Ideal for the pro photographer on the move, or as a secondary discreet pocket camera - ThinkCamera was at the launch of the GR DIGITAL II.
There's been a recent trend for tiny compacts, massive megapixels and a varnish of lime green snakeskin to finish off.
Ricoh, thankfully, are sticking to the good ole basics - fully manual, 10 megapixel CCD (sensor), 2.7" LCD (with 160degree angle of view), sleek black body (25mm thick - well, thin), 5.9mm (28mm in 35mm equivalent) prime f2.4 lens, 1 touch RAW button, a hotshoe, plus a whole host of accessories and features that truly make this of pro grade. More like a DSLR than a compact!
Existing Ricoh accessories - including external viewfinder, wide conversion lens and external flash - compliment the forthcoming GT-1 tele conversion lens (40mm in 35mm equivalent) and a smaller viewfinder designed to sit permanently atop the GRD II.
Those familiar with the existing GRD will be happy to hear that the old 11 second RAW file processing time has been overhauled to an improved 3.8 seconds - better still the internal camera buffer is large enough to stack 2 RAW images simultaneously. It's not quite a continual burst rate, but is as good as the market currently offers in a compact.
Image quality has been improved too - the new image processing engine has improved noise by 2 stops (Ricoh claim that ISO 400 on the GRD II is as good as ISO 100 on the original GRD). ISO 100-800 is available, plus "Hi-ISO" (400-1600).
There are some really nice touches to this camera - the flash only pops up when the user clicks a small lever, preventing any issues with unwanted flash.
Also the (now lockable) selection wheel has fully manual controls, including 2 user defined modes - much like the current standard of DSLR hitting the shelves.
Other clever usability features include images displaying in the best possible orientation on the LCD screen - the camera 'knows' which way up it is. So whilst portrait images usually have big black borders around them when viewed in landscape fashion on the LCD, just twist the camera on its side into a portrait position and the image will auto rotate to fit the screen whilst remaining the right way up.
Also there's an "electronic level" feature for assisting in taking 'level' photographs - so no more wonky horizons! - the GRD II 'knows' when something is correctly lined up and will either give a visual or audio signal (or both) as per user-definition.
There's a 7 megapixel 1:1 square ratio format for some 'Hassleblad imitation' too - so certainly aimed at the pros!
Pro camera comes at a pro price however - expect the GRD II to retail at £400 when it hits the shops later this year.
