The Sound of No Silence

(Stark Contrast: Some rich people's expensive fancy car was parked at the roadside where the poor was having cheap food for dinner. It was taken at the end of the Temple Street night market with a GRD lent to me by Crisitian at out meetup on Monday night)

It was interesting to meet someone living thousands of miles away who shared your hobby. Cristi from London, his friend and I met on Monday. After dinner and then desserts at a popular sweetshop, we had a shootout at the nearby interesting Temple Street night market. He will probably post some of the shots on his blog.

Focusing Sound

Cristi and I talked about some issues of Ricoh's cameras. The one question that interested me the most was how he managed in his street shots to have the subjects looked right into the camera. I asked if it was because he asked for permission to shoot and people posed for him. He said no. The secret was, he revealed, in a "flaw" of the Ricoh cameras. When he showed me how the GRD gave out the mechanical sound during focusing, I knew why: the subjects looked right into the camera because they were curious of the sound by which time Cristi simply pressed the shutter.

It is fairly inconvenient for street shot photographers to ask just any people on the street to look into their cameras; and if they do ask, they seldom succeed. Cristi's idea actually works for him. That made me think of two suggestions for the photographers and Ricoh's future cameras, respectively.

(Scantily Clad: An embarrassed tourist walking past the laces kiosk was caught looking into the GRD. It was because of luck, mark you, not the focusing sound)

Suggestions

As I am a GX200 user, let me put forward this suggestion with reference to GX200. I think other recent Ricoh cameras have a similar menu system; so the suggestion should be applicable to them too.

My suggestions are simple but useful: For the photographers, in case the focusing sound is desirable to attract your subject's gaze in a street shot or a portrait shot for especially a baby, turn on the focusing sound in the menu.

For Ricoh, in your future cameras' menu, separate the on/off control for focusing sound from that for the rest of the adjustable sounds. You may ask: The on/off control for the focusing sound is already available. Why separate it?

The menu system in GX200 has similar independent on/off control for "Level Sound" and "Shutter Sound", while the rest must be turned on or off as a single option. Likewise, I think the "Focusing Sound" should be able to be turned on or off indepentently cos I wonder if there are much photographers who wish to activate other sounds at the same time. It is a simple thing and no harm to add this function in Ricoh's future cameras.

So, if the mechanical focusing sound can help attract the subjects' gaze at the camera on some ocassions, it will do good to tweak the menu as suggested above to allow activation of just the digitally generated focusing sound.

As an aside, GRD's mechanical focusing sound is not satisfactory IMO. GX200's is not loud at all but it is still desirable to make the mechanical sound lower.