Why I Bought the Ricoh GRiii | Three Months On

Scroll down past all the words to see the full photoset: 3 Months with the Ricoh GRiii

Film vs. digital: a real life story

Over the last ten years or so, I’ve gotten into the habit of visiting NYC in early October (pandemics notwithstanding), and it’s one of my favorite places to shoot photos in the streets.

During my 2022 NYC trip, I carried two cameras with me everywhere I went for six days — a digital Fuji X-Pro3, and a compact Rollei 35S point-and-shoot film camera. But the experience of juggling film and digital didn’t result in the best of outcomes.

When I’m in New York, I walk almost everywhere so I can shoot as much as possible, taking my time, slowing down and periodically posting up in spots that have good light and lots of action. You know, “street photography.”

On this trip, I switched between cameras as often as it occurred to me, at the time it felt like an even spilt between the two. I came back with over 800 digital photos and approximately 150 film photos, and the amount of “keepers” wasn’t what I’d wanted out of it all (and I try to maintain pretty low expectations and high standards when it comes the keeper ratio).

Editing that batch of NYC photos made it painfully clear to me that shooting digital and shooting film are two different disciplines, and trying to do both at the same time generally means that I’m not focused on the essence of the pursuit — the photography fundamentals required for consistent results, especially in shooting film.

For me, working with a digital camera encourages volume — just shoot as much as I can and sort it all out in Lightroom later. The only limits on the amount of photos I can take are how engaged my vision is, how much ground I’m willing to cover, and the size of the memory cards in the camera.

I try to not let the camera do too much of the work, but my photographic mindset is looser with a digital camera in-hand. I can think all I want about taking the time to line up shots, and adjust as many settings to manual as I can handle, but once I’m out in the streets and I can take as many shots as I want in order to get just the right one out of almost any situation, that’s exactly what I’ll do.

And that’s fine. I love the seemingly endless run-and-gun approach of shooting digital, and the X-Pro3 is an excellent camera — my favorite digital rangefinder style — both in terms of user experience and quality of output.

But with an all-manual mechanical film camera, there’s a finite number of shots in a roll, and every setting needs to be actively considered, so a volume shooting strategy isn’t really an option. I need to lay in wait, or move with purpose and attention, take the time to line up each shot (not just think about it), and hope that I captured the moment I saw with my mind’s eye. Because there’s a fraction of a second between pressing the shutter button and the camera capturing the image, and things really can change in that fraction of a second.

The practice of intuitively seeing the apex of movement, light and composition is the zen of photography, in the streets or anywhere else. The whole process is about slowing down, about evaluating scenes and seeing the shots as they emerge — sensing how the composition is going to come together and capturing it at just the right time, when everything in motion is also in balance.

Attention to those fundamentals is what I found in the dichotomy between digital and film photography, so I decided that’s what I wanted to focus on.

A year of shooting film

As 2022 was winding down, I found myself in Tokyo for two weeks, and largely on my own for about half that time. I overpacked for that trip. I took the Fuji XPro-3 and a couple of prime lenses, the Rollei 35S, and a Leica MP — the all manual, 35mm film camera that I had just picked up — along with a couple dozen rolls of film (an even split of black & white and color).

Neither the Fuji nor the Rollei made it out during that trip to Tokyo, they stayed stashed in my backpack in the hotel room closet. I shot 22 rolls over two weeks with the Leica. And I like the results of my Tokyo endeavors far more than those from the NYC ’22 trip. Not just because the Leica is an incredible camera that’s a joy to shoot with, but because I was more focused on the fundamentals of making photographs — being more purposeful, not rapid-firing the shutter at everything that caught my eye, but making an earnest attempt to use light, motion and composition to capture the scenes I saw unfolding.

Starting then, in December of 2022, I only shot film for 12 months — with the Leica when it made sense, and with Rollei the rest of the time. I never left home without the Rollei, unless I had the Leica with me. It was fun, challenging, and more immersive than shooting digital (especially when I started developing black & white film at home). It made me feel more connected to the process and the output than working with digital images, and I think it made me a better photographer…maybe.

