Advanced Digital P&S with best B&W mode

I bought my GRD II back from Blake because I missed using it. It works well fits nicely in a pocket and the interface is straight-forward. Cheaper to buy used than a new canon or nikon and it works better.
 
eddie1960 said:
I don't know what camera's you have Jim but I'm guessing you could get an Oly EP1 body and an adaptor for your lenses and get better results than with a p/s
theres an ep1 body on ebay right now for 349 + shipping. with the right lens it will still fit in your pocket
if not that I would lean towards a g10 which should be available under $400 now that the 12 is coming out
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Thanks for the suggestion but I've tried the u4/3 stuff and didn't care for it much for lots of reasons, also I'm not big on the idea of adapting lenses. Part of this search for a digital P&S is to alleviate some of the problems I face shooting an RF and film so adapting lenses and manual focusing with magnifiers and such seems a step in the wrong direction in my case.


I'll have a look at the GRD series, I've never looked into them so I have some reading to do. Partially considering the Dlux4 as well (I'm a sucker for the Red Dot).

I looked at the DP1 and DP2 which are within budget but sound to be horrid devices.

I'm already planning on pre-ordering a Fuji X100 at this point. It really may be the ideal camera for me - a digital RF with AF and cool retro styling but as that's vaporware at the moment and generally cameras that get this much hype prior too release all seem to have some sort of glaring defect I'm basically ignoring it for the time being.
 
From what I've seen the King of B&W out of the camera is the GRD I, followed by the GRD III. Take a look over at www.ricohforum.com. The guy who runs it is great and there's a small group of Ricoh-holics that share a LOT of great information.

I was very sad when my son trashed the LCD on my GRD I, but it allowed me to justify getting a III.
 
I admire your honesty. lol

In that case I recommend you canon G10. with its 14mb packed in a small sensor, you get very small pixel size that works like grain and when converted to b&w looks more filmy than any other p&s i have seen.

of course for best result you need to shoot raw but you can try the lazy-mode, i mean, the in-camera b&w mode as well.
 
jmooney said:
How does it compare to the GRDII? The reason I ask is that the II has a native square format mode and I REALLY like the idea of that.
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It has a zoom range of 28mm to 100 or something, it has a dingy vf that could be useful, it handles like a smallish rangefinder, it has a dial for ISO, and for exposure compensation, its screen is lovely, its cheap, its very sturdy. it does not have a snap mode but you could set the distance in manual mode and save it in custom setting. its AF is very fast for a P&S. it has image stabilization, which is very useful... it also looks mean and serious.

its flaws are, noise at anything above 400, but if you shoot b&w you could shoot 800 iso for that gritty look. it has a 3 second delay between shots, but its a p&s and you can forgive it that.


edit: it has a native aspect ratio of 4:3 and i'm ignorant of everything square.
 
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Ricoh GRD3 again. Good B&W JPGs. The RAW files have a lot more latitude for B&W PP. Sigma DPx cameras are good too, but not for JPG. I'd go for the Ricoh.
 
jmooney said:
Thanks for the suggestion but I've tried

I'm already planning on pre-ordering a Fuji X100 at this point. It really may be the ideal camera for me - a digital RF with AF and cool retro styling but as that's vaporware at the moment and generally cameras that get this much hype prior too release all seem to have some sort of glaring defect I'm basically ignoring it for the time being.
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I would have suggested the GRD or the Sigma both of which i think are lovely cameras but i took into account the price point you mentioned, i should know better GAS gets us all to open are wallets wider than the director of finance would prefer
 
The drawback of cameras with wide-range zooms is that you got noticeable barrel distortion on the wide end. But I suppose there's a software fix for that.
 
jmooney said:
How does it compare to the GRDII? The reason I ask is that the II has a native square format mode and I REALLY like the idea of that.
Click to expand...

The GRD III is a close second. The word on the street is that Ricoh tried to do some stuff to the RAW files on the II that they removed, or perhaps got right on the III.

None of the GRDs have zoom, they are all 28mm lenses. The GX line, very simmular handling has zoom lenses though not as uber high quality as the primes that live in the GRD line.
 
Panny LX-3 or Canon G9 and easily within your budget and theyre plentiful. I do not think spending a lot on a tiny sensor point and shoot makes a lot of sense because the image quality diff between any of the better ones isn't enough to justify spending a lot.
 
Probably Ricoh Grd1. The noise looks fine up to iso 800. At 1600 it gets a little blotchy. Raw-writing is slow. Just below 9 secs as fastest.http://ricohforum.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3&sid=f282048390813b18476775bcbe78c904&start=0
For some unknown reason, iso 1600 is not available in raw, which means that underexposing is required to achieve that.

Another one, very old by now and both ridiculously low amount of pixels as well as used price at Ebay is the old Olympus D-360L which seems to generate grainy output at its highest iso, 500 http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/D360/FULLRES/D36L07AA.HTM
 
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