In the days leading up to our trip, I’d been agonising over what kit to take. The Ricoh GR III? The Fujifilm X-E2? Both? In the end, I settled on the Ricoh and nothing else. By the second day, my Ricoh had lost its autofocus! Just that. My GR III has already been faulty for months, with an LCD screen that doesn’t work very well anymore. I’ll refer you to the blog post where I talk about it. Until now, I’d been putting up with this problem, which I consider minor.

This week, just before I left, I wanted to clean my sensor as there was a tiny speck of dust on it. Nothing too serious, but I thought a clean sensor would be ideal. Well, whilst taking my Ricoh apart, I noticed that a small ribbon cable had been severed. I think that’s why my LCD isn’t working properly. Another, more serious problem has cropped up. I can’t get one of the screws holding the sensor in place out. So it’s impossible to clean it. Out of frustration, I put it back together without cleaning it…

So here I am at the very start of my trip with a Ricoh GR III that has two problems. A faulty LCD screen and no autofocus. Just so you know, the Ricoh doesn’t have a viewfinder and isn’t designed to be used without autofocus, as the manual focus is just rubbish. Well, rubbish in the sense that it’s very, very difficult to focus manually. For one thing, the camera doesn’t have a focus ring, and for another, everything is done via the LCD screen. This is all the more problematic when the screen, like mine, is faulty…

I quickly have to make do with what I’ve got. On the morning it happened, we were visiting Chinatown and I used everything I knew about zone focusing to carry on taking photos, even without AF. I switched the camera to fully manual mode: focus set to 2.5 m, f/8 and Auto ISO (max 6400 & shutter speed 1/800 s). But I still have serious doubts about the focus. In fact, I didn’t know if it was just the AF system that was broken or if it was more serious than that and the whole focusing system had stopped working…

Anyway, I started fretting about it, and Gwen told me I should just use my other camera (the Fujifilm). She couldn’t believe it when I told her I hadn’t brought it with me… Well, you’ll just have to buy a new camera then! I must admit I wasn’t exactly thrilled by the idea (yes, really!), but I gave it serious thought as we were only at the start of our holiday. In the end, the fully manual mode seems to be working well, and I got confirmation that evening whilst editing the photos that it really is the AF system that’s on the blink. The GR III is half-broken, but it still takes great photos!

I’d never really tried manual focus with this camera before. Without a viewfinder or a focus ring, it’s virtually impossible. I use the depth-of-field data provided by the camera and the distances I know (arm’s length ~ 0.7 m…) to focus when I want to shoot at a wide aperture. It’s still zone focusing, as I can’t achieve precise focus. But it works quite well!

In fact, I feel as though I’m taking a step backwards and using the GR III just as I used to use the GRD IV years ago. I’m learning to keep the ISO down by deliberately reducing the shutter speed in situations where I know I won’t need 1/800s. For example, in fairly static situations. This helps me keep noise to a minimum. So I find myself adjusting the ISO more often depending on the situation. That’s what I used to do systematically with the GRD IV, which produced a lot of noise above ISO 400.

I don’t know if this is a long-term solution. But buying a new one is out of the question for the moment. The GR III may have lost a few features, but it still works! I’ve got a faulty LCD screen that’s still usable, no autofocus, and a speck of dust on my sensor. Hey! It could have been worse, couldn’t it?

All the photos were taken with the Ricoh GR III | 35mm crop.

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