Ricoh GRiii, a return to digital

When I returned to NYC in October ’23, I had both the Leica and the Rollei with me. No digital cameras. But shooting on-the-go, especially at night or indoors in tricky lighting like museums and galleries and bars and restaurants, and taking snapshots while I was hanging out with my wife and friends (living in the moment as opposed to living through the lens), I realized that I wanted a digital backup, something low profile and pocketable but powerful.

After a couple weeks of internet research, I decided the Ricoh GRiii was my best option. When it comes to digital cameras I’m big fan of Fuji, but Fuji doesn’t make anything quite like the GRiii. Its 28mm equivalent lens is a workable focal length for just about any situation, it’s palm-sized and easily pocketable, super quiet, and not at all flashy looking, but it boasts the tech specs to take decent images.

It’s got a lot of fancy settings that allow for the creation of “recipes” (settings combinations that result in film emulation and other treatments) for both black & white and color, but I haven’t explored those too much. I’ve been far less interested in what the camera can do, and more into exploring what I can do with the camera. So I shoot RAW images and convert, process, and edit as needed in Lightroom.

I started using the Ricoh GRiii in December of 2023, and I’ve been pleased with the results so far. It’s in my pocket about as often as the Rollei 35 — which is to say, I’ve always got one of them on me. Unless I’m out with the Leica, in which case I’ve probably also got the Ricoh in my bag or in my pocket.

This photoset contains photos made with the GRiii, in chronological order, while getting acquainted with it between December ’23 and February ’24. You can see my intent manifested here — mostly snapshot style photos, quick, candid, mundane, everyday life, and street shots, all pretty casually captured as I went about my days and nights…

Los Angles, CA | July, 2023

My year in photography really began over the summer. It’s not that I wasn’t taking pictures during the first half the year, but my effort wasn’t consistent and my output was far from prodigious. I was coming off a creative slump following what felt like a big project, work was crazy, the stars just weren’t aligned, so my attention to photography was sporadic.

So it was at this point that I found myself in Downtown Los Angeles over the fourth of July weekend with the expressed purpose of shooting photographs. My wife had work obligations in LA that weekend, and as I have no qualms whatsoever about riding her professional coattails for a free hotel room, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get some dedicated solo time with my camera in the subject rich streets of DTLA.

But it was kind of a rough go, a rocky start to what’s shaped up to be a reasonably productive second half of the year. The rough patch I experienced that weekend in LA was not necessarily a collection of pronounced individual issues. Rather, the vibe was weird and things just didn’t click.

I never really felt like I found a flow state while shooting over those three days. I only shot four rolls of film in that time, and I remember thinking that I botched more shots than I hit. I was frustrated with my lens choice and decided that I prefer a 50mm over a 28mm lens for street photography…but I hadn’t brought the 50mm with me. The weather was hot as hell, the air was swampy and smelly. Anime Expo was happening at Staples Center and there were costumed nerds everywhere, but they were uninteresting to me and I barely photographed any of them. An off duty jewelry store security guard threatened to shoot me.

More than once I stepped into a local bar and knocked back a drink or three in search of my mojo, to no avail. But I put in the work, and photos were taken. And that’s what matters.

I burned one roll of Portra 400 color film and got one decent shot out of it, so it got top billing, and three rolls of Tri-X 400 black & white, selects from which fill the gallery.

Closing Out 2022: I’m Still Taking Pictures

What Was I Even Doing in 2022?

As I look ahead to next year and plot some high-level goals & aspirations, I’ve been looking back over the last year of photographic output. While I can’t help thinking about how, why and when I pursue creative endeavors, and what my personal relationship is with it all, I ultimately tend to get frustrated with all that creative metacognition and go back to focusing on just doing the damn thing.

And when it comes down to doin the damn thing, I didn’t shoot enough this past year.

In any case, the images contained in the galleries sprinkled throughout this post represent my favorite film photos from 2022, taken with a variety of 35mm and medium format cameras. Give ‘em a click to expand.

What’s in Store for 2023?

Keeping it simple for 2023, there are just two things (I think) I want to focus on when it comes to photography:

1. Shoot more. And shoot more film…maybe exclusively shoot film? I guess I shot quite a bit of film in 2021 too, but some of my more notable photo excursions were shot with a digital camera. And to be clear, I really like my digital camera rig and I really enjoy shooting with it. And I’m not a film snob. But I regularly consider limiting my options as a means of up-leveling fundamental skills and digging deeper into creativity.

