Black