I was looking forward to the event announced by Ricoh scheduled for Friday, February 23. I was hoping, and I wasn't the only one, that Ricoh would announce the launch of a new camera.
There were reasons. GR3 has been sold almost unchanged since 2019. In 2021, a version with a lens with a focal length equivalent to 40mm was added. It seems that creating the monochrome camera expected by many would not require much investment.
Mechanically, it could be no different from the GR3. In turn, support for monochrome files has already been prepared for K-3 Monochrome.
A few weeks ago, Ricoh Japan even did a survey about monochrome cameras, what motivates people, why they prefer to take black and white photos with a monochrome camera and not convert them in post-production. The survey even asked whether the respondent would be interested in buying a monochrome camera if it were not a SLR. The Camera Photo Plus fair is taking place in parallel, and two days earlier Fujifilm presented the X100VI, which can be considered a natural competition for GR. It's hard to imagine a better moment.
I will tell you in advance, nothing was announced during GR Live. However, you could watch all previous versions of GR.
The meeting focused on discussions and presentations regarding the current generation of GR cameras and experiences related to their use.
6 invited photographers and eight amateur "fans" who registered in advance by filling out a form on the event website presented their photographic works and their attitude to GR cameras.
Invited photographers had 10 minutes of time, amateurs had 3 minutes of time. Additionally, there were two presentations made by Ricoh employees.
I will mention two lectures.
Among the invited guests was Suzuki Tatsuo, also known from the Tokyo Void photography collective, who was previously almost an icon of the Fujifilm X100. Apparently, after the scandal related to the advertising film, Fujifilm parted ways. The photographer himself has recently been working on combining his photos with music, and he created just such a photographic and musical presentation.
One of the speakers was former actor Kyosuke Hamao. Kyosuke-san, known, among others, for his role as Eiji Kikumaru in the musical "The Prince of Tennis", currently works as a photographer. He noticed that when taking photos, a certain relationship is created between the photographer and the photographed person. If we change the camera, it may affect this relationship.
In particular, a large camera may cause the subject to stiffen internally and want to present himself in the best possible way, in his opinion, not necessarily in a natural way.
Then the actor talked about how easy it is to photograph natural emotions using GR. Even when photographing with a Leica, he was unable to capture the natural smile of his chef uncle - he always looked like a busy professional. Only changing the camera to the inconspicuous GR allowed him to capture what he wanted.
There was a half-hour break during GR Live, during which you could talk and make new contacts. Needless to say, the vast majority of those present were shooting GR and didn't hide it at all - with my ZF I could feel a bit out of place. However, I noticed that some people had Fuji, Sony, and even the analog Leica M4.
The last point of the program was a panel discussion with three discussants: Ishii Tomohiko, Watanabe Satoru and Kimura Tetsushi.
Ishii-san and Kimura-san are associated with the Ghibli studio. Ishii-san is a film producer, having worked on such films as Howl's Moving Castle, Tales from Earthsea, and was the producer of Miyazaki's last film "The Boy and the Heron". We can guess that he worked close to the Master, and it was during this work that he documented using GR3. Some photos were displayed during the panel. This was something because I don't think these photos have been shown publicly before.
Kimura Tetsushi works at the Ghibli Museum and takes photos, among others. products that can be purchased at the Ghibli store. For photography he uses Sony A7IV, and in his free time he takes photos with GR.
The last discussant, Watanabe Satoru, is a professional photographer, the author of 10 books, he used GR series cameras back in the analog era, and then all digital GR models, up to the newest one.
The topic of the discussion was “life and sub-camera - why do we use GR?” The very concept of a camera that is not the main camera was discussed. The discussants admitted that there are very few photographers who use only GR. Even these three panelists are not exceptions. To separate professional photography from photography taken for yourself. As a complement to professional equipment in situations where using it would be awkward.
The statement that taking photos with a phone is impertinent and rude was mentioned several times in the discussion. On the other hand, taking out such an inconspicuous device as the GR in these situations causes completely different feelings and reactions.
Two types of events where neither a phone nor a professional camera is acceptable: weddings and funerals. The gentlemen said as if it was something obvious that guests at the wedding cannot have cameras. On the other hand, taking photos with a phone in such situations is rude. In turn, a small camera like the GR3 is the only one that is somehow acceptable.
Here I see some cultural complexities that, unfortunately, I do not fully understand. But I will follow this lead and talk to my Japanese friends about what they think about this matter.
At this point Ishii-san again mentioned Hayao Miyazaki, who cried at his teacher's funeral. It would have been unacceptably rude to photograph this situation with a phone, it would have been inappropriate to bring out large equipment, but the GR was the right tool. This photo was not shown.
During one of the previous presentations, GR user clubs were shown in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, as well as in many prefectures in Japan.
During the panel discussion, it was stated that, unlike users of other brands, GR users are very active in the community, there are many community activities. Watanabe Satoru even said that he had not heard about meetings of, for example, "users of Z-mount cameras". I must say that I haven't heard of them either, but that doesn't mean they didn't exist. However, I have heard about meetings of users of Fujifilm equipment.
The meeting, although related to the profession - unfortunately, at least for now there will be no new GR (even the words "see you next year with GR3") were interesting and allowed me to get to know other interesting figures of Japanese photography.
At the end, there was a commemorative photo of the participants.
To finish this text, I will share one piece of practical information that may be useful to someone if they go to the GR website. When photographing GR, you can use the tags #grsnaps and #shootgr_<city name> on social media, e.g. #shootgr_tokyo.
Tags with the city name allow you to estimate the number of users. The most GRs are in London, Tokyo is in second place. The low position of New York - supposedly the capital of the street - is puzzling.
