This weekend, I sold my three cameras and bought two brand new ones! Hooray! Well, there goes my bonus. For my purposes, I need two cameras. An SLR for when I want to “do” photography and a compact one that I can carry around with me all the time.
The first one is the new Olympus E500. The E500 is a significant upgrade to the previous E300, which I have been using up until now. It has a bigger and brighter LCD display (2.5″ up from 1.8″) and is currently the lightest SLR body. The controls were also moved to the right places and I felt it was what the E300 should have been. It just went on sale friday and I spent 2 hours at Bic after work trying it out. The guy even let me take it outside to shoot some pictures in low light and print them out. How could I not buy it after that?
The second camera is the Ricoh GR Digital (above). Although the E500 is a great camera, I have to admit I was more excited about getting the GR Digital. This camera is the one I have been looking for all my life. It was love at first sight. If I could marry it I would. The GRD is the much anticipated digital version of the popular Ricoh GR series. What sets the GRD apart from all the others is that it has a fixed wide angle 28mm lens with F2.4 aperture making it very fast and sharp. Most compact cameras have optical zoom lenses that sacrifice quality for the ability to zoom which I don’t need. I admire Ricoh for having the balls to go against economic common sense and put out a compact digital camera without zoom.
I’ve been growing more and more disappointed with the performance of my Canon IXY Digital 55 and was glad to get rid of it. The GRD is unlike any other compact digital. After spending just a few minutes with it, you could tell that the engineers spent a lot of time thinking outside the box. The controls and interface are quite simple and intuitive. It has two dials, controlled by your index finger and thumb, which are used to set the apeture and shutter speed in manual mode. I was surprised at how natural this felt. It was easy to control with just one hand. I find manual mode in most small digital cameras very hard to use and the settings are always buried in some menu. With the GRD, I think I’ll be using manual mode more often.
The GRD came out at the end of October and sold out immediately. Currently, no stores have any stock and I thought that I would have to wait until next year before I could get one. I did a search on kakaku.com and found a small store in Tama-plaza that had it and called them up first thing this morning. Lucky for me they just got one in last night and so I reserved it right away. When I went to pick it up the guy at the shop told me that 2 other people called right after me. Apparently, they all were looking at kakaku.com as well. While I was in the shop, a couple of people came in asking about it and one guy who noticed that I had it asked me if I could open it up and show him. There are people more obsessed than me!
Here are a few photos I took around the Tama-Plaza area, nothing interesting really. Check out some wonderful photos at the GR Digital Gallery.
A Good Review of the GR Digital.
I see you took a shot of your lunch… did you hear about that guy who has taken a picture of every meal for 20 or 30 years. Suggest you don’t make this a habit.
Mark, you’re refering to Dr. Nakamatsu. He got a lot of money for that data. 30 years of that pays off.
that camera is sexy (GR). the Canon IXY is what we call the Powershot ELPH in the US, right?
What does that sign say thats hanging on the tree?
Yep, IXY is ELPH outside of Japan. I’ve had a few ELPHs and I just felt that they have not really improved in the way that I want them too.
Not sure what that sign says, sorry.
I always wanted to know. How is it that an SLR takes those nifty pictures where the subject is in crystal clear focus and the background is kinda out of focus (so cool), but a “normal” digital camera alway has everything in focus? I’ve been looking at cameras like the Panasonic DMC-LX1 that have a lot of manual features and I was wondering, can these compact cameras to the same thing? What features should I be looking for?
A question that I can answer!!
This has to do with what’s called “depth of field”. This is the area that is IN FOCUS. The aperture is the opening that lets light thru the lens and onto the film or sensor. When you use a low aperture setting (the opening as wide as possible) e.g. F2.0 the depth of field is shallow so you get stuff in the background out of focus. When the aperture is high (the opening very small) e.g. F12 the depth of field is deep so everything is in focus.
It works the same way your eyes works. When it’s bright outside your iris is very small because there is too much light, but when it’s dark, your iris opens up wide to let in more light. At dusk sometimes it takes a while for you to focus because your eyes are opening really wide to adjust to nightfall and thus shallow depth of field.
“RED EYE” occurs because when the flash goes off, your iris is wide open (it’s dark) and the light from the flash illuminates the blood on your retina, thus red eye. That’s why RED EYE flashes flash once so that your iris reacts to the bright light and closes really small and then the flash goes off again with the shutter and you get a nice picture where you can’t see the red eye.
So back to your original question. Mainly the reason why you can do this on SLRs but not on compact cameras is because of a few reasons.
1) Most people use compact cameras set to automatic or equivalent. In automatic mode the camera chooses the aperture and usually finds a balance where everything is in focus. Many compact cameras these days do have aperture priority mode though.
2) Most compact cameras have a wide angle lens 35mm-50mm. Generally, as the focal length of the lens increases the depth of field decreases. Therefore it’s harder to reproduce these effects with a compact camera with wide angle lens. As an example, I had a F1.0 105mm portrait lens way back and it had such a shallow depth of field. I could take a person’s face and have her nose in focus but her eye out of focus. It was a great lens.
