looking at all these great photos, and a couple of notes
A great lot of excellent photos from everyone! Thanks for posting them.
I haven't had the GXR out for some time, my time to do photography has become somewhat limited and I've been concentrating on working with other cameras in recent months.
But I went to a wedding a few weekends back. I was not the wedding photographer, thank the gods, but I brought along the Leica X2 and the Ricoh GXR fitted with A12 50mm Macro for myself and another friend to use. Both cameras acquitted themselves rather well for my purposes .. I was able to send a little gift of 200 casual candid photos to the bride and groom, and their parents.
Using these two cameras after working for some time with the M9 and film cameras made clear to me what the biggest differences were: shutter lag and shot-to-shot responsiveness.
shutter lag:
A problem with both of them is that AF focusing speed gets in the way of getting the exposure made at the right instant, so I quickly flipped both to manual focus and set a zone when it was bright enough to stop down. This worked well, but I then found that the other problem is that the shutter lag is not particularly consistent. Compared to the E-1 or M9, which always fire the shutter at an easy to figure out delay from when the shutter release is pressed, both the GXR and the X2 seem to pause and hunt by a variable moment even with the focus and exposure locked before making the exposure.
shot-to-shot responsiveness:
Both the X2 and the GXR write quickly to the card but do not buffer writes. This introduces a short but remarkably annoying "lock up" between one shot and the next which cannot be avoided. It's not like I'm trying to shoot sequences, I simply need to be able to make the next shot without having to wait for the camera to catch up. (Note that this never happens on a film camera as between shots you're doing something ... winding the film and cocking the shutter ... that distracts you sufficiently such that you hardly notice that the camera was 'locked up' ... !)
These two issues are the biggest detraction to both X2 and GXR for my use. It's not terrible, for most subject matter it is hardly noticeable, but when I'm shooting at a party and people are moving and having a good time, and I want to catch their expressions, the variability of shutter lag and the shot to shot lock up time account for most of my lost photos.
This is precisely where the E-1 and M9, with their buffered writes and very consistent shutter action, excel. Despite the fact that both of them are almost glacial in their write speed compared to the X2 and GXR, they prove to be far more immediately responsive for this kind of picture taking situation.
The good side of the GXR and X2 is their remarkable image quality combined with the delightfully small and non-intrusive form factor. I carried one or both of them, sans bag, over my shoulder or in my vest pocket both days of the wedding and they never got in the way. Either of the E-1 and M9 would have always been telegraphing me "carrying a camera" due to the added size and weight. And I have to give a lot of credit for how good both of these compacts are in terms of sheer image quality. If the shutter lag and responsiveness issues are not in my way, they return photographs remarkably on par with the higher end cameras and lenses.
The GXR with A12 Camera Mount becomes a bit more consistent and responsive, and you never have the AF option to distract you, but once configured with EVF and lens it's only marginally smaller/lighter than the M9 so it loses a little on the compactness front while gaining a little on the competency front.
Fascinating, after so long working with the GXR and X2 almost exclusively, to compare them to my higher-end cameras and have these strengths and weaknesses be so readily apparent. Camera technology is so intimately linked to what you make photographically ... !