
Ricoh and its beloved street-savvy point-and-shoot cameras are back. The company is announcing new iterations of its pair of compact digital street shooters: the GR III HDF and the GR IIIx HDF, which feature the addition of a new Highlight Diffusion Filter, along with a couple of other small updates, while keeping the remainder of the camera identical to its predecessors.
At this point, the GR III and GR IIIx’s street bona fides are the stuff of legend: its 24.2MP APS-C CMOS sensor; a 28mm or 40mm equivalent (III/x, respectively) f/2.8 prime lens that produces sharp, high-resolution images; two tele-crop modes; and, of course, the discreet and compact finesse of wielding it.
Thrown into the mix is the new Highlight Diffusion Filter. Built directly into the shutter, the filter diffuses and emphasizes the image’s highlight areas while blurring its edges, yielding softer and more expressive images with a whiff of nostalgia in them. The arrival of the HDF does, however, replace the built-in Neutral Density filter that came with the previous models. Additionally, toggling the filter is now the default setting of the Fn (Function) button, priming the GR III HDF and GR IIIx HDF to produce contemporary street scenes with the timelessness of film photography or vintage movies.
A few other changes are also at hand in both the GR III HDF and GR IIIx HDF. First, they will now sport a dark silver shutter-release button, exclusive to these new models. Next, the cameras introduce a new autofocus mode, Zone Select AF, which automatically selects the best focus point in a user-designated 3x3 focus zone. Finally, users will also be able to pre-program up to three white balance settings as the base white balance. This update will also be available later for all other Ricoh GR III/x cameras with an upcoming firmware update.
It's about time we had some more of these street stalwarts in stock. What do you make of the addition of the Highlight Diffusion Filter? Will it have an impact on the secondary market for its older siblings with the ND filter? Let us know what you think in the Comments section, below, and be sure to check out the detailed product pages for the Ricoh GR III HDF Digital Camera and GR IIIx HDF Digital Camera.
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