The Ricoh GR Digital II | Digicam Photography in New York

Описание: Buy this camera 👉 https://geni.us/GRDigitalII
Check out my eBay store where I sell cameras: https://geni.us/ApertureZeero
CORRECTION: I originally thought this camera to be the original GR Digital, but when I looked at the bottom of the camera I saw that it was the II. My apologies for the mistake. The GR Digital II was released in 2007. It has a 1/1.75” 10.1MP CCD sensor.

I flew to New York last minute to film a golf event in Westbury for a friend who fell ill.

To say I was anxious about the whole thing is a dramatic understatement. Part of what helped me work through the anxiety was knowing that this would be a great opportunity to take some photos in a new place with a new (old) camera and make a video about it.

I knew heading into NYC wasn't feasible with the limited time I had in New York, so I opted to head to the beach for a number of reasons - one being that I hadn't seen the Atlantic Ocean since I was in Boston working on a show back in 2009 when I was living in Los Angeles.

I had recently equipped my Ricoh GR Digital II (purchased for $80 at a local camera repair shop) with the GV-1 28mm optical viewfinder - which, oddly enough, was nearly $30 more expensive than the camera itself. I don't know that I can really get in the flow with photography without a viewfinder of some kind. After using the GV-1, I get why it's so expensive.

It's BEAUTIFUL.

I've been shooting mostly with 35mm focal lengths with my Leica X1 and my point & shoot film cameras so I was bit surprised by how much I struggled with 28mm on the Ricoh. It was definitely a challenge, and I had to overcome my instincts for framing based on a 35mm lens. I found myself adjusting my stance quite often to get the right composition but even when I did the 28mm still felt too wide.

The public beach here in Long Island wasn't going to be busy enough to do anything close to street photography, so I had to settle for "urban landscape." Fortunately there were enough interesting visuals for me to get in the flow with taking photos -- abandoned structures from this beach's heyday, a closed up restroom building with odd concrete structures that, I assume, were meant to provide shade to beachgoers visiting a now closed pier.

While taking pictures I mistakenly underexposed a few but felt that the preview image on the camera of those images was interested. My instinct was to purposely underexpose more and see what they'd look like when "recovered" in editing. Although I wouldn't shoot all of my photos this way, there is something kind of magical about these noisy, distorted images. The digital grain is so intense and the colors so poor that it gives it a look of Digital Impressionism - maybe even a feeling of Pointillism that we see in art museums in major cities.

I could definitely see embracing this look for a specific project where the subject matter paired with the degraded images combines to create a powerful experience for the viewer.

I'm glad I botched the exposure a few times. It led to an exciting discovery.

Ricoh GR Digital II 👉 https://m.dpreview.com/articles/84822...
Lens Distortions 👉 https://www.lensdistortions.com
RNI Films 👉 https://reallyniceimages.com
mVCR by MotionVFX 👉 https://geni.us/mVCR

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#digicam #ricohgrdigital #ricoh