Home Town

April has been an absolute cracker of a month weather wise, and yesterday was no exception. With some free time on my hands I decided to take a bike ride and took along one of my Ricoh GRIII (the none X HDF version).

The GRIII twins.
Yes, I have two GRIIIs, what’s the problem?

I didn’t have a destination in mind, or any kind of photography goal. The only thing I wanted to do was have a steady bike ride, and if I saw something worth photographing at least I was prepared. 30 minutes after leaving the house I found myself in Doncaster City Centre (I’ll never get used to Doncaster being a City).

Doncaster has a bad reputation, and in some cases it’s warranted. It has the same issues a lot of town centres in the UK have since the internet killed shopping as a past time. But, there is a new Civic Centre, which is all new and shiny and worth a visit.

It doesn’t seem to fit the rest of Doncaster, and maybe that’s a good thing. The buildings are shiny and glossy and people seem to find it a nice place to sit and enjoy the sun.

As it was the middle of a very sunny day Decided to shoot with the B&W Negative +Red Filter from Ritchie’s Ricoh Recipes. You can find it here; https://ricohrecipes.com/the-bw-collection/
I love the almost negative look it gives, especially with the blue sky. It’s almost black. The sun creates a lovely contrast and it works really well in bright light. I left the HDF filter on to add a bit of glow.

This is my favourite image from the day. I love the tree. It looks like it’s reaching for the woman, and she adds a sense of scale.

Here’s the rest of the images from the day.

I was recently asked why most of my images were in black and white. I struggle to see details because of my sight loss, but I can see contrast. Black and white helps me see my subjects.

I enjoyed my trip into town. I’ve never thought of it as a photographic destination. Maybe I’ll go back and see what else it has to offer.

Point and Shoot

I don’t hate the camera on my phone, but I am not a fan of using my phone as a camera. It’s big (bring back the iPhone Mini), and the controls are rubbish, and making manual adjustments takes too long. I wanted something to take on days out with friends (which usually involves drinking), or on a city break. Something that was small and easy to use.

The X100vi is still a fairly hefty camera, and definitely not pocket-able. So, I decided to dig out my point and shoot.

Ricoh GR3X Camera
My GriiiX Ubran Edition

This camera has been sat in my sock drawer for a good few years and hasn’t been used. It wasn’t cheap and I have thought about selling it a bunch of times. But, I’m glad I didn’t because I haven’t given it a fair chance.

This isn’t a review, there are a million already out there by much more qualified people.

I love the sound this camera makes when you turn it on. That’s a good reason to buy a camera right? It’s the little things.

I like to use this camera in aperture priority (AV) mode. It can be used fully manual, but with a camera this size I just want to worry about the aperture. As I’m using this as a point and shoot I don’t want to spend lots of time editing. So I generally just use the straight out of camera Jpegs.

I have three presets on the dial for different colour profiles, Kodak, Portra and Ilford Black and White. But, the built in colour modes are good too, and easy to access from the control dial.

There are lots of great recipes over at https://ricohrecipes.com, the same guys that run the brilliant https://fujixweekly.com.

In my last post I wrote that I wanted to take more photos this year, and photos of our life rather than just one I’d put in my ‘portfolio’. This camera will definitely help with that.