f8 and Be There

There aren't too many of us who have pockets large enough to walk about with a large format view camera upon our persons. By the same token almost everyone has a portable telephone that can be used to take pictures (even if it can't be used very well to make calls). They probably represent the extremes of photographic portability (I'm not counting here the wheelie-bin full of lenses, laptops, lighting and latte-makers that studio work demands). Both are trade-offs. One for quality and the other for Angry Birds.

The demise of the compact camera has been forecast for some time now, as more and more compromise and settle for the shampoo commercial approach to photography - "Take two image capture devices into the streets? Not me!" I do believe there continues to be a niche for a high quality compact camera that handles like a compact camera and not like a frozen slab of raspberry panna cotta. I have long said that I will take portable telephones seriously as an image capture device when they start showing up with tripod sockets but even I cannot fault some of the photos that come out from the likes of the Nokia N8 and others.

They are not cameras though, any more than a Swiss Army knife is a kitchen tool. It can do many of the tasks that you need in a kitchen but you would not use it to cook day in, day out because it is a compromise and an uncomfortable one at that. The last bastion of the compact camera is and will remain for some time the "high end compact". This has always been a rarefied and slightly odd niche, populated in years past by companies such as Rollei with the 35 and Contax with the T series. Everyone jumped on the bandwagon at some time - who can forget the Nikon 35ti and its beautiful dials? They were designed to be as much expressions of wealth as picture taking machines - nobody who used a gold Rollei 35 could ever seriously describe it as the easiest camera they had ever used to take a snap of their Persian cat...

The current crop is all digital, of course, and there are some crackers out there. The Canon G11 and Nikon P7100 represent the "prosumer" end of things - cameras that are big and complex enough to be almost as capable as their big DSLR brothers while still being portable (perhaps "luggable" is a better term). Leica has the D-Lux 5 and Panasonic its LX sibling while Olympus have the XZ-1. All are well thought of and all have zooms large and small.

Then there is Ricoh... They appear to follow their own trajectory, largely untroubled by such niceties as fashion and the latest trends. I was a Ricoh user many years ago, when they produced a quietly excellent SLR called the XR-X which took Pentax lenses. Today I already own a GXR with the M-Mount module that allows me to put Leica LTM, M or R lenses in front of an APS sized sensor and snap away to my hearts' content. Recently and as a result of my experiences with this setup I also acquired a GR Digital III. This is the penultimate expression of a line of cameras that echoes back to the film-consuming GR1 and continues with the recently released GRD IV. I picked my III up cheaply due to its having been superseded, at least in the minds of the marketing men and the early adopters for whom the next shiny thing is their sole raison d'etre.

Right from the early days the GR and now GRD line have been characterised by two key attributes - small size and a 28mm lens. The computation of that lens has changed over the years but there is still a striking family resemblance from first to last. Oh, the other defining characteristic worthy of a mention is the quality of the output, easily belying the size of the unit. The GRD is small, light and discreet. In use it reminds me of nothing less than my Leica II - almost instinctive to use and capable of punching well above its weight in all but the most exotic of company.

One of the simple joys of the GRD is its black and white performance. It really does produce outputs reminiscent of film. We don't all want to render the world all the time in razor sharpness or in shortbread tin hues and the little GRD is ideal for those who are more concerned with the image than their image. I am sure that the more recent GRD IV is better in all sorts of interesting ways but the III works for me.

Which brings me to the point of today's sermon. I have a number of cameras, all in regular use. If leaving the house on business or pleasure I always pop one into a pocket, a briefcase or a bag. Over the years my "camera I bring when I don't want to use a camera" has varied from an Olympus Mju-II to a Rollei 35, from a Yashica T4 to a Contax T2, from a Minox B to a Leica D-Lux 4 with a few others along the way. Today it is the Ricoh. It is not a Leica, it is not even a Nikon, but it is more than capable of acting as my visual notebook. If I had not been carrying it the other day I wouldn't have got this shot. If I hadn't got this shot I wouldn't have felt moved to write this piece.

What goes around...

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- All images on this blog are copyright Bill Palmer and may not be reproduced in any format or medium without permission.