I GOT TO TRY THE RICOH GR IV
The new Ricoh GR IV design mirrors the standard GR form factor.
I GOT INVITED TO AN EXCLUSIVE UNVEILING OF THE NEW RICOH GR IV
For the last few months, I’ve been borrowing my friend Faizal’s GR III, and at first I was skeptical of this system… but to my surprise, that tiny, fixed-lens, simple camera has become one of my favorites to take out with me. It’s a ton of fun to use, and for street photography specifically, there are some major advantages to a camera with a form factor like this. A topic for a future blog/video…
However, that camera does have some drawbacks which have made me unsure about committing to buying my own.
That’s why, when Ricoh recently announced they would be releasing the GR IV, and the rumored specs seemed to directly address my main concerns with the GR III, I got really interested in learning more about it.
The Invite TO TRY IT…
Funny enough, when I was at BILD Expo in June, I got connected face to face with some of the Ricoh team. One thing led to another and I ended up on a call with their marketing team, which in turn led to an invitation to an exclusive early showing and hands-on demo of the new Ricoh GR IV.
At that event, they passed out a handful of GR IVs to a small group of photographers, ambassadors, and Ricoh GR community members. There were literally like 10 to 15 of us in that room. Such an honor to catch an invite to something like this.
The Ricoh GR team giving us an explanation of some of the new features of the Ricoh GR IV.
We all got to feel these cameras out, play around with some of the new features, and just get a sense of what’s to come. They also went through a pretty informative presentation with details about the changes made on this new model, so I got to learn a lot about not just the new camera but what makes it different from the past GR models.
To clarify, I did not get to take the camera out on a photo walk, and I also did not get to keep any of the images I was taking on the camera itself. So, I unfortunately can’t share sample pictures from the camera in this blog or video.
WHAT WILL I SHARE IN THIS BLOG POST?
I recognize what an interesting opportunity I just had, so I wanted to make a short post to chat through my thoughts after handling the camera, and provide my very brief and basic first impressions of the Ricoh GR IV. Specifically I want to note the big differences between this camera and the GR III which I’ve now got a couple months under my belt with. I’m going to keep my thoughts basic and based on what I observed and got to see for myself, and I’ll save the full review for when the camera is out and I actually have mine in hand.
If you’re like me, you might be interested in picking up the GR IV upon release. My only goal here is to provide you another perspective from someone who’s actually held it and used it a little bit, and hopefully help you make a decision about whether you want to buy it.
Just a quick housekeeping note: this post is not sponsored by Ricoh, they did not review this, and they don’t even know I’m making it. But I do want to thank them for inviting me to that event. I recognize I am still very new to that community of photographers, so the fact that I got this opportunity feels like a blessing.
Design
THE BUILD QUALITY OF THE GR IV
The Ricoh GR IV
The design & form factor is easily one of the biggest draws to the GR system for many, and as I’ve gotten experience with the GR III, its been easy to see why.
However, in comparison to cameras from other companies/systems I’m comfortable with, the only aspect of the GR III’s design I haven’t like has actually been the build quality/feel. The III does feel a bit plastic, in my opinion, and the buttons feel a little finicky sometimes.
Now, I could be saying this just because I’m used to a lot of cameras with a lot of metal components, but nonetheless — if you’ve watched my other gear videos or read my other blog posts, you’ll know that I care a lot about how a camera feels when I’m using it.
If I had to choose, I want a camera to feel closer to a brick than a pillow, if that makes sense. It just feels more real, more convincing, more reliable.
That’s why I was really stoked when I picked up the GR IV and felt an immediate adjustment to the build feel. It feels like they used stronger materials, and it does have a tiny bit more weight to it, which I actually prefer.
The Ricoh GR IV build quality feels a lot more “sturdy.” Loved the way it felt in my hands.
The buttons across the board feel way more firm and tactile when pressed, the camera itself feels a little more solid, and even with the clear design and material improvements, they actually managed to slightly decrease the size of the camera.
It’s definitely a tad bit slimmer, even though it’s a tiny bit heavier (literally just a couple grams heavier).
