Roll 298
Film: Ilford XP2 Super 400
Developed & scanned: DEP Lab 2025/10/8
Camera: Ricoh GR1s 28mm f2.8
-
After much struggle, I've finally made it to the GR1s. Strictly speaking, I prefer the GR1 — it has no filter ring, and the body feels nicer in the hand. But the GR1 I bought didn't focus as accurately as this GR1s, so I sold the GR1 and kept this one.
If you've used both the GR21 and the GR1s, you'll feel that the GR21 is simply too wide. If you carefully compare their images, you'll feel the GR1s is just about perfect. And once you factor in the price, the Ricoh GR1s becomes a camera you'd be doing yourself a disservice not to buy.
With the announcement of the Ricoh GR IV 18.3mm f2.8, attention seems to have swung back toward the film-era GR1 series. I briefly owned a Ricoh GR IIIx 26.1mm f2.8, but the feel was genuinely very different from the GR1 line. The film-era GR sits with its center of gravity toward your hand; the digital GR shifts it toward the lens side, since the lens is heavier. No wonder accessories like thumb grips exist for the digital GR.
-
#1
Around this time I often used the F1 movie soundtrack as background music for work.
#2
I'd heard before that the Ricoh GR1 series usually won't shoot at f2.8 in Auto mode, and my own testing confirmed it — even when it's pitch dark, the aperture still stops down just a little. Maybe it's exactly this compromise on a sliver of light that buys the astonishing improvement in image quality. This close self-portrait was so sharp and clear it startled me.
#3
A little fish, still alive back then. That tank is now a shrimp tank.
#4
This GR1s has had its flash modified — the flash wire was disconnected, so it won't fire in Auto mode and instead uses a safe shutter speed. This is my son's room.
#5
I was in the middle of testing the camera when my son happened to come home from school.
#6
The cameras that are forever scattered across my desk.
#7
Close-focus test. Fortunately, this Ricoh GR1s focuses accurately.
#8
Honestly, the GR1s is more worth buying than the GR21. The GR21 is rare, sure, but its images just aren't as good-looking as the GR1s's.
#9
I've always felt that images shot on film hold up to repeated viewing better — they more readily trigger that "worth lingering over" feeling. The same scene shot digitally somehow loses a bit of that sense of rarity, of being one of a kind.
#10
The iron door of the communal stairwell in our apartment building is plastered with small ads — a few of which have probably been there over twenty years.
#11
Originally I sent the GR1s in for the flash modification purely for looks — the camera is just too beautiful, and it would have been a shame to tape over the flash. Once the flash was disabled, night shooting became completely effortless.
#12
A father's-eye view, walking my son to school.
#13
An angle that just happens to obscure things.
#14
If I had to name the strongest compact camera, my vote goes firmly to the Ricoh GR1s — price, performance, and build, covered on every front.
#15
The desk is a mess. Worth documenting.
#16
Having handled so many compact cameras, there are two whose feel I really love: the Ricoh GR1s and the Leica Minilux. Both place the lens toward the outer edge of your grip (lens to the right when facing the camera). The Contax T2 and Nikon 35Ti use the opposite layout — lens toward the inner edge (to the left when facing the camera) — which shrinks the gripping area and creates instability when held one-handed, half-forcing you to use two hands.
#17
The GR1s lens is rated 28mm f2.8, but the key isn't the f2.8 — it's that the aperture blades are circular. There are plenty of f2.8 compacts, but the reason the GR1s images look better is precisely those circular blades, which produce soft tonal gradation across all kinds of exposure conditions. I once used the first-generation Fujifilm Klasse 38mm f2.6 and the Klasse S 38mm f2.8; their apertures weren't circular, which meant their out-of-focus rendering wasn't as pleasing when stopped down. I suspect that's exactly why the Klasse never became a universally acknowledged top-tier camera — even though it isn't cheap either.
#18
An undeniable optical miracle — such a tiny lens! Incidentally, while cleaning the GR1s once, I discovered when wiping the lens that the front element is actually a concave design. Quite rare.
-
That's this roll — Ricoh GR1s 28mm f2.8 with Ilford XP2 Super 400. Thanks for reading.
