Cameras


Ricoh’s GR III Is a Potent, Pocketable Point-and-Shoot

February 21, 2019

By Greg Scoblete

Following the Photokina teaser announcement, Ricoh is ready to spill all the beans on the new GR III advanced compact camera.

It’s a pretty significant overhaul from the previous model, including a new sensor, lens and image processor. The APS-C-sized sensor is now packing 24-megapixels and an ISO range of 100-102,400. There’s no optical low pass filter, though there is a simulation mode that mimics the effect using a shifting image sensor.

Like the GR II, the GR III has an 18.3mm f/2.8 lens (28mm equivalent) but it’s been redesigned to improve image quality and reduce distortion and chromatic aberration. The new lens can focus closer, too, down to 6cm in Macro mode with a magnification ratio of .35x. The lens’s nine aperture blades stop down to f/16 and the lens has a built-in, two-stop ND filter.

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If 28mm is too wide for you, the GR III has two digital crop modes to deliver a 35mm or 50mm angle of view. Resolution will drop to 15-megapixels or 7-megapixels, respectively, when you switch to the crop modes. If 28mm isn’t wide enough, you can spring for the $250 GW-4 wide-angle conversion lens to achieve a 21mm field of view.

Also new for the GR series is in-camera image stabilization. It can be turned on or off or set to kick on only when shutter speeds drop under 1/60 sec. The sensor shift mechanism works on 3 axes and is good for up to four stops of shake correction.

As for autofocusing, the GR III will use a hybrid approaching combining both contrast and phase detection. The camera will be the first in the GR system to sport a 3-inch touch display with touch focusing and touch supported across the entire menu.

What hasn’t changed, however, is the camera’s video recording capability. Like the GR II, the GR III records full HD video at up to 60p.

Additional features include:
* a USB-C connection
* Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy
* 14-bit RAW file support
* new Image Control setting to adjust saturation, hue, grain, contrast and more
* multiple customization options for exterior camera controls
* 2GB of internal memory plus an SD card slot (UHS-I)
* 200 shot battery life, per CIPA standards

The GR III ships in March for $900.

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