Changes to the design & BUILD OF THE GR IV - WHAT’S NEW?
The button layout of the Ricoh GR III, which has the spin wheel imbedded in the d-pad.
In terms of actual design and layout changes, the biggest thing is that they removed the spin wheel on the back, which I know a lot of people complained about on the III being annoying to use. I don’t mind it so far as I use the III, but nonetheless, that’s gone.
They replaced it with basically just a normal looking directional pad — so it’s the same pad, minus the spin wheel, I guess.
The button layout on the back of the Ricoh GR IV. The GRIV brings back the plus/minus switch on the top right of the back, and removes the spin-wheel on the pad.
To replace that spin wheel, they brought back a similar plus/minus switch on the top right of the back, which was last seen on the GR II.
Besides these, the majority of the buttons and dials across the camera are pretty much the same (of course aside from tiny sizing/placement differences… a new groove here, a new bump there… you get it).
I was happy that picking up the GR IV felt almost identical to picking up the III. I am JUST getting my feel for the GR III, so if I do buy a GR IV, I’m happy to know it won’t feel foreign to me.
As for the lens, you still have an 18.3mm, 28mm equivalent fixed lens, but they completely rebuilt it, with a different glass element structure entirely. I’m not the gear guy, so I’ll avoid trying to explain the new build, and let someone smarter than me do that.
The GR III only had 3-axis IBIS, while the IV will have 5-axis, and based on sample images shown in that presentation, this can lead to a pretty dramatic difference in what is possible for lower shutter speeds while shooting handheld.
They also developed a new battery for this camera, which should extend the battery life to 250 shots.
Thankfully, there were also not a lot of major changes to the menus/UI. I’m not saying improvements were NOT made, but as someone JUST getting used to the III, I’m glad the layout of the menus and such is still quite recognizable and easy to navigate.
Menu navigation on the Ricoh GR IV.
My Main Concerns and What I Tested
Playing around with the autofocus on the Ricoh GR IV.
My main two complaints about the Ricoh GR III so far have been:
Low light, high ISO image quality could be better
The autofocus hunts a lot, but particularly in lower light scenes
I was looking for improvements in those two areas right away when I picked up the GR IV.
Thankfully, this event was in a venue with big windows, so we got a mix of bright sunlight and some darker areas in the hallways, which made it possible to play around with focusing in different lighting conditions and pixel-peep some higher ISO images on the camera screen.
I was even able to take photos side by side with the III and IV, and just observe on their back screens and look for differences.
Holding the GRIII and GRIV side by side to compare them visually. Ignore my INSANE cuticles…
Obviously, on just those screens it’s hard to tell, but I can attest to seeing a pretty noticeable difference in how the low light, high ISO images held up. I also found the autofocus on the IV is definitely more responsive/faster.
Of course there’s a small resolution increase as well — the new sensor is 25.7 megapixels on the GR IV versus 24.2 megapixels from the GR III. A smidge, but resolution increases are never something to complain about!
That said, for all things image quality, sharpness, low light capability, IBIS, autofocus - these are all things I’d need more time with the camera to form comprehensive opinions about, so obviously take what I’m saying here with a grain of salt, as I only had about an hour to mess around with the camera.
OTHER New Features ON THE RICOH GR IV
Theres a lot of other changes that may or may not impact your personal experience with the camera greatly. For me personally, the above points were the most crucial, but here’s a few notable ones I’ve seen on rumor sites, but can confirm are in fact actual features of the new GR IV:
53GB internal storage in the GR IV compared to 2GB on the GR III
They added “SN” for Snap Distance Priority on the mode dial, which basically assigns snap focus distance priority to the front dial
New battery, which extends battery life up to about 250 shots (up by about 25%!)
Two new image control filters added to the existing set - yellow and green (hopefully those get added to LR as “profiles”)
Final Thoughts
I was torn between buying a used GR III or waiting to pick up the new GR IV when it came out.
After getting my hands on the IV and seeing that my main concerns were strongly improved - the autofocus hunting, the low light high ISO imagery, etc. - I’m planning to place an order for this camera day one and cannot wait to take it out in the city and on some future trips.
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