Recently, I bought myself a new toy... Slim, strong, black. Magnesium alloy. Loveable. Cult. GR1v.
When I saw this artpiece for the first time, maybe a year ago, I knew immediately that that was the one I was looking for. Durable, stylish, with the lens that can compete with any SLR's ones. And small. Unbelievably small. Good for parties, good for travelling, good for serious work, too. I needed a compact camera as I didn't have one. So I made up my mind pretty quickly and there it was: Ricoh GR1v.
The black beast is mine.
Major features and benefits
In Auto bracket Mode, the GR1v shoots three frames of the same composition effortlessly changing from Under to Normal to Over in ½ step thus ensuring you take the shot you want even under difficult lighting conditions.
ISO is set automatically when DX film is loaded. It is possible, however, to set the ISO manually (from 25 to 3200) to allow you to set the correct exposure to suit the charactersistics of the film and increase sensitivity.
The GR1v’s Manual Focus Mode is the perfect choice when you know the distance to the subject and want to be able to capture the shot without even the slight time lag of auto focus. The shooting mode button allows you to set the focus at 1m, 2m, 3m, 5m and infinity.
Ricoh claim high picture quality is guaranteed with the GR 28mm f2.8 lens. The Ricoh GR1v has high-quality optical glass and special lens polishing and coating technologies combined with the GR lens unit consisting of seven multi-coated lenses in four groups with aspherical elements. Ricoh also say the GR 28mm lens provides superb colour reproduction with a high level of distortion correction and perspective effects to extreme depth of field with the execution of it’s high quality shutter and seven blade aperture.
Aperture priority AE and Exposure Compensation meet the demanding requirements of advanced photography and exposure compensation effect for high-key or low-key expression. An illuminated LCD panel allows camera settings, the amount of film remaining and battery status all to be checked easily. Perfect for long exposure night shots.
A lens hood is included with the GR1v. When the image you want to capture has strong backlighting, simply attach the GR1v lens hood, which can easily be removed and stored.
Optional accessories include a Filter Ring and 30.5mm filters (Polariser, MC- AY2, MC-1B, 6x CROSS, MC-ND4).