Smile!

GRD II, f2.4, 1/80, ISO 100, RAW

Another gray and rainy day in London without many pictures taken, I need to find a weekly project to work on.
I took this picture on my way home near the Greenwich Observatory, I find itreally cool that she is actually smiling in my direction instead of looking at the guy with the big dSLR taking a picture of her. I cropped the picture a bit tighter to get a closer composition on this.

Thames Barrier

LC1, f5.6, 1/800, ISO 100, RAW, 41mm

After the Ricohforum meetup yesterday I took a walk with the Panasonic LC1 today. I walked to the Thames Barrier to take a few pictures, the light was very good with some dark cloud and rays of sun in between. I did take a lot of pictures but like this one best.

Building a Future

CX1, f5.2, 1/320, ISO 80, JPG b&w, 200mm

Ok, this is a very similar picture to the one posted yesterday and it is taken not too far from the one yesterday either. At first I did not want to use it because of this but in the end it is the picture I like most from today. Here the 200mm zoom was also very important to get the right depth in the picture.
This time it is a b&w picture out of the camera and just cropped and sharpened a bit.
So far the CX1 is great but I wish there would be a way to disable the noise reduction in the camera through either a option in the menu or RAW.

Sheltered

CX1, f5.2, 1/190, ISO 238, JPG, 200mm

It has been mostly a dark and grey day so not perfect or very inspiring to go out and take pictures. I took a walk through Greenwich Park and saw them under a tree taking in the view. As soon as I saw the scene I knew it would make a great picture, the CX1 allowed me to use the 200mm zoom and get the perspective I wanted.
The image is a bit soft, partly due to the (too strong) noise reduction and partly due to the shutter speed in combination with me using the DR mode. I still like how it came out and after converting it to b&w and adding some noise it looks as I want it.

Woman in the Painting

GRD, f5, 1/35, ISO 400, JPG

On my way home I decided to take a longer way and stop over in Greenwich. This was a good idea since I came upon a gallery opening and a Q&A session with the artists. I snapped a few pictures and this is my favorite picture for today.
It really pays off to always have a camera with you at all times. There was a thread in the DP Review forum what the best camera is. THe best camera is the one you have with you today. No other camera is or will every be better than the one you have with you.

Bus Stop 'C'

GRD, f2.4, 1/60, ISO 1600, JPG

After work I went to the British Museum to take some high ISO comparison pictures and with this the last batch for my upcoming GX200 review. I used all Ricoh cameras to take pictures at ISO 100, 400 and 1600. So far I did not manage to compare all yet but it should be very interesting.
This is a ISO 1600 picture I took while waiting for the bus. I saw a few Wong Kar Wai movies and liked the way he uses shots through windows with the reflections. This is my try at something similar, kind of inspired by WKW and Christopher Doyle.

Stairway to Heaven

LC1, f2.2, 1/40, ISO 100, RAW, 28mm

The weather was very nice today so I went out to get my biggest shoot-out done. I packed all my digital cameras and went to shoot more comparison pictures for the GX200 review. This should have been done a while ago but the weather and other things meant I cold not get it done as I would have liked. It is coming along nicely though and will be done very soon. All I am missing now is a high ISO comparison between all Ricoh cameras but this will be done tomorrow.
This picture is not part of the comparison and I took it to post it on my blog. I stood right in front of a 'No Photography' sign but this was referring to the inside of the house and not the stairway so I took the picture. Not that I am well known for following 'no photography' signs anyway ;).

Family Cafe

LC1, f2.5, 1/800, ISO 100, RAW, 28mm

I've been around taking some extra pictures for my GX200 review. I wanted to have more pictures for the comparison part. Unfortunately my GX died so there won't be many picture to compare the GX with the GX100 and GX200. The LC1 worked flawlessly though so it will have to do as a substitute.
This is a picture I took for the comparison but decided that it does not work well so I will use it for my pic for the day instead.

Summer Afternoon

GRD, f3.5, 1/2000, ISO 100, JPG b&w - Taken on 20/07/2006

Took this picture while enjoying the nice weather in London. I really liked the scene with all the different people in there. At the time I took the picture I wished to have a 40mm lens since 28mm was too wide for what I wanted to capture. But with some cropping it gives me the view I wanted.

Looking Back

S40, f2.6, 1.3 sec., ISO 100, JPG, 35mm - Taken on 09/02/2006

While creating a backup for all my pictures I realized that there are quite a few pictures I really like but never got round to upload anywhere. This is why I decided to look back at some of my favorite pictures from before I started my blog and post some of them here. This week will be all dedicated to my older pictures.

