Roll 288
Camera: Ricoh GR21 21mm f3.5
Film: Ilford XP2 Super 400
Developed & scanned: DEP Lab 2025/8/29
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One day I started looking into Taiwan's photography book market — specifically, how much income a photo book could realistically generate.
The numbers were sobering. Royalty rates for authors in Taiwan typically sit at 8–10%, which means selling a 500 NT photo book nets the author maybe 40–50 NT per copy. Assuming a first print run of 1,000 copies — and assuming the whole run sells out within a year, which is optimistic — that's an additional 40,000–50,000 NT for the year. And more than 90% of books never see a second printing, which means for most authors, that single print run represents their entire lifetime earnings from that book.
That kind of income isn't enough to support a family. For a lot of people, it's barely enough to support a stable relationship.
So I started rethinking whether I actually want to make a book at all. My conclusion: whether I do it or not, it probably won't change my life significantly either way. And oddly, that's a relief — no pressure. The more urgent task is just to keep writing blog posts.
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The camera for this roll is the rather mysterious Ricoh GR21 21mm f3.5. Released in 2001 — the same year Jay Chou dropped his second album Fantasy — the GR21 is genuinely hard to find honest user impressions of online. That alone felt like a good reason to shoot more with it and document what I found.
If it weren't so expensive, I probably wouldn't have bought it. The curiosity was the draw: what does a 21mm f3.5 lens feel like in a body that weighs just 200 grams?
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#1
The GR21 can focus as close as 30cm, but the lens is so wide that even at minimum focus distance, the framing ends up looking something like this.
#2
Being a GR-series camera, manual focus distance override is a given. For me, the ability to set a fixed focus distance is one of the things that separates a genuinely premium compact from a basic one — cameras like the Konica Big mini F 35mm f2.8 or Olympus Mju II 35mm f2.8 don't have this, which is part of why I wouldn't call them high-end compacts. The GR series does: its Snap mode lets you lock focus at 2 meters, which makes mirror self-portraits far more predictable.
#3
The expensive Lego sets at home aren't ones I bought. Pictured: Lego 76968, suggested retail price NT$9,199. This shot is also approximately at minimum focus distance.
#4
The storage room we're still sorting through. The GR21's ultra-wide lens earns its keep here — the tight space opens right up, every pile of stuff visible at once. Shot with my hand over the flash; in Auto mode the GR21 dropped to 1/30s shutter speed, and without flash, no camera shake.
#5
Same composition, Auto mode, flash left on.
#6
Also at minimum focus distance — a look at the outer limits of what the GR21 can do for bokeh.
#7
The fish tank as it was then. By the time I'm writing this, both goldfish are gone. May they rest in peace.
#8
More of the cluttered space. Honestly, the GR21 might be better suited to the Konica "on-the-scene supervisor" role than the actual Konica cameras built for it — it's wide enough to handle any interior. Wide-angle cameras belong indoors, not outdoors. I think a lot of people use wide lenses for landscapes simply because that's what came with the camera — no repositioning needed, so it's convenient. That convenience has created a false impression that wide lenses are for scenery.
#9
The thermometer hit 39.9°C in direct sun. That summer was something else.
#10
My son has moved on from PAW Patrol, but the helmet is still PAW Patrol. Does he care? Is this dad overthinking it?
#11
Two things that tend to make a bicycle look sharper: fewer cables (brake cables, gear cables and so on), and black rims.
#12
This photo shop — Jia Lun Digital Imaging — is where I used to get prints made with my elementary school Olympus point-and-shoot. No particular reason other than proximity to home.
#13
I've seen people say Banqiao's Fuzhou station has a Japanese feel because the platforms are on the second floor. That's fair, though it takes a bit of imagination to get there.
#14
Traditional Taiwanese Han architecture through the GR21.
#15
I was shooting pretty randomly on this roll — I just wanted to finish it and get it developed. I was genuinely worried the camera might be broken.
#16
Let some sun in.
#17
Legislator Ye Yuanzhi seems like someone who can laugh at himself.
#18
Still not sure whether I'd go Yamaha or Honda for a sport bike. Honda costs more — you're paying a premium just for the badge. But sometimes that's where the value actually lives. The willingness to pay over the odds is itself a kind of statement.
#19
Any lens gets sharp once you stop it down, but for a 21mm f3.5 to resolve this well in such a tiny autofocus body — that's impressive.
#20
Back to reality: my first-generation Gogoro with essentially zero resale value.
#21
No clouds. Wondering what a filter would have done.
#22
The GR21's Auto mode is actually quite trustworthy. This one is Auto.
#23
This one is aperture-priority at f3.5.
#24
Shun Tian bicycle shop — a place I'd visit occasionally as a kid. Still open.
#25
This confirms it for me: wide-angle lenses aren't made for outdoor landscapes.
#26
I hope I live to see Taiwan introduce pedestrian crossing signs without gender stereotypes.
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By the time I'm writing this, I've shot 9 rolls through the GR21 — it's been about 9 months since I first picked it up. When I first got it, I was genuinely excited. It was the most expensive compact camera I'd ever bought. Nine months on, that excitement has settled into something quieter. I've started seeing it as just a camera rather than some holy grail, and I think that's actually when I can write about it most honestly.
I originally bought two GR21s at once — yes, two. One of them has since found a new home through Facebook Marketplace. Speaking of which, I've been using the Marketplace notification feature to track down cameras lately: type in a keyword, and the system alerts you when something matching gets listed. Far more useful than digging through Facebook groups with their terrible search function.
Feel free to follow my FB Marketplace profile:
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/profile/1178947869/
That's this roll — Ricoh GR21 21mm f3.5 with Ilford XP2 Super 400. Thanks for reading.
