Walking the Middle Earth with Ricoh GR IV

And some driving too.

(Middle Earth is a LOTR reference for New Zealand, where the trilogy was shot in 18 months in one go (and later edited to have three movies), and if you’ve never seen it, I envy you.)

As a LOTR nerd and a connoisseur of natural wonders, New Zealand was on our mind for quite some time. And so was the Ricoh GR IV.

Ever since I picked up photography, I naturally gravitated towards fixed lenses. I always felt having a zoom lens made it hard for me to photograph. Sure, you could zoom all the way and get a delicious compression but I never felt confident which focal length was the right one. A prime lens removes that decision and if you have a 35mm or equivalent lens, you capture what you see from your eyes.

So, the Ricoh GR IV: neither easy to find in the market (even after paying an additional scalpers fee) nor easy to justify the purchase in my case (I own the holy grail of fixed lens camera — THE LEICA Q2). But as luck would have it, after multiple inquires and cancelled orders later, my buddy Suganth helped me find the camera in a store in Australia (without any scalper’s fee), coincidently from the same place I got the Q2 a couple of years. The first part was sorted. And we swept the second part under the rug like logic in the face of desire.

I have long believed that the best camera is the one that’s with you (attributed to Chase Jarvis, who popularized the phrase when he released the first ever book on iPhone photography). I also realized recently that I too want to make images with my camera - not my laptop. For both of these beliefs, the Ricoh GR IV excels. And how!

What a marvel.

This is the most joyful little camera I’ve used in years. It’s fast. Extremely fast. Turns on instantly. On, off, on. Put my Leica to shame. A hardcore sick burn. Leica should be ashamed. While using this and comparing this to my Leica Q2 (inevitable comparison ), I kept wondering what motivated the CEO of Leica. If you really cared about photography, if you wanted to honor your 100+ years of photographic history, why did you produce electronic bodies that took so damn long to turn on?

In my view, an ideal camera needs to have two things: instantaneous startup with zero shutter lag, and better software overall. This Ricoh is both of these things. It was ready the moment I pressed it on. The camera menu and the controls were sane. Every time I tried to connect the camera with the app, it did on the first attempt.

I spent a couple of minutes dialing in different settings and reconfiguring the buttons, and every time I pulled it out from my pants pocket (into which it fit perfectly), I was filled with delight. It is a delight-generating machine. Every time I pressed the shutter, the GR IV did not disappoint, hiccup, lock up, or stutter.

This little magnesium alloy nugget of photographic possibility reminds you what a camera is supposed to be. The GR IV feels like a tool. A totally customizable tool with perfectly acceptable image quality. Tools like this remind you that someone, somewhere, cared. Cared about each and every detail, the hardware and software, and someone had indeed strong opinions.

The Ricoh GR IV loves shadows. It loves highlights. Sometimes I forgot that it's just a tiny APS-C sensor and not full-frame. Straight out of camera, it produced images that would have taken me my laptop and some spare minutes. For the GR IV it was click and boop.

Two weeks with this camera, and it’s far from perfect. Especially, it feels so delicate in hand, its gossamer-like weightlessness, a bit like holding a beautiful, just-hatched baby chicken. The 2.8 isn’t fast enough for low light. The battery lasts about 250 shots. No viewfinder - the number of times I bumped my forehead in its screen on instinct.

At the helm's deep, a product has to earn its place in the world. It doesn't help that this category of product (point-and-shoot) is getting hammered each year by the iPhones. So it needs to function not only at absolute peak performance but do so while simultaneously delighting us. The delight in this camera comes from its intuitiveness. Things working without much thought or fiddling. You don't have to think about carrying this on your shoulder. You don't have to fiddle much to get a great shot by a press of the shutter. Once you joyfully embrace the constraints of this camera, it becomes an unbeatable companion.

And now some more photos as a testament to its capabilities from 96.7 km of walking and 2,728 km of driving in the Middle Earth.