I guess not everyone who reads this site is also active on my flickr, so I’m going to post something twice now. I got myself a Ricoh GR Digital and these are my impressions of it. Maybe it’s interesting for you:

————

Yepp, I bought a Ricoh GRD. The bargain was too good to resist. It came in with the optional viewfinder, so I can shoot like normal people do. ; D

Im kinda impressed by the nice “grain” and the image quality in general (for example I wouldn’t have expected some sort of a bokeh. But sometimes there is one. Hurray…).

What freaks me out though, is that the fact that one cannot change both aperture and shutter speed while the display is turned off. Maybe it makes sense in a way (one can’t see the changes), but you know… It would be okay for me to count the f-stops while changing it.

Now you have to switch on the lcd, make your changes and if you don’t want to get disturbed by the lcd while looking trough the viewfinder, you might want to turn it off. So you have to press the display button 4 times. Well…. Hurray. And then the situation in gone.

I could shoot in aperture priority, but it doesn’t work that good. Maybe my cam here is broken, but the shutter speed won’t get over 1/760. Even when Iso is set to 400, aperture 2,4 and raising cam in a light-flooded area. Errrrr…

It seems that, if I want to shoot in bright daylight, I have to set iso down and aperture up to get the A work. Somehow stupid, because I loose the nice grain (starting at 400) and the last bit of bokeh at f2,4.

//update

The “bad A mode” thing is still ongoing, but it came to my ear that with the new firmware you can trigger both dials without the display on. The values are visible in the display by the moment you turn on of them. Gladly, the actual picture isn’t visible at that time. Only the values. It goes off again after a view seconds. Nice, Ricoh!

————

I think I’m gonna like this cam. Not like a real film camera, but as for a digital compact it’s okay for me. Although one has to be aware of the highlights and the small bokeh if you’re looking forward to a more analogue look. Anyway…. Here are some first pictures made during a weekend in Hamburg (I had an interview at the HFBK. We’ll see…).

---

My own silly rules

Today, at work I found a adequate answer to a question I was asking myself recently many times. Okay.. many questions. But somehow they all had one phrase in common: “Is it okay to…?”

Is it okay to retouch… Is it okay to copy the film look onto digital pictures… Or - most recent - is it okay to apply a fake bokeh to a picture made with a small sensor digicam…

I don’t know why I found myself thinking all this sort of stuff. Maybe I watched too many of these movie clips featuring oldschool photographers. You know… like “capture things as they are”. Reality and stuff.

In a reasonable amount, I think it is helpful to be aware of these old values (I really do), but… I am 27, not 55. The new generation, which does things different or is somewhat bold is important. These contemporary pictures are indeed a mirror of our time. That’s what was going on in my head today. There shouldn’t be a “don’t do this and that”. Of course, there isn’t really such a rule. But somehow this questions came into my mind and there must be a reason for it. Anyway…

Eventually, this is also a step towards this whole art thing. Like…. the freedom to do things only because you want to. The visit of the HFBK Hamburg is getting to work. It’s something I started thinking of the first time now because I don’t see me as an artist. I don’t build sculptures or do paintings. I still don’t see myself in that way, but this creative freedom is a good aspect. I should be aware it to the same extend as I do it with the traditional values.

Sooo… I guess my Ricoh GR Digital plus ext viewfinder should arrive tomorrow. Let’s see what I can do with the files to get the pictures I want… ; D

//edit
Gosh. Am I alone with this kind of thoughts or do you have the same “problems”?