Kid's Fountain

GRD II, f2.4, 1/40, ISO 80, RAW

After the marathon (in taking pictures) yesterday, I took it easy today. The weather was the complete opposite as it was cold and raining so not great for walking outside and taking pictures.
Took this picture after lunch on my way back to the office and liked the colors and contrast that the grey weather gave to this fountain.

Have a Rest

GRD, f5.6, 1/1250, ISO 64, JPG b&w

This is one of my 'lunchtime pictures', I liked how he seemed pretty much fast asleep and enjoying the sun in front of St. Paul's. This is a favorite spot for people to have a nap since the sun almost always shines in this spot all through the year when the weather is nice.
Took it with the GRD I and added the sepia toning and vignetting in post processing.

Sad Lovers

GRD II, f2.8, 1/35, ISO 80, RAW, 8.4mm

The last day of my fish-eye lens week is today. I took a few pictures on my way home but this worked best due to the perspective although I had to play around with the colors and saturation a bit to get the look I wanted.
It was a fun week and taking pictures where the quality does not matter and you can get away with noisy or blurry pictures is definitely something different to what most people try to achieve. While it will be back to normal from tomorrow, I am already thinking about the next weekly theme, maybe a text mode week would be fun.

Lunching in the Rain

GRD, f4, 1/200, ISO 400, JPG, 40mm

Took this picture, like so many others, after my lunchbreak. Taking pictures during lunch is sometimes the only way to keep my blog updated. This is where a compact camera comes in handy. This is why for me a compact camera will always have a big advantage.
I took a few pictures but found this to be best although it is slightly out of focus. It works very well in sepia and since I haven't used sepia in a while it was good to have a picture that works beter with it.

Blue & Yellow

GRD II, f5.6, 1/500, ISO 80, RAW

More color for my blog from today's picture. I don't know why but when using the GRD I, I almost always use either b&w and/or high ISO for my pictures, when using the GRD II however I always end up with a color picture at low ISO. There is something differnt about what you "see" depending on the camera you carry, at least for me it is.
Took this while walking back from lunch near St. Paul's today. There was a road saftey event in front of St. Paul's and the ploice had their bikes parked behind the church.

Last Kiss

GRD, f2.4, 1/125, ISO 400, JPG

Been a gray and rainy day so did not take a lot of pictures today. This is no problem though since the first picture I took was the one for the blog. When I saw them in front of St. Paul's I knew this would be a good picture. I am quite pleased with the outcome and cropped it to 1:1 format.

At Her Feet

GRD, f3.2, 1/160, ISO 400, JPG b&w

Back in the UK but not much time to take pictures. It gets dark early and the weather is not very nice either. Took this picture during lunch, as always.
More and bigger updates will be coming soon. I will publish the R10 and GX200 reviews, a long exposure and landscape comparison and of course more about my factory visit.

St. Paul's

R10, f5.6, 1/760, ISO 80, JPG

There are some days when I'm very inspired and take lots of pictures and like quite a few of them. Then there are days when I am not very inspired or don't have time to take pictures. While I had enough time today and went for a walk to take pictures with both the R10 and GX200, I did not take many pictures and most are pretty bad or at best average.
Take this picture for example, it has very nice colors but is aside from that more a typical tourist snapshot so not very arty or interesting as such. Then again, I took it with the R10 and it is nice to use it sometimes in pure point and shoot mode and be like a tourist. The geek in me is now more interested to see how the picture came out, it is the best case scenario for the R10 or any camera. It is taken in bright light, at base ISO with a fast shutter speed so it should show what the R10 can do best. I based the image parameters on Pavel's recommended settings for the R8/10 (Contrast +2, Sharpening -1 and Color Depth +1). I think the result is very good and as usual the colors came out very well. This is one of the reasons I prefer Ricoh cameras over any Nikon, Fuji, Canon and the likes, the colors are just more natural and not over the top saturated.

Drawing St. Paul's

GX100, f4.9, 1/800, ISO 100, JPG, 72mm

Using the GX100 is text mode showed me the difference between the lenses from the GRD and GX. The GRD lens has more contrast so work better with this mode and the GRD also saves the picture as TIFF for some reason.

I did not spend much time taking pictures today but worked instead on my Wordpress blog to improve it and make it more usefull. If you remember I've set it up on my 100th post to use it as a backup or to move my blog here. I did and still do not really like the Wordpress interface so have just been using it as a backup and imported the posts randomly. I started thinking of deleting it a while ago but then decided to use it for something more usefull.
So today, I have set it up as an archive of all my reports, comparisons and reviews I did on this blog. This should make it easier for people to find things and I will also be able to post more news and other things that would be too long or would just not work within the format here. You can check it out at Ricoh GR-Diary @ Wordpress. It is still work in progress so let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.