Ricoh GRiii Long Term Review!

the Ricoh gr3 is one of the most popular Point shoot cameras on the market today especially among the street photography crowd I've owned this one now for about 16 months and what I want to do is give you my long-term review of the gr3 some pros some cons and help you decide whether or not you should pick one up for yourself let's go ahead and hop into it [Music] a little bit of backstory about this gr3 I originally bought this for my son who at the time was spending what felt like a million dollars a month in Fujifilm Instax camera prints and so I wanted to get him a small lightweight point and shoot camera that he could use and we could shoot to an SD card so that I wasn't spending so much money on film fast forward a few months into the purchase and I started picking this thing up more and more and realized how powerful it was I've taken some of my favorite images on this little camera so I just wanted to give you that little back story before we actually get into the pros and the cons foreign is the fact that it is so small and lightweight it's very discreet it's easy to throw it in a backpack into a pocket keep it hanging off your wrist if you're wanting to fire off for any situation but don't let that small size fool you this camera delivers big results like I said a little while ago I have taken some of my favorite images on this little guy right here with that small form factor Rico did a great job when it comes to operation of the camera most of your settings can be controlled or changed with one hand making it very fast and effective if you are shooting street with it the raw files are some of my favorite files to work with in post-processing however if you're not a big editor the jpeg images and the jpeg simulations that come out of this camera are also beautiful one of my favorites is the positive film simulation that's straight out of camera as well as the monotone black and white simulation that are straight out of camera jpegs the other positive is 28 millimeters is a pretty fun focal length to work with now at first it took me a little while to get used to I typically prefer longer focal lengths like 50 millimeters and longer however 28 is very fun because you can still get up close to do portrait style shots you still get the wideness and you still get the environment that your subject is in or if you want to back up and shoot a traditionally wide shot 28 is a very good focal length for that I also find it fun for you know shooting buildings shooting anything that's super tall that 28 millimeter focal length really exaggerates the size of architecture and I really like that about the Rico moving into some Cons with the gr3 the first con is the body feels fairly cheap when compared to the xt3 that I had back in the day as my everyday shooter or my x-pro 2 that I now have as my everyday shooter the RICO feels a little less quality and for me that's a little less confidence in stealing especially knowing that my five almost six year old uses it pretty regularly I'm always inferior that this thing is going to be dropped and break even when I'm using it I keep a pretty tight grip on it because it just feels like if it falls it's going to crumble into a million pieces so it does have a little bit cheaper feeling than like my Fuji bodies and bodies that I've used in the past the other con is the battery life on the Ricoh is pretty questionable at times now if you are using the Ricoh battery from the factory it has a decent battery life it'll last you a couple hours if you're not powering on and off however if you're getting aftermarket batteries I think I have the Wasabi Power Batteries I really don't have a great experience with those they seem seem to drain fairly quickly so if you are thinking about getting Rico also consider getting about you know three to five batteries especially if you're shooting street with it or if it's a camera that you're going to take on a long hike or a backpacking or a camping trip certainly pack some extra batteries or have a charger fairly close this thing's not going to give you a lot of power for a long time and the final con with the RICO is the price even though this camera is now four years old the prices on the used Market are still outrageous in my opinion for a point shoot camera a good example of a gr3 is still going anywhere between about 700 to 1200 dollars depending on the condition and if you get any of this special diary additions or anything like that so pretty expensive for a point and shoot camera [Music] as mentioned earlier the gr3 has a fairly cheap feeling design and with that I do believe comes some common quality control issues number one is the scroll wheel the command dial on the back at least on my model and I've seen this happen in other examples as well on forums but my rear command dial basically has a mind of its own I can scroll it and scroll it and scroll it and it will flip between numbers at whatever Leisure it decides it wants to do it at once again fairly common issue according to the forms that I've been on but that's just something to keep in mind now that this body is getting a little older you may start to experience some of those same quirks another common issue with the gr is the lens shroud on the front which is why I have an aftermarket lens cover unfortunately there are times where the Leafs that close down to protect the lens do get snagged or they get stuck this is a very known issue in the gr world with this one specifically my whole front lens cover actually fell off and I am currently trying to find a donut her body so that I can replace my shutters and essentially what happens is when it closes down only one of my Leafs will shut because the other one is stuck I did take the front face off because once again it fell out on its own and there is no way for me to repair the leaf that's stuck because two of the tabs are broken so if you have a donor body I would love to purchase it off of you you can email me find the email in my channel description I'll also put my email in the description below but yeah I would love to find a donor body because I would love to fix that front shroud and get this aftermarket cover off uh it's a good little cover but it makes the camera itself a little less inconspicuous when you got those little spikies sticking out and the last common issue just to be aware of with the Ricoh is the front ring that also goes around the whole lens assembly it gets worn and does have a tendency to fall off now my front ring is currently on my desk because I have the aftermarket cover on there so just keep that in mind that front ring does have a tendency to fall off it gets a little bit loose and that's just another one of the quirks with the GR [Music] finally who's this camera for first off I believe this camera is for the hobbyist who wants a nice little compact design to take with them everywhere if you're going on Hikes if you're going on camping trips if you're going bicycling skateboarding rollerblading whatever it is this is a camera that is designed for day to day basically journalism this is this is what I would call a pocket photo Journal camera it is great for documenting basically day-to-day activities trailering off of that I think this is great for families for vacations just to document trips together my family uses this camera like crazy once again my five-year-old son he loves it I love it we take it everywhere that we go so that we always have a photo option aside from our phones to capture a moment with the obvious person that this camera was designed for is the street photography shooter with it having the one-handed operation features the 28 millimeter focal length the discrete and small design this is a street photography King and I think there are plenty of videos and channels out there that would back that statement up the final person that I think this camera is for is the BTS King this is a behind the scenes ninja camera I use this camera all the time to document what we're working on with our photo and video production company and it is just so easy on set I know a lot of people will still use a DSLR or mirrorless camera on set but to whip this thing out of the pocket and just start firing off some behind the scenes stuff it is so easy and simple and some of my favorite BTS images have come from this camera as well wrapping up and I want to make a note really quick I don't want the common issues to scare anybody away from making the purchase of the gr3 if you feel it's a camera that's going to help for your shooting situation these are just things to keep in mind it doesn't happen with every camera but they are common issues it doesn't affect the image quality it can affect the user experience at times but once again I don't want to discourage anybody from this camera I would still highly recommend it just keep those issues in the back of your mind but I want to know your thoughts what do you think about the Ricoh gr3 do you love it do you hate it what are some of your favorite use cases for your gr3 would love to know those down in the comments below also as always thank you thank you thank you for being a part of this channel I love growing this community here on YouTube y'all have a good one we'll see in the next [Music] foreign

Channel: Garrett Ware

Views: 22,538

Keywords: ricoh, griii, street photography, street photo, point and shoot, ricoh griii, grii, ricoh gr, travel photo, travel photography, travel camera, jpeg, camera review, fujifilm, x100v, xpro3, fuji xt5, xt5

Id: EIMlRiXMSgU

Length: 9min 9sec (549 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 02 2023