately see the advantage but until the procedure is 'learned' it might be a bit opaque.

The GRDIII can be used pretty simply by those who just want a camera but it is those that will push its frontiers who will get the unforgettable images.

Learning to use the camera is a bother, few enthusiasts will see this as a problem, the bother is well worth the result. You have to charm the snake out of the basket to get the best show.

I would hate this camera to get bad press because of its almost hidden manipulation charms but someone unprepared for its depth might just do so - unfortunately.

A bit of the workman and bad tools syndrome ... please don't let this happen.

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Tom Caldwell

Hi Pavel,

Would you mind explaining why you put a second aperature in parentheses after the first (i.e., the 5.6 after the 4.5)?
Thank you!

Hi,

F4.5 is a theoretical maximum aperture number for GRDIII size of sensor, before the diffraction starts to take effect. However, my tests revealed that the loss of image sharpness due to diffraction is unnoticeable at f5.6. So I think it's safe to use this aperture without worrying about overall image sharpness.

Whiteshore said:

Hi Pavel,

Would you mind explaining why you put a second aperature in parentheses after the first (i.e., the 5.6 after the 4.5)?
Thank you!

Click to expand...

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Ricoh Film & Digital Forum
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Thank you!