Well I am about chock full of 28mm lens wonder folding lens bodies. I still have and use the original GRD, GRDIV and GRI. They are all great cameras and the original must be 10-11 years old by now. It is still a great camra in its own quirky way and testament to the lasting qualities of Rioch gear in general.
I will assess the GRIII when and if it happens but I gave the GRII a miss. I also doubt if I really need yet another 28mm fixed lens camera from Ricoh as my present ones work quite well and it might be getting increasingly hard to pull yet another rabbit idea out of the hat. But Ricoh has worked miracles before and who knows?
My main problem is that I really wanted something that was a continuator to the GXR and perhaps a little smaller. The GR with an exchangeable mount system would have been nice but the old bogey has been that Ricoh make a very good single lens and it is verging on impossible to make a whole series of them on GR sales quantities.
Therefore they have a possible choice of aps-c and casting about for suiable lenses might suggest that there are many PK mount aps-c lenses available. However the resulting camera combination will no longer be the compact camera that the GR series has always been but a sort of condensed GXR without the modular system. Not that there was anything particularly wrong with their modular system other than being too radical for a conservative market.
Looking at what might suit me is not necessarily what your average current Ricoh buyer might want. Despite taking a little step backwards in user ergonomics I was very taken with the Panasonic GM1. At a time when the rage on this forum was for the impossible provision of several GR bodies each with a different lens I simply made my own and the GM1 and later GM5 can be bought in multiples and each fitted with a lens of choice. Ergo - I have an ersatz series of different lensed "GR" camera bodies made exactly to cover my needs. With M4/3 there is such a range of lenses now that almost every possible lens type can be found for those with deep enough pockets. How soon will a GR come out with an 85mm fov f1.2 image stabilised lens? And yet I was using just that on a GM1 over two years ago. Want a 24mm fov f2.0 lens as well - no problem (or a 24mm fov f1.4 if your pockets are deep enough), An exquisite 70-200mm fov f2.8 OIS lens? Just empty your wallet here .....x
Panasonic also found a way to fit a quite useable evf into a camera body physically smaller than the GR. This is the pocket-rocket 16mp GM5.
Therefore if Ricoh did the unthinkable and joined the M4/3 consortium the whole range of M4/3 lenses would be ready and winking at a GXRII built to GR proportions. Unfortunately there is no way a collapsing 28mm lens will fit into a regulation M4/3 mount.
The GRIII? I will see what it brings when it arrives .... But the 30mm fov f1.7 Panasonic lens is a honey of a lens and the GM5 + 15/1.7 is a potent compact package and I can make it into whatever combination that takes my fancy.
But better still would be a GR size GXRII with modules for PK, M4/3 and LM - with a decent built in evf. That would be something to really rock the boat - especially if the existing GXR mount modules would fit. One of the additional modules of course would be an updated 28mm f2.0 collapsing lens. ie: the GRIII.
They are going to make it? I am in.
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Tom Caldwell
