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Is the Ricoh GX100 the new prosumer Messiah? Not necessarily because it is the best prosumer camera ever made, but it could be the camera that forces other manufacturers to compete with it and return to the prosumer market, a market that gave us such darlings as the Canon Pro 1, Olympus C8080, Panasonic LC1, Nikon 8400 and 8800, Sony F717, F828, Sony R1, Minolta A1, A2, A200, Samsung Pro 815, Canon G-series (G7 is different), Nikon 4500 and 5400, Kodak P880, etc.
Even though the Sigma DP1 has a bigger sensor, it will not be a mass-appeal camera, it does not have a zoom lens, it will cost a lot more, and no one really knows if/when it will be released (given Sigma's track record). That's why I think the Ricoh GX100 has the best chance of revitalizing this segment...
For the purpose of this post, prosumer is very loosely defined to be any advanced non-DSLR with some advanced features.
By the way, the use of the term "prosumer Messiah" is an homage to Frank Herbert's Dune. It is not a contemporary religious reference!
Let's meet the Ricoh GX100
First an actual user blogging about their GX100at the mygx100 blog here at blogspot.
Official announcement (at dpreview), including detailed specifications
Official Ricoh website for the GX100. Brochure in PDF from Ricoh (5.2MB).
Lots of discussion on the Ricoh GX100 in the dpreview Ricoh Talk forum
PhotographyBlog has recently posted a review of the GX100. Discussion of the review in this Ricoh dpreview forum thread
Others reviewing the GX-100 are PhotoReview and german sites digitalkamera.de and dkamera.de. List of all reviews available at dcviews.com
Also reviewed by print magazine What Digital Camera. Discussion of the review in the Ricoh dpreview forum
dpreview forum user Amin S has posted a comparison between the GX 100, the Canon G7 and the Leica D-Lux 2 (Panasonic LX-) in his blog. Discussion of his comparison in the dpreview forum
dpreview just posted their 12-page review of the Ricoh GX-100, produced by Simon Joinson.
For those in the USA, the Ricoh is only available from Adorama either directly or through Amazon
Current price is $600 for the camera, and $170 for the removable external LCD viewfinder aptly named VF-1. They are also bundled together in the GX100 VF KIT for $700 (Prices and availability are as of the time of writing and can change at any time)
Conclusion? Too early to tell just yet! For one thing, we need more technical reviews of the camera to be published, hopefully including one from dpreview.
work in progress, more coming up!
2 comments:
I have had a GRD for 2yrs and my GX100 for 3 weeks and I love it, it adds to what the GRD offers by way of a zoom lens and a much faster Raw write time (hooray), the noise at the higher speeds is also greatly reduced making the likes of 800 usable, I love it - Thank you Ricoh.
For those interested parties I have a series of my GRD/GX100 images posted here:
http://ianskyphotosite.blogspot.com/
Thanks Ian for your comments! Indeed Ricoh has managed to move into the prosumer (RAWsumer) gap created by the traditional SLR manufacturers abandoning the segment.
Blogger does not automatically convert links to urls, so I converted the link above to a url, check out Ian's great work with the Ricohs, http://ianskyphotosite.blogspot.com/
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