Incorporating a newly developed highlight diffusion filter (HDF), the Ricoh GR IIIx HDF allows users greater control over the style of their imagery while maintaining exceptional image quality. Captures with HDF enabled are noticeably softer and feature an emphasis on highlights, resulting in a more nostalgic look that resembles film photography or vintage movies. The default setting of the Fn button is now set to turn HDF on or off. This model also features a dark-silver shutter-release button to distinguish it from previous GR series models. Lastly, new firmware allows Zone Select AF as well as up to three white-balance settings to be preprogrammed as the base white balance.
The newly designed 26.1mm GR lens provides a 40mm standard angle of view in the 35mm format, delivering images with a natural perspective and a truthful sense of depth for a completely different type of street photography. High-refractive index low-dispersion glass lenses and aspherical high-precision molded glass lenses are optimally placed in the lens construction to suppress optical distortion and chromatic aberration, delivering a high level of sharpness. The camera also comes equipped with an ND (neutral density) filter, which can open the aperture up by two stops to capture shallow depth-of-field images with a variety of scenes and subjects under varying shooting conditions. Its nine-blade diaphragm mechanism creates a natural bokeh effect and a truthful sense of depth at open and larger apertures, while capturing beautiful light beams at closed-down apertures.
An updated 24.2MP APS-C CMOS sensor pairs with the new GR Engine 6 to produce high-resolution 14-bit DNG or JPEG stills with impressive tonality, natural color rendering, and high sensitivity from ISO 100 to 102,400. In addition to stills shooting, the GR IIIx HDF is also capable of recording Full HD 1080 video at 60p, 30p, and 24p frame rates.
The hybrid AF system combines a contrast-type AF mechanism with a phase-detection-type AF mechanism ensuring high-speed focusing operation. During autofocus shooting, this AF system detects the subject's face or eye with precision, focuses on it, and indicates the in-focus position on the LCD display using the AF frame. When the camera detects multiple faces, it automatically distinguishes the main subject from secondary ones and indicates this on the focus frame.
Shake Reduction (SR) minimizes camera shake on three axes, including yaw, pitch, and roll to provide up to 4 stops of compensation and produce crisp, sharp images even when taking split-second snapshots or capturing images with challenging low-light conditions.