I was almost going to buy the Panasonic DMC-LX1 because it has the widest lens (28mm) but only when set to the 16:9 ratio which I was on the fence about. Also, the size and shape of the camera is a bit awkard. Doesn’t fit in your pocket flat and is too small to justify using a camera bag. I’m glad I held out for the GR Digital because it is exactly what I have been looking for!! If you are thinking about paying 60,000 for the LX1, I would just go for an SLR instead. There are some good deals out there.
Dude that was a great explanation. So basically even with a compact digital camera, if I increase the focal length (i.e. use zoom) and keep the aperture set low (assuming the compact camera has this manual feature) then the depth of field decreases (becomes more shallow) and I would get the effect that I want with the background a little out of focus right?
Here’s my next question (sorry, I’m such a bonehead when it comes to photography):
But then I would have to take pictures of everything from a quite a distance away in order the subject to be the right “size” in my photo right? But why is it that an SLR seems to be able to do that (increase focal depth ) without the super zooming on the subject? I mean I don’t see photogaphers standing 20 meters away from their subject when taking portraits and stuff. Is focal depth something that you can manually set/change or an SLR where most compacts can’t?
Using the zoom on a compact usually doesn’t work either. Unless it is an exceptional compact. The reason is that as you zoom a lens the minimum aperture setting increases. Generally compacts have slow lenses so you can’t get a wide enough aperture to begin with. As you zoom out the minimum aperture opening decreases and your depth of field increases. This is really hard to explain in words and easier to understand if you have an SLR and some lenses to play with.
These sites have very good explanations if you are interested
http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/DigiCam/User-Guide/950/depth-of-field.html
http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/fototech/htmls/depth.html
And this site may answer your question about how to choose a digital camera in the context of depth of field.
http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/dof/
Man that’s a lot to study!
After reading your blog as well as comments from other sites, I picked up the GR Digital.
I’ve been without a camera for months (the last one broke) and was fed up with grainy photos of the compacts and decided to splurge with the GR.
I don’t know anything other than point and shoot, but with the manual features of the GR, I may start looking into F settings and such. Sounds like fun with this camera.
BTW, you were right about the availability on kakaku. I was lucky as well; as soon as a shop receives some stock, it sells out quick.
It’s supposed to arrive tomorrow. woohoo!
Eugene,
Thanks for visiting and great that you could get a GR! I think is it just about the best compact digital I’ve owned. It reminds me a lot of old 35mm Olympus Pens I used to use. I loved those cameras. The negative side of the GR is that it is a bit cheap looking and the rubber grip will defintely peel off in time. It is like that with every display model I’ve seen so far. No big deal, just glue it back. But some people complained that for such an expensive camera it should be built better. It doesn’t bother me as much, I’m really happy that it works great in lowlight! I hope you enjoy it! If you post you pictures on the web let me know.
Eugene, one more thing to be prepared for since you say you are a point and shoot type of person. The GR was a really wide fixed lens and no optical zoom. You may find that you have to go a lot closer to your subjects to take their pictures and close-up portraits will appear slightly more exaggerated than with what you may be used to. There is a digital zoom but that basically just increases the pixels and the results aren’t great. I love using a wide angle lens for the kinds of things I like to take photos of so it’s not an issue.
Roy, I read about the rubber grip issue on kakaku.com. We’ll see how mine holds up.
I used to be sold on the look and feel of the recent compacts, but like i mentioned, most of them took crappy photos. Indeed, the GR looks a bit drab but not a factor for me. Didn’t use the zoom much on my previous cameras so the fixed lens isn’t a problem either.
What kind of settings do you use? Are you always taking pictures on the highest quality setting (8mp)? That must eat up a lot of memory.
BTW, great site.
I bought a 1GB SD card and so far have been taking photos at 8MP Fine and the average size of photos are 2.5MB. So I can take about 300+ photos on the 1GB card. The best thing about the GR is the adjust dial. When you push it in a menu shows up to adjust Exposure Compensation, White Balance and two others that you can set (e.g. ISO, Metering, Focus modes etc). It is soo easy to change these things on the fly!
I use either P (Programmable) or A (Aperture) with P the front dial changes boths the Aperture and Shutter speed together, while A you change the just the Aperture. I don’t really use Auto Mode that much.
The LCD screen is absolutely fabulous at 2.5″ so I suggest you buy LCD protector film. I did, makes a big difference.
Is that Tama-Plaza in Yokohama?
Just curious how much you paid for the GR. I’m in Korea and looking to pick one up but it’s not availible here yet. I have a friend heading to Osaka next week and might get her to pick one up for me. Any suggestions where in Oaska would be a good place to pick one up?
Thanks
Nayan
It cost around 80,000yen. Not sure about Osaka but your friend should just try all the major electronic stores. They might have one of two in stock.