King Of The Streets – Ricoh GRiii

At 5am on a Sunday morning, my pal Andrew drove to my place to pick me up and we made our way to Tekka market at Little India.

I had been talking about the possibility of getting a Ricoh GRiii for quite awhile and since he owned one, we decided to go on a photo walk to test it out.

Now Little India is probably described as a ‘rough’ place in Singapore which is to say it’s pretty safe by most standards. Arriving before dawn meant that we got a nice dose of diffused light to shoot with.

The Ricoh GRiii is probably the purest camera that one can use for Street Photography. It’s small, light and almost entirely matte black.

Most people won’t even notice you have one in your hands, and have just taking a shot of their face. It’s basically a camera for ninjas.

I shot mainly at low ISO and using the High Contrast B&W preset. The shadows and tones coming out of the APS-C sensor in this little camera is amazing. I barely had to do any post processing as it’s basically producing images that I see in my mind’s eye.

Being able to get close to people to take a shot has always been a concern for me as I’m shy. However I found that with the Ricoh GRiii, I was able to just hold it around my hip level and just walk around snapping silently without anybody noticing.

One major drawback for me is the battery life – it’s awful. We found ourselves having to take frequent breaks – because we needed to sit down and charge the batteries via the USB port with a power bank. I can’t imagine having to lug around multiple batteries if you travel with this camera. Each full charge probably produced 200 plus shots which is ridiculous.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed using the Ricoh GRiii. I haven’t decided if I should purchase my own copy yet, but it would definitely make a great addition to my collection as a travelling camera.