Gloomy LA Digicam Street Photography | Ricoh GR Digital II

I've owned the Ricoh GR Digital II for several months now, but I haven't had a chance to dedicate the time to a more immersive photography outing. I took this camera with me to New York and while I managed to get a few photos during a trip to the beach, my time was limited and I was still learning the camera. I knew a trip to Los Angeles would be the perfect opportunity to shoot some street photography in the neighborhood where I was staying - Los Feliz.

This camera's excellent "Snap" setting allows you to use Range Focusing to quickly make photographs on the street. Paired with the GV-1 optical viewfinder, this camera is about as close as you can get to the 35mm film rangefinder experience with a digicam. What I love about the camera as well is the speed with which it takes a photo. As soon as I see an image I want to capture, I can raise the camera to my eye and press the shutter and there's almost no delay in making the picture. With my Leica X1, it's quite a different story - it's incredibly slow in comparison and there are even times where I miss the photo entirely.

Something else I love about the Ricoh GR Digital II is the battery life. The battery is barely depleted even after several hours of street photography where I'm never turning the camera off. Originally I thought I'd have to buy a few spare batteries but I haven't bothered because the one it came with lasts so long.

This camera does have some image issues - numerous dead pixels and there's something on the sensor or on the inside of the lens that creates a shadowy blob in some photos. I do wish I could fix the blob, but it's not enough of an issue with this 16 yr old camera to dedicate any serious resources to it. Even with these issues, I still find myself loving the images this camera produces. The digital noise, the bloomy highlights, the dreamy film quality the images have - it's easily producing my favorite images out of any digicams I've used.

There's just something magical about this CCD sensors.

While I would prefer this camera to have a 35mm full-frame equivalent focal length, I've grown used to the 28mm lens. Most of the photos I make when shooting street are more of a wide tableau that captures the movement of people, their spatial relationship to each other and the buildings and objects around them and this wider focal length allows me to better capture that. Where it's challenging is when I focus more on urban landscapes - the lens feels just a bit too wide when I'm photography an object against a wall or a car in front of a house.

I'm incredibly lucky to have found this camera for only $80 at an Omaha camera repair shop. When I saw the price I knew I had to buy it and even though I could make some serious profit by selling it online, I know that this is a camera that will remain in my collection for a long, long time.

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