Ricoh

GR III Street Edition

Premium Digital Compact Camera

The Ricoh GR III Street Edition refreshes the Ricoh GR III with a new look and more. The "street" theme is displayed on camera body which features a unique "asphalt-like" surface texture to provides a smooth but non-slippery feel, as well as a yellow accent that is reminiscent of traffic lines painted on streets on the camera's ring cap. Additionally, its distinct shutdown screen features a specially designed product logo and a street-view image that ties in with the camera's "street snapshot" concept. Comestics aside, the GR III Street Edition includes the Full Press Snap feature, which allows an instant shift of the lens's focus point to a preselected position when the shutter release button is fully pressed. This function can be reassigned to the rear LCD, such that the touchscreen may be used instead to change focus more intuitively, ignoring the standard AF process. The Street Edition GR III also comes with two batteries to support longer shooting sessions.

The updated design of the Ricoh GR III digital compact camera brings together a 24.2MP APS-C CMOS sensor and a new GR Engine 6 to produce high resoultion 14-bit DNG or JPEG stills characterised by impressive tonality, natural colour rendering, and a broad sensitivity range of ISO 100-102400. A pair of crop modes - 35mm at 15MP and 50mm at 7MP - are available for simulating the look of working with longer focal length. Additionally, the GR III can also record Full HD 1080 videos at 60p, 30p, and 24p frame rates.

Coupled with an updated 28mm-equivalent prime lens with a bright f/2.8 aperture, this pocket-sized camera is well-suited for everyday shooting with a wide field of angle. Optically, this 18.3mm prime lens features six elements in four groups, which include two aspherical elements to minimise spherical aberrations and distortion for greater sharpness and more accurate rendering. In addition, the redeveloped design of the lens produces images of greater contrast. Two focus modes are on offer - one covering shooting distances from upward of 10 cm, while the macro mode supports close up shots within a 6 cm to 12 cm range. Incorporation of an internal two stop effective (ND 0.6) filter provides the options of slowing the shutter speed or alllowing working with a wider aperture setting. A first in the GR series, a 3-axis Shake Reduction (SR) System has been optimised for use with the lens, promoting sharper imagery during during handheld shooting at slower shutter speed. Featuring further advantages, this SR unit aids in reducing moiré and dust removal.

The physical design of the GR III remains compact and pocketable in spite of the updates, with a redesigned rear layout that pioritises a larger thumb grip with accessible dials for more comfortable use. For improved personalised control, the ADJ level, FN button and Touch AF operations can be programmed to handle various functions. A 3.0" 1.037m-dot LCD touchscreen can intuitively operated during shooting, playback and menu navigation. Operation is faster and more seamless thanks to the reduced 0.8sec start-up time and a quickened Hybrid Autofocus (AF) performance. The integrated Bluetooth LE and Wi-Fi enables wireless connectivity with a paired mobile device for files transfer as well as embedding location info within your files. Alternatively, a USB Type-C port also enables file transfer, along with battery recharging in-camera. Each of the two included DB-110 rechargeable lithium-ion batteries offers about 200 shots per charge.