GX GARNERINGS

  ^GXR (upper) and GX200 Before penning the closing remarks on the GXR report, I wish to write a few things about the GXR body on ergonomics, which has always been the strong point of Ricoh. Since I was attracted to digital serious compact cameras and bought the GX200 over a year ago, I have tested and played with a number of such cameras, namely, the G10, LX3, GRD II and III, GF-1 and GXR.  The engineers and designers have done an admirable job in drawing up well thought-out button arrangements over what little space left on the camera back, not least because the LCD display is growing bigger while the camera size smaller. If you use the G10, GF-1 and, to a lesser extent, LX3, you would surely be impressed by their ergonomics.  It is the area that these compacts undoubtedly out-shine some big DSLR, like the Nikon entry-level models. Once you've used the G10 or GF-1, you would be too pre-occupied by the good ergonomics to find the difference offered by Ricoh.  But if you

^Look real?  These vegetable lookalikes are made from paper. There are lots to buy to prepare for the Chinese New Year (CNY) which is based on the lunar calendar.  No, we don't buy mooncakes.  Mooncakes are for the Mid-Autumn Festival.  For the CNY is a time to pay visits to friends and relatives, people flock to the supermarkets to buy eatable items  to be given as gifts during the visits.  Why eatable items?  Probably in the old days the Spring Festival is to herald a new year of farming.  Anyway, Chinese culture is preoccupied with eating. ^Soybean sheets, bean curds and bean cakes.  All are paper-made. Floral decorations like cut flower arrangements and potted plants are the second thing to acquire from the market.  They are to decorate homes to greet visitors. ^The two young creators of these fake foodstuff.  They spent a week doing the work. The third things are Chinese traditional sweets and other candies to treat visitors immediately after they have sat down an

^A fierce tiger and the Chinese lions The Chinese New Year (CNY) is coming on Sunday.  CNY is also known as the Spring Festival.  Here everyone is busying with the preparations, much the same as people would do for Christmas in, say, the UK.  It will be the Year of Tiger for the next Chinese year.  A common celebration is the lion dance which is mostly performed on the seventh or eighth day of the CNY since that is the time for business going back to normal. So, a breather from the GXR stuff.

We are nearly the end of the GXR field report series.  I wish to talk about the external options for the GXR, namely, the flashgun and the viewfinder. The external flash named, well, GF-1 can do TTL flash on Ricoh cameras with the flash interface as illustrated below, which Ricoh called Type R.  It can also be used on  other Ricoh cameras which have no TTL-flash capability like the GX200.    When the TTL-A LED is on after the flash has been mounted and turned on, it is ready to do TTL flash. A few presses on the lower rectangular power level select button will light up the last two LEDs on the far right, activating the manual flash output via adjustment on the GXR. The flashgun can turn upwards up to 90°for doing bounce flash but not sideways.  It can double as a wireless slave flash.  For that matter, it comes with a stand.  I have read through the instruction manual but can't find the clue as to whether in slave mode it will automatically distribute the flash ou

Last week, we stopped at some technicalities about the S10.  Let's start this week with a post on what I feel about it in real shooting circumstances. Wandering with the GXR S10 into an old area with buildings primarily of over half a century old, I was amazed by the the scene heaving into sight: a flyover sticking out from the narrow space between two rows of old residential buildings; and more so when a bus whizzed past a coach followed. Before the heavy vehicles appeared, I had stood at the scene with the TC-1 mounted on the S10 waiting for the shots.  If you don't know, Ricoh's telephoto converter TC-1 has a magnification of 1.88x to boost the GX100, 200 and S10's farthest focal length to 135mm. To accentuate the apocalyptic feel for this scene, the shots were intended to be underexposed.  As often the case with my GX200, I also slightly zoomed the lens out a bit to show some vignetting on the corners to echo the feel.  The image setting was turned to Norm

Here are the links to GX GARNERINGS's GF-1 impression series: 1) GF-1 User's Impressions: Introduction 2) When Impressive GF-1 Meets Striking Girls 3) GF-1: Image Quality with Full Size Photos 4) Are You Torn between Two Systems? 5) Some Great Functions of GF-1 6) My Colour Mode of GF-1 7) Different Tastes of B&W and Others 8) GF-1's Design Flaws 9) Musings on the Two GF-1 Lenses 10) GF1 Impression: Closing Remarks

What's he doing up there? Can you think of an answer? Have a thoughtful Sunday!