Tuesday 5 July 2011

This town, is coming like a ghost town

So as mentioned yesterday I've noticed a ghosting around some of the images produced by the Ricoh GRiii. I've looked at plenty of sample images over the last day and it appears that my GRiii has a more severe problem with this ghosting effect. This was surprising after reading that all of the lens elements in the GRiii have a multi-coating to prevent/reduce ghosting problems.
All the images below were shot in aperture priority or program shift mode (therefore incapable of using the DR function and doubling up the images). The images are cropped from 100% views and taken from close the the edge of the frame - but not at the outer limits; the bottom cropped photo was (although out of focus) even taken from the middle of the image.
I'm not sure what to do now; I can't see where I could be going wrong with settings/shooting style that would produce this level of ghosting to occur so often. I've been saving and waiting for a digital compact for a while now and thought for a long time about what camera to purchase. I was really looking forward to spending the next few weeks with the Ricoh not leaving my side and getting out to do some street work. I started to shoot street with my last Ricoh, the GR1, about 2 years back and when that died, I kind of stopped with street photography. Without my unobtrusive GR to wander around with and take everywhere in my pocket I left my street work fall to the side whilst I focused on my major project. I tried to fill the Ricoh gap with a Minox 35GT but it didn't feel the same and it was a bit too small for me to handle (plus it was purely manual focus).
So after finally finishing uni, getting back to shooting for the fun of it and not the grades, I'm really bummed out that my camera of choice to restart my street work is a disappointment.
There are many cameras in the higher price range that I would choose over the GRiii but none that I can think of in the £350-£450 bracket that offer a fixed wide angle lens with great user interface.
Because of this ghosting problem I haven't risked heading to London for the LSPF in case something happened to the camera and I couldn't get a refund (also I've not insured the GRiii as I'm probably taking it back - another reason not to take it around London).
If you have experienced the same problem or know of anything to cut down on this level of ghosting please contact me on the email address for this blog,
Many thanks,

Alex


ISO 64 F5.6 @ 1/160


ISO 64 F3.2 @ 1/710


ISO 64 F3.2 @ 1/850


ISO 64 F2.5 1/270

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