Four months with my Ricoh GR IIIx

September 27, 2025

Back in May, I bought myself my first brand-new dedicated camera in about a decade. It's a Ricoh GR IIIx, a pocket-sized digital camera with an APS-C size sensor and a fixed 26.1mm f/2.8 lens (equivalent to 40mm on full frame).

I'd known about these Ricohs before, but it wasn't until I actually picked up a GR IIIx in a Bic Camera store in Tokyo that I realized how much I liked it. It's small but has a big sensor, the lens splits the difference between my favored 35mm and 50mm focal lengths,[1] and unlike some other compact digital cameras,[2] it feels fast and responsive and pared down to the essentials. It has exactly the physical controls you need, and I knew how to use it as soon as I picked it up. The JPEGs straight out of camera also generally look pretty nice.[3]

A couple of years ago, I wrote about how I fell out of using my Fujifilm X-T1. The Ricoh is a lot smaller than the Fujifilm, so it's easy to keep in my bag and bring everywhere. As a result, I use it more.

Here are some photos I've made with the Ricoh these past few months.

1. City life

First, a few photos from life around San Francisco, shot in May and June.

In early July, we traveled to New York for a few days for my friend Louisa's wedding celebration. I really enjoyed experiencing a slice of NYC summer (in all its sticky humidity) with my friends there.

And a couple of assorted photos from other places in late July and September:

Evening walk, Walnut, California
Pigeon, Cherry Creek Trail, Denver, Colorado

2. In the Rockies

While flying back to SF from NYC in July, I took this photo of the Rockies from my window seat[4]:

It's hard to get any sense of scale when looking down at those mountains from so high up—they might as well be rumpled blankets on my bed at home. I spent some time later trying to figure out what area is in that photo above—I think Independence Pass is somewhere in the middle of the frame, based on a distant shape in that photo that seems to match Taylor Park Reservoir.

In September, our friends Reini and Andrew invited us to visit Colorado for a few days with them. The last time I'd been in Colorado was in 2018,[5] so it was nice to return and spend more time in that landscape. Compared to my aerial photo, it was a very different perspective being on the ground in those mountains. These photos are all from our one day in Rocky Mountain National Park:

Anyways, I'm enjoying this new camera a lot and am looking forward to making more photos with it!

  1. My friend Kelly has the GR III with the wider 18mm lens (28mm full frame equivalent), and I'd tried it briefly in December, but that focal length isn't very interesting to me—it's too similar to my iPhone—and so the camera didn't "click" for me at that time. ↩︎

  2. I was also considering the Sony RX100 series of cameras (the super zoom is pretty cool) but when I tried it in the store, it just didn't feel fast and snappy the way the Ricoh did. I think the Sony has too much going on in too small of a package for my preferences. ↩︎

  3. I've mostly been shooting with the "Negative Film" simulation, and only doing some small edits on the JPEG file in Apple Photos. I save all the RAW files, though, so that I can reprocess them in the camera if I want to try a different film simulation. The "Negative Film" simulation generally works okay but sometimes I find it shifts red colors towards orange too blatantly. Greens can also look rather blue. ↩︎

  4. More on airplane window seat photos from earlier in the year ↩︎

  5. I passed through Colorado in 2018 while driving my Mazda Protege5 from LA to Detroit (and back) for my internship at Ford. ↩︎