This idea of focusing more (if not exclusively) on film started in October, after a trip to NYC in which most of my film photos turned out like shit — I think because I split my focus on shooting digital and film simultaneously, and in the aftermath I really came face to face with the realization that I don’t approach them in the same way.

Fresh off that realization, I went to Tokyo in December and, while I took my core digital rig with me (a Fuji setup that, again, I like very much), I didn’t snap a single digital photo. I opted instead to use the Leica MP 35mm film camera exclusively as I explored that city. And while, as of this writing, the results are still TBD (the lab is closed until the new year), the experience was exhilarating, and also a little challenging in that it was entirely without any of the luxuries that digital or more feature-rich film cameras offer. The MP is all mechanical and all manual — it only requires a battery for the light meter, and the camera works fine if the battery dies, you just need to find an alternate way to meter — so it forced to me slow down and get used to having to manage every aspect of the process while on the move.  I came away from the experience with the unwavering feeling that I need a lot more of that.

2. Make more physical media — prints, booklets, foldy zines, whatever else I can come up with that’s equal parts a little polished, but still DIY, and not crazy expensive.

Sharing photos online is the quickest and easies way to connect with photo communities, especially in engaging and supportive environments like Glass, Mastodon and Flickr. But posting digital photography on the internet, even in places where genuine interest thankfully takes the place of algorithmic imperative, can feel a little like stuffing content into a void.

Exploring the impact of physical media, of sharing the tangible results of my photographic endeavors, is increasingly appealing to me these days. The reach won’t be nearly as broad as it can be in a global digital environment where finding new things is as easy as clicking on a hashtag, but I don’t care about that — I want to share work with people in formats that are tactile and interactive, held rather than scrolled through, can be passed on, left out on coffee tables or bookshelves or the tops of toilet tanks, and can be easily revisited.

Physical media just seems like a more worthwhile endeavor than posting for the fleeting engagement of likes, boosts and comments. Not that I’ll stop posting photos to the internet…

All that said, I’ve had 5”x7” prints of the photos for my next booklet project on the wall in my home office for literally months without any movement, so a bias toward action on the production side of things is definitely needed.

I think what it comes down to is that, more than any other kind of photographer, I’m an opportunistic photographer — I almost always have a camera on me — and unless I’m traveling, I rarely set out with the specific intent to shoot. That needs to change.

I need to make the time and put in the effort to approach photography with purpose: take pictures because I set out to take pictures, make things with the pictures because that’s how I want the work to be represented.

I’ll figure out what it all means later.

Los Angeles Noir | A Short Story in Four Photographs

“Please… I’ve come so far.”

Long Time No See | A Return to Blogging (sorta)

I’ve got a wicked case of writers block.

The last time I put anything on this blog was January, 2021, about 20 months ago, around the time I started my monthly newsletter, One For The Road, which became my main outlet for sharing photos, writing, and music.

I recently decided to make a change to the way I do things with photos and general writing — that is, to post that stuff to this blog instead of the monthly Substack email — and use OFTR to share some music recos and drop links to whatever I’ve done here.

And for some reason, that’s the only writing topic I’ve been able to focus on for a week: basically a blog post that classifies as a “meta procedural.” And holy shit is that boring.

So in lieu of something interesting to read, here’s something (hopefully) interesting to look at: a gallery of black & white 35mm film photos taken over the last few months, on Kodak Tri-X 400 with either the Rollei 35S or the Olympus XA.

Weekly Photoset: January 6, 2019

Wrapping up the first week of the new year by publishing some photos I made over the last seven days. Here’s the first photoset of 2019…

Weekly Photoset: January 1, 2019

Happy New Year. I spent some time in Carmel and San Francisco last week, and these pix came out of those adventures. This batch is predominantly black and white, except for one — when I pulled the RAW image from the camera, the color was so vivid, it clearly wasn’t meant for black and white. There’s also a rare selfie here, please don’t hold it against me…

Weekly Photoset: December 20, 2018

After months of deactivation — and a couple of years after removing the app from my phone and iPad, which essentially removed it from my daily life — I deleted my Facebook account this week. So, just a heads-up: if we were connected there, we’re not any more...or rather, we won’t be for much longer, as it takes 30 days to delete an account for some reason.

