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| Banksia Straight out of camera JPG at [Standard] Image Control. |
I think every camera maker would do well to explore the Ricoh approach to camera menus.
There are enough menu items to achieve full control of the device.
Functions not required are simply not there.
The arrangement, layout, navigation and graphical user interface are all very good.
The treatment of the menus in the User Guide is clear, easy to understand and well laid out.
Further improvement could be achieved by
a) Adding a My Menu
b) Re arranging the existing submenus into more photography-centric headings such as
Controls, Focus, Exposure, Image, Drive, Setup, Movie, Review, Connect.
Ricoh has taken a step in this direction with submenu items in the Camera Menu but I think they could go further with this.
You can navigate menus with the touch screen or hard controls.
Setup Manual p35
I find the camera runs well with all Setup items at default settings.
Still Image Settings Manual Page 27 -29.
I find that many of these give good results at default. I will only mention those which I think could benefit from an alternative selection or which I think deserve some comment.
* Face Detection I have this ON. It will work with my usual Focus Mode which is Select AF.
* AF Assist Light. I always turn this off. It annoys subjects and drains the battery for not much gain.
* Full Press Snap. You really need to experiment with this. The idea sounds good but I find in practice I never quite know if I am at the active focussed distance or the pre-set snap distance. I like to have more control and set this one OFF.
* Focus Peaking. Here is another one I switch OFF. I find manual focus on this camera most unsatisfactory and the implementation of Peaking no help at all.
All the rest I leave at default.
Make sure that [Auto SR Off] in {Shooting Assist} is set to [Enable Auto SR Off]
Customize Settings Menus
I have already discussed the main features of this menu in the previous post.
Otherwise I just leave items at default.
That’s it really.
The GR3 is one of the easiest and most straightforward of recent cameras to set up thanks to good design of controls, menus and the user interface.