Went on a photowalk in a botanical garden today to play with my new lens in daylight, and the guy who hosted let me borrow one of his super telephoto lenses as well. Super fun to play with that extra reach for wildlife and general framing.
Here are a few I’m happy with.
What’s your new lens?
Thanks! I liked those two the most as well. To be quite honest, a lot of this was not intentional (unless it was subconsciously??), I was on the beers that night. I think it’s one of those nice quirks of B&W photography, weird harsh light looks cool as heck :D
The story of the good trees / bad photographer continues!
The trees have once again decided they’ve had enough of being leafy
New lens is a Sigma 18-50mm f2.8. Really enjoying it! It’s what I used for the night photos in the previous post as well.
I like this one! The way the trees form interesting shape into the distance is cool.
Dang this is cool! All with your Ricoh? I ended up returning mine because I couldn’t get it to work for me but I’m glad it’s working for you and delivering!
Yep, all those on the GR III. It’s surprising how well it worked.
I used the timer function as my “remote switch” so I didn’t get any vibration from my hands. Little GR mounted on a big tripod was quite comical. 13s shutter speed, which is a little more than the maximum time before getting star trails when using a 28mm equivalent lens. Aperture wide open, ISO 6400, and focus set to infinity.
Was a 4% waxing moon going on to 0% at midnight. These were shot around 10pm, clear skies out in the countryside. Last time I had these conditions was 2012 and I was using a 5D Mk II, technology has come a long way, the APS-C sensor on this GR is easily as good or better than the 5DII in these conditions.
Sorry to hear. But glad you have the decisiveness to know it’s not for you. It’s a very “me” camera, so I’ve found it easy. I love tiny quirky things and I love fixed focal length lenses. I find myself wanting to buy another one, just because I like it so much haha. Maybe a GR IIIx is in my future.
The astro shots here look incredible.
Yesssss
The lab could not scan this because it has a bunch of broken sprockets so I’m trying some makeshift methods after holding onto it for a couple years
Those night shots are incredible! I’ve never got anything great from my GRIIIx at night, but then I never thought to use the timer. Do you know of any good guides on the GRIII?
I’ve been using manual cameras for a long time, so I think a lot of it comes down to experience.
That said some things that serve me well for low light photography are these:
Auto ISO is a friend in the dark. For this camera I set a maximum of 6400, beyond that is too noisy imo. In a pinch auto ISO can produce a well exposed shot at the expense of more noise, but it can also produce a cleaner image if the lighting is suddenly better.
I’ll often use the auto ISO with shutter priority mode in the dark. And I use a couple of simple rules here. Match your shutter speed with your focal length for the lowest possible value without too much blur. Eg 28mm = 1/30s, 40mm = 1/40s. If I’m taking photos of something that isn’t moving at night, I find the lowest value I can use (thanks to the internal stabilisation) is about 1/15s or even 1/8s if you’re particularly steady.
Also helpful is this guy, Samuel Lintaro, he is a Ricoh ambassador and has a lot of good GR content. Also happens to be a very not-YouTubey kind of content creator, as silly as that might sound. Very down to earth and an easy not trying hard kind of funny, not into pushing an agenda (except for Ricoh cameras haha).
This is his beginners guide to the GRIII, which I found very informative:
Just dropped off a few rolls at the lab. Excited to see what I got.
Some of the scans I did with an ipad and cell phone. I tried with my DSLR but had better results with the phone. This was some probably super duper expired Kodak 800 so the results are pretty neat I think. You can see from that photo of me that the sprockets were pretty damaged in a few parts which makes sense why they couldn’t scan it at the lab.
Thank you! This is basically the exact pitch of knowledge I need.
I finally got to do that fairy shoot I was talking about like, several months ago! Here’s a few of my favorites
Love the chair and flowers. Something about it is quite appealing. And those clouds! Nice shots :)
