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New Ricoh GR-II Owner....Some comments and Pictures****

F

flipflop

New member
Hi,

I just purchased a Ricoh GR-II and am really loving it, because of its size it can go everywhere.

I am wondering what your normal work flow is like with this camera. Who is shooting raws vs. Jpegs.

What software are you using to edit the photos. I am running a Mac and only have Iphoto at the moment. On my PC I had photoshop and I fairly comfortable with it in adjusting levels, saturation, exposure and contrast etc.

Any Lightroom users? Is it worth the money?

I basically want to be able to shoot high quality images, have the ability to enlarge them to at least 11X14.

What do I need to this, I have the camera and a nice new 20" Imac. The printer I have is not the greatest but it prints decent. Its a Canon IP1800, if I need to blow something up I will go to a real lab to have them printed.

What else do I need software wise?
Please explain your workflow just trying to make the switch from film to digital.

Sorry for all the questions.

Thanks for the help
 
Tim

Tim

Active member
Hi flipflop and Hello all,

I also have been lurking here for some months and finally got around to registering. This forum offers some unique discussion on a favourite type of camera of mine - The high quality compact. I've carried a Contax T2 and then a T3 for a number of years but recently bought a Ricoh GRD II to replace the T3 - I still will keep the T3 for the occasional film use.

The GRDII accompanied me on a recent holiday as my only camera and it found it worked for me perfectly, I had a very high rate of keepers. The 28mm lens was never a handicap, in fact it made it easier "to see" an image as I was always looking in the 28mm field of view.

The release of the GX200 is on my list to buy. I was considering a GX100 at what will be clearout prices but the technology in the GX200 is too compelling. On Image Quality I found the GRD perfectly fine for images that mostly found themselves as postcard (6x4) prints. Even the odd 6x8 were great and I suspect I can manage larger without any problems.

I recently followed the thread on RAW development and the main question for me is which RAW processor software to buy? Which offers the best price/performance ratio? What RAW developement features are a must have and which program do you think is the must have?

Some options... with approximate price..
Lightroom US$300
Capture One 4 US$200
Bibble lite / pro US$70 / $130
Lightzone Basic / Full US$130 / $200
Silkypix US$150

other options?..

PS: I also use a Nikon D80

Thanks in advance

Tim
 
otumay

otumay

New member
Hi,
I hope you enjoy your GRD-II as much as I do. Right now I'm on vacation and I have the Ricoh and Fuji S5Pro with me. The Ricoh is set to RAW+b/w jpeg. I have Photoshop CS3, Lightroom and CaptureOne on my MacBook and ample time in the shade...
First of all, I'd like to say that I'm much more pleased with b/w performance of the Ricoh than its RAW performance. The noise is very apparent at ISO 400. The colors are overcool. I know it's unfair to compare its results to the S5 shots, all I can say is that Ricoh woks wonders in b/w.
Coming to your question, it depends on how much effort and budget you wish to afford. Of course, CS3 is wonderful, but it may be an overkill for Ricoh. Lightroom is very convenient to use and gives good results. CaptureOne is not that easy to use but, it is very efficient in dng conversion. Unfortunately, it does not have Ricoh's profile in its camera database. So I would recommend Lightroom, I guess.
Best,
Osman
 
Joan

Joan

New member
Since you have an iMac, flipflop, you might also want to consider Aperture. I think it's what I'll eventually be buying, once I get the funds together. I found it a lot easier to use than Lightroom, plus it's $100 cheaper. Do the 30 day trial and see what you think. I also want to give it a go with just PS Elements and Adobe camera raw before I make up my mind.
 
L

les

New member
Caution on Aperture - it has a much higher hardware requirement than Lightroom.
I'm able to run LR on an iMac, and G4 and Pismo Powerbooks, and it's great, does so many things well, with the beta 2 pushing the envelope even further.
Important decision to make, 'cos once you've made it and set things up, the hassle of a change will be too much to bear.
 
Tim

Tim

Active member
Guy Mancuso

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
I actually don't have a GRD yet. LOL

But some of my favorites are C1 and LR. They also handle most camera's but not sure about the Ricoh's . Another one is Lightzone which i don't have a link for.

I'm going to get a GX-200 when it comes out.
 
Tim

Tim

Active member
Guy,

Pretty sure all the Ricoh's use Adobe DNG for their RAW format so I think just about all the RAW converters will work - there may be one exception somewhere. Even though I have a GRDII the GX200 is on my to buy list also.

Tim
 
Joan

Joan

New member
les said:
Caution on Aperture - it has a much higher hardware requirement than Lightroom.
I'm able to run LR on an iMac, and G4 and Pismo Powerbooks, and it's great, does so many things well, with the beta 2 pushing the envelope even further.
Important decision to make, 'cos once you've made it and set things up, the hassle of a change will be too much to bear.
Click to expand...
I didn't realize that, Les. Perhaps I ought to give LR another try ... I did the trial when it very first came out on my old PC. Maybe I should download the current Mac version and see if I can figure it out. If it runs faster, that would be a very good thing.
 
Tim

Tim

Active member
Joan said:
I didn't realize that, Les. Perhaps I ought to give LR another try ... I did the trial when it very first came out on my old PC. Maybe I should download the current Mac version and see if I can figure it out. If it runs faster, that would be a very good thing.
Click to expand...
Joan and all,

I am trialing LR on a PC laptop which is an original dual core 1.8Gz running XP and its a bit slow but manageable - I would say the slowness helps at this stage of my learning. Like so many others here I'm working out the benefits of RAW.

For me. I am still printing some jpgs out of the camera IF they are spot on technically. My understanding is that any printing process only needs 8 bit files anyhow (so jpg is enough?) whereas RAW from Ricohs are 12bit? so if the original jpg is as you want, whats the point of reprocessing it? Can anyone correct me here?

Where I think RAW helps out is if you need to make tweaks to the image that is substandard in some way. Tweaking jpgs can result in a worse image than properly tweaking a RAW file as you have more information from the image to work with - this is assuming your final use is printed output. Is my thinking essentially correct here?

Tim
 
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