Hi,
I used to own a GR a long time ago. I loved the handling, the 28mm lens and the image quality but here is what I didn't like:
- AF especially in poor light
- unreliable exposure meter
- poor auto-WB and out of the box colors
I shoot RAW but the last two points were the most annoying. Every shot needed post processing to look good. I'm sure that the camera has been improved and I would love to hear from someone who owned the first GR and no the GRIII by how much.
Thank you!
I would say that the AF is certainly much improved, but it still can hunt a fair bit in low light. It’s certainly well short of my Fujifilm cameras (X-T4, X-Pro3 and X100VI) but it’s better than any camera I’ve used in the same class as the GR.
I’ve always treated all Ricohs as “raw only” cameras* as I’ve never really liked their colours or noise reduction. But the GR III/IIIx do produce JPEGs that I’m happy to use: I have two custom profiles that give results I like, one B&W and one based on Negative Film—though generally I still use the raws, especially for high ISO shots. Metering has been fine for me but in all honesty the way I shoot kind of makes metering a bit of a non issue (most of the time I’ll point the camera such that I’m aiming at something the right distance away and the scene is about the right brightness, then half press and recompose—with this I find I generally only need compensation for specific environments).
As for auto WB, I never use it on any camera so can’t comment on that. I used to use it on Fujifilm and they do a very good job.
The III is definitely a big improvement. Image quality and AF performance are noticeably better. The new exposure compensation control (on the rear rocker lever) is also a welcome improvement to handling. I hate the rear-facing control wheel. Build quality feels a bit better. IBIS opens up a lot of options.
Whether it’s a big enough improvement across the three factors you mention is another matter.
One thing I will say, at the risk of heresy, is that if you want to address the second and third points on your list then the Fujifilm XF10 is worth a look because it definitely does a decent job on both fronts. AF performance IME is somewhere between the GR and the GR III. I found it good enough but some people seem to hate it (mostly I suspect because they’ve never used the other cameras in this class, which are all pretty poor at AF, and/or they hadn’t figured out the settings where Fuji’s AF is as fast as it can be). In many ways it’s a hard camera to love: it exhibits some baffling design decisions and it’s prone to the dials becoming erratic (and is the only camera with this issue that I wasn’t able to fix with contact cleaner). But once you figure out its happy place and don’t try to use it for things it doesn’t want to do, under the skin it’s a great camera. I ordered my GR as soon as it was announced at the start of 2013 and honestly never thought I’d sell it, but the XF10 eventually elbowed it out. The only reason I don’t still have the XF10 is that I damaged the screen and the dials stopped working. But (and here is a bit of a problem for anyone buying one now) prices are now so wild that even in its semi functioning state I sold it for what I paid brand new. It’s quite different to a GR, though. Much simpler. I quite liked that. Image quality was absolutely competitive with the GR III.
* except the GX8 and the GRD which took forever to write a raw file
but at least the JPEGs were seemingly untouched by NR