I was looking forward to the event announced by Ricoh scheduled for Friday, February 23. I was hoping, and I wasn't the only one, that Ricoh would announce the launch of a new camera.
There were reasons. GR3 has been sold almost unchanged since 2019. In 2021, a version with a lens with a focal length equivalent to 40mm was added. It seems that creating the monochrome camera expected by many would not require much investment.
Mechanically, it could be no different from the GR3. In turn, support for monochrome files has already been prepared for K-3 Monochrome.
A few weeks ago, Ricoh Japan even did a survey about monochrome cameras, what motivates people, why they prefer to take black and white photos with a monochrome camera and not convert them in post-production. The survey even asked whether the respondent would be interested in buying a monochrome camera if it were not a SLR. The Camera Photo Plus fair is taking place in parallel, and two days earlier Fujifilm presented the X100VI, which can be considered a natural competition for GR. It's hard to imagine a better moment.
I will tell you in advance, nothing was announced during GR Live. However, you could watch all previous versions of GR.
The meeting focused on discussions and presentations regarding the current generation of GR cameras and experiences related to their use.
6 invited photographers and eight amateur "fans" who registered in advance by filling out a form on the event website presented their photographic works and their attitude to GR cameras.
Invited photographers had 10 minutes of time, amateurs had 3 minutes of time. Additionally, there were two presentations made by Ricoh employees.
I will mention two lectures.
Among the invited guests was Suzuki Tatsuo, also known from the Tokyo Void photography collective, who was previously almost an icon of the Fujifilm X100. Apparently, after the scandal related to the advertising film, Fujifilm parted ways. The photographer himself has recently been working on combining his photos with music, and he created just such a photographic and musical presentation.
One of the speakers was former actor Kyosuke Hamao. Kyosuke-san, known, among others, for his role as Eiji Kikumaru in the musical "The Prince of Tennis", currently works as a photographer. He noticed that when taking photos, a certain relationship is created between the photographer and the photographed person. If we change the camera, it may affect this relationship.
In particular, a large camera may cause the subject to stiffen internally and want to present himself in the best possible way, in his opinion, not necessarily in a natural way.
Then the actor talked about how easy it is to photograph natural emotions using GR. Even when photographing with a Leica, he was unable to capture the natural smile of his chef uncle - he always looked like a busy professional. Only changing the camera to the inconspicuous GR allowed him to capture what he wanted.
There was a half-hour break during GR Live, during which you could talk and make new contacts. Needless to say, the vast majority of those present were shooting GR and didn't hide it at all - with my ZF I could feel a bit out of place. However, I noticed that some people had Fuji, Sony, and even the analog Leica M4.
The last point of the program was a panel discussion with three discussants: Ishii Tomohiko, Watanabe Satoru and Kimura Tetsushi.
Ishii-san and Kimura-san are associated with the Ghibli studio. Ishii-san is a film producer, having worked on such films as Howl's Moving Castle, Tales from Earthsea, and was the producer of Miyazaki's last film "The Boy and the Heron". We can guess that he worked close to the Master, and it was during this work that he documented using GR3. Some photos were displayed during the panel. This was something because I don't think these photos have been shown publicly before.
Kimura Tetsushi works at the Ghibli Museum and takes photos, among others. products that can be purchased at the Ghibli store. For photography he uses Sony A7IV, and in his free time he takes photos with GR.
The last discussant, Watanabe Satoru, is a professional photographer, the author of 10 books, he used GR series cameras back in the analog era, and then all digital GR models, up to the newest one.
The topic of the discussion was “life and sub-camera - why do we use GR?” The very concept of a camera that is not the main camera was discussed. The discussants admitted that there are very few photographers who use only GR. Even these three panelists are not exceptions. To separate professional photography from photography taken for yourself. As a complement to professional equipment in situations where using it would be awkward.
The statement that taking photos with a phone is impertinent and rude was mentioned several times in the discussion. On the other hand, taking out such an inconspicuous device as the GR in these situations causes completely different feelings and reactions.
Two types of events where neither a phone nor a professional camera is acceptable: weddings and funerals. The gentlemen said as if it was something obvious that guests at the wedding cannot have cameras. On the other hand, taking photos with a phone in such situations is rude. In turn, a small camera like the GR3 is the only one that is somehow acceptable.
Here I see some cultural complexities that, unfortunately, I do not fully understand. But I will follow this lead and talk to my Japanese friends about what they think about this matter.
At this point Ishii-san again mentioned Hayao Miyazaki, who cried at his teacher's funeral. It would have been unacceptably rude to photograph this situation with a phone, it would have been inappropriate to bring out large equipment, but the GR was the right tool. This photo was not shown.
During one of the previous presentations, GR user clubs were shown in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, as well as in many prefectures in Japan.
During the panel discussion, it was stated that, unlike users of other brands, GR users are very active in the community, there are many community activities. Watanabe Satoru even said that he had not heard about meetings of, for example, "users of Z-mount cameras". I must say that I haven't heard of them either, but that doesn't mean they didn't exist. However, I have heard about meetings of users of Fujifilm equipment.
The meeting, although related to the profession - unfortunately, at least for now there will be no new GR (even the words "see you next year with GR3") were interesting and allowed me to get to know other interesting figures of Japanese photography.
At the end, there was a commemorative photo of the participants.
To finish this text, I will share one piece of practical information that may be useful to someone if they go to the GR website. When photographing GR, you can use the tags #grsnaps and #shootgr_<city name> on social media, e.g. #shootgr_tokyo.
Tags with the city name allow you to estimate the number of users. The most GRs are in London, Tokyo is in second place. The low position of New York - supposedly the capital of the street - is puzzling.