Today's picture has been taken with my old Pentax Option S40, my first digital camera and the camera I replaced with the Ricoh GRD. This picture is my favorite picture from this camera and made it clear to me that the camera you have with you at any time is the camera that will give you the picture. This was basically the day I decided that a dSLR would just not work fo me due to the bulk. I took this picture while walking home from work and after I decided to met a friend at a pub, I had the camera with me because it was small and so I could take this picture.

Since I will use older pictures this week, I can relax and use the GR1 again to take pictures.

One Year Later

GRD II, f5, 8 sec., ISO 80, RAW

Today is a special day for my blog, it becomes one year old :D. It is exactly one year since I started the blog and a lot has happened in between.

I got the idea to start the blog when a friend mentioned starting a "food diary" and taking pictures of food. This sounded like fun and I was looking for something in order to get myself motivated to take more pictures. At that time, I was carrying the GRD I around with me every day but did not use it sometimes for a whole week. This was a wasted opportunity in my view so a photo diary sounded like a good idea. This is how the name 'Ricoh GR-Diary' and this blog came to be.

I would have never expected to keep posting one picture every day for a whole year and, aside from some friends, I did not think people would be intersted to read my blog. I kind of expected to post a few pictures and then get bored and leave it. Taking and posting a picture every day became a lot of fun and I began to see things around me that I ignored or passed by before. It was not always easy and on some days I only had some mediocre pictures or had to improvise something but it was always fun.

What I would have never expected is the response I got and the fantastic people I met through my blog. Thank you for reading my blog and it was great to meet some of you in person, hope there will be more opportunities for this!

Meeting Ricoh representatives at Photokina, having the rare opportunity to visit the Ricoh factory during my trip to Hong Kong or getting cameras to review is something that might have never happened without me starting this blog. Here let me say again a bit thank you to Ricoh for making all of this possible!

Enough talk for now. I hope you enjoyed the blog so far, be it the pictures, my writing or maybe both? Whatever is was, I hope it was never boring.

The Painted Hall

GRD II, f2.4, 1/2, ISO 80, RAW, 21mm

Been in Greenwich today and passed by the Maritime University and thought it would be nice to go and have a look at the Painted Hall again. Had my GRD II with 21mm lens with me today since I haven't used either for quite a while now. Maybe not the most exciting of pictures but some color is good for the blog.

The Fog Rises

GRD, f2.4, 1/25, ISO 64, JPG

Thick fog was coming over London this afternoon. The whole day before we had a very strange light. It was kind of yellow but lacking any contrast so terrible for photography. Not that fog is much better in terms of contrast but it does give a great atmosphere if you get the exposure right.
I had three pictures I liked from today so what made me choose this one was the fact that it is shot at a low ISO. Did not want to give the impression that my GRD I is broken and I can't move it away from ISO 400 or 1600 ;). I added some vignetting and used Noise Ninja to remove some color noise but more to sharpen the luminance noise.

Water Feature

GRD, f5, 1/320, ISO 1600, JPG

While walking home I came across this new "water feature" in Greenwich. A water main must have broken so it was flooding the street around but made for a nice picture.
Now if you ask why I used ISO 1600 instead of a much lower ISO, this is because I like how the camera handles the color and together with using contrast at +2 and color depth at -2 gave me the result I wanted. I removed what little color noise there was with Noise Ninja but left the luminance noise alone.

View Through the Fence

GX200, f6.3, 15 sec., ISO 64, RAW, 72mm

While on the bus today I saw this scene and had to get off and take a picture, or a few to be honest. Sometimes I see a scene and know exactly how I want the picture to look like. This was one of these occasions and while it is yet another long exposure I really like the picture. Also reminds me to get out more after dark and take some pictures of the industry around North Greenwich.

Site Office

GX100, f4.1, 1/250, ISO 200, RAW, 24mm

Saw this while walking in Greenwich today and found it really funny. Cropped to 16:9 format, sharpened it and increased the contrast. Now the picture is mre crisp and comes close to the GRD I quality. Overall, I am more comfortable now with the processing of GX100 RAW files and can get out more although the dynamic range is pretty limited, especially when compared with the GRDs.
It is a great camera though and the LC-1 lenscap is genius and a must have. Only problem is the case which is not optimal to get the camera out fast unlike the GRD case.