My Ricoh GR IIIx

My new camera

Bob Durie

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I agree very much with the adage that the best camera is the one that is with you. For the past 12 years, this has been the camera built in to my iPhone.

I recently purchased a new camera, a Ricoh GR IIIx. A roughly 2 week research and courting process led me to having one delivered to my door within 48 hours from Amazon, delivered on July 1st. I made a meager attempt to get one from a local camera store, who cited supply chain and it being really hard to get (I feel for you brick and mortar).

This camera matched my needs in terms of looking to be an excellent life camera, for family, people, portraits, but also one that would fit in my pocket. Nothing else matched it. I have an SLR that i never take anywhere because basically it needs to be in a bag or my hand, and this taught me i shouldn’t budge on the portability.

Also; i’m hoping to leave my phone at home more and more, and i never would without a camera! I enjoy capturing life’s moments too much, and really enjoy looking back on them. This now makes that possible (further down this path is a minimalist phone, but knowing the iPhone camera is about as good as it gets for a camera phone, a pure play camera was going to need to be in my arsenal).

Why isn’t the iPhone camera good enough for me anymore? The turning point for me was watching Apple’s WWDC keynote in early June. They touted some of the new capabilities such as using the iPhone as a webcam, including integration of the portrait technology.

Up until watching that keynote, I was a big fan of iOS’s portrait technology. But in that moment, it all of a sudden looked unnatural. It looked like a Zoom/Teams blur effect, and i’ve been soured on it ever since. I now can look at many pics i’ve taken with portrait mode and spot the undesired nuance. This video does a great job explaining how Portrait mode achieves bokeh, and near the end hints that computational photography is only going to get better. I’m sure this is true… but I’d prefer not to wait.

Ultimately, the thoughts that swayed me was thinking I may look back on all these pictures of my kids and date that photo’s age based on the visible tech i see in the effects. Just like there is a time and place for Instagrams’ filters, there is also for effects that are trying to match something more mechanical. If I want something to last the test of time, I should rely on more proven technology, and certainly not something that feels unnatural already.

But wait; why not a film camera?? Ha! I don’t have time for that! Or budget. I also have no aspirations to be a great photographer, nor do I particularly want to get in to the craft of photo finishing. I just want some timeless pics of my family i can blow up and put near the staircase. I greatly appreciate all the advantages of digital photography and am relying on them to deliver this vision.

All in all, I’m very pleased with my decision. I’m spending less time with my phone in my hand, more time with my camera, and already have a slew of great pics to sift through even though I’m still very much just learning how the thing works.

For me, this feels like a pretty big step towards unbundling of services on a unified device. I absolutely adore my iPhone, and am grateful for most things it’s enabled for me over the past 12 years. I am definitely reaching the top of a curve though, and the idea of app stores so that your phone “does everything” leads to the phone being “more engaging than real life”, and I’m glad to take a firm step towards unbundling and see where it leads.

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Bob Durie

Sometimes focused, sometimes scattered, my opinions about the world, people, tech, purpose, impact, and nonsense.