I’ve been toying with the idea of shitcanning my Instagram account too, but I’m not quite there yet. I’ve managed to keep it curated enough — mostly photography, art and design, records, bands, vintage cars, and boxing — that it still delivers content that generally makes me happy…despite the glut of advertising, and the fact that I’m pretty sure those bastards are hot-micing my phone to target said advertising.

Anyway, few days late (per usual), but here’s the week’s photoset…

Weekly Photoset: November 25, 2018

I had most of last week off work, which offered a break in routine, as well as the opportunity for a short road trip in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. The upshot of all that is a weekly photoset that’s a bit heavier than usual.

This week’s set also features some pretty vivid color shots among the standard black and white fare. I do love strong black and white images, but I’m certainly not married to the look, because every image has its own requirements. I’m just trying to create what I see in my mind’s eye — without too much editing — and I see in both color and black and white.

Most of these images are devoid of people, too, which has, historically, been a compositional norm in most of my photography. As I mentioned in last week’s post, I’m still working on my comfort zone when it comes to taking pictures of people in public, but the opportunity to do so didn’t really avail itself last week.

Weekly Photoset, November 19, 2018

If there’s a theme to this photoset, it’s traversing the Bay on BART. I made a couple trips between Oakland and SF last week, and captured these images along the way.

I’ve been working on photographing people more lately. It’s not something I’m super comfortable with, and like most of my photography, regardless of subject, I’m opportunistic with it.

One of these pictures was made with the Lightroom Mobile camera on an iPhone 8, the other three with the FujiFilm x100f. (Can you tell the difference?)

Weekly Photoset: November 12, 2018

Last week was a rough one. It’s been difficult to escape the fires that have effected the whole state — we’ve gotten shitty air quality in Oakland, but compared to what folks in Butte and Ventura Counties have been going through, rotten air quality is, in the immediate term anyway, not much more than an annoyance. I mean, I’m wearing a filter mask outdoors (which feels pretty dystopian), but still have a roof over my head. I have friends in Paradise and Calabasas, near Malibu, who can’t say that at this point.

Please give what you can to help the victims of the Camp (Nor Cal) and Woolsey (So Cal) fires. The NYT put together a pretty good list of places to start. If you live nearby, please consider donating your time by volunteering. If you live away from the affected areas, please throw some money at the problem. People can use all the help they can get right now.

With regards to this week’s photos, I shot more with the Lightroom Mobile camera on my phone this week than I did with the x100f — or rather, I was happier with the results on the phone — but both are represented here…

Weekly Photoset: November 6, 2018

I set a Sunday deadline for myself to post a weekly photoset, and I blew it right outta the gate. I should have posted these images two days ago. But that’s life these days — I’m busy, and sometimes things fall by the wayside. Better late than never, I guess…

Weekly Photoset: October 28, 2018

I haven’t been posting to this site enough — to the blog or the photo galleries — but that doesn’t mean that I’ve got nothing to post. I take photos almost daily, either with the Lightroom Mobile camera on an iPhone 8, with a FujiFilm x100f that I have on me most of the time, and sometimes with a Nikon D7200. Currently the output is just piling up in the Adobe cloud and on a hard drive.

Also, I’m increasingly fried on Instagram, annoyed and frustrated with a shitty user experience. It’s flooded with ads and, as far as a creative outlet goes, feels like just shoving bullshit in to a black hole. And while I do post to 500px and VSCO from time to time — and find those to be cleaner and more curated communities despite (or maybe because of) the smaller, more photography-focused user bases and ad-free paid options — I don’t own those spaces like I own this one.

So in an attempt to breathe a little life into this site, and do something lasting and more personally meaningful with the photos I make, I’m going to start publishing a weekly dump of images. There may be just one photo, or there might be several, but I’ll put in the effort to put up something here every week; these photos won’t get any explanation beyond where and when they were snapped; and the weekly cadence will hit on Sundays, with a seven day lookback. Beyond that, no rules.

Just for the hell of it, and because some rules are for breaking, this first edition goes back two weeks. So let’s see where all this goes...