Last weekend I compared my Ricoh GRD III with the new GRD IV. You can download the DNGs to form your own opinion, I don’t judge the pictures here. The .jpgs shown here are scaled down, so they are no benchmark for the cameras.
Ricoh GRD IV, f2.2, 1/60, ISO 259, JPG
Ricoh GRD III, f2.2, 1/60, ISO 100, JPG
First time I worked with the GRD IV, there was no big difference to the GRD III. But when you switch back from the new IV to the III you see the huge advantage: The new Ricoh GRD IV is really fast and the resolution of the monitor is a lot better. These are the most important facts for now.
Ricoh GRD IV, f4.5, 1/320, ISO 80, JPG
Ricoh GRD III, f4.5, 1/320, ISO 64, JPG
I didn’t think that the menu would be much different, but you have to rethink some functions and your workflows. Some details are a little bit disturbing: When using the Adj.-Button to select the Move Target Setting you usually can select between AF, AE/AF and AE. After pushing Adj. again you select the focus point and after pushing it again you are back to the AF, AE/AF and AE-selection. With the GRD III this switching works, with the GRD IV not. Don’t ask me why. With the IV you can’t leave the „cross-hairs“-view. I’m not sure, but I think at the beginning it also worked with the IV, but after playing a little bit with the camera this feature got „lost“.
Ricoh GRD IV, f2.5, 1/500, ISO 80, JPG
Ricoh GRD III, f2.5, 1/500, ISO 64, JPG
The handling with both cameras is nearly perfect. I wrote about the huge difference in speed and resolution. The worst fact during my foto-safari were three system crashs with the new GRD IV. Three times the new camera was freezing and the only solution was reassembling the batteries. The camera always crashed when watching the DNGs very quickly after taking the foto. First time with a black screen, second time freezing during the playback view and the last time I finally had an Errormessage (see the picture on top of the article). I’m not sure, but with the IV I was using an Eye-Fi SD-Card and perhaps this WLAN-SD-Card is the error source. I don’t trust the Eye-Fi cards cause I’m not very happy with the slow and unpredictable transfer and the very poor Eye-Fi Center on OSX, but this is another story.
Ricoh GRD IV, f2.5, 1/800, ISO 100, JPG
Ricoh GRD III, f2.5, 1/800, ISO 100, JPG
Ok, a detailed report of the GRD IV is coming soon. For now have fun with the DNGs 😉
Good mini review and it’s useful being able to download the DNGs and see how they look in Lightroom. Definitely considering the GRD IV as carrying my D700 & 28mm/2.8 lens is not always convenient.
vielen dank für die dng. 🙂
eine frage: findest du die ricoh GRD IV besser als die Sigma DP2s ?
vielen dank für die antwort
sergio
GRD IV’s displayed ISO values seems to differ from the real ISO values, by about 2/3 stop. So all the GRD IV’s pictures in this review look a bit darker then the ones of the GRD III, which displayed ISO values are more honest.
When compared side by side, shooting in RAW and in automatic mode, the IV will use the same speed/aperture values as the III but choose for a doubled ISO! Results would look exactly the same though… as you could expect from using the same sensor.
@sergio: Die beiden Kameras kann man nicht wirklich miteinander vergleichen. Mit der DP muss man wesentlich bewusster umgehen, die GRD ist viel intuitiver. Wenn ich wählen müsste würde ich die GRD nehmen, da sie flexibler und schneller ist. Wenn ich eine bewusste Fototour mit viel eingeplanter Zeit mache, die DP.
Hey mich würde mal interessieren, warum du die GRD 4 genommen hast?
Es gibt ja auch noch andere Kompakte (S100, LX5, XZ1, X10) – ich suche nämliche eine neue – hatte die X10 zum Probieren, aber mich hat WDS gestört.
Danke und lg, K.
Very hard to compare these dngs since the focus is not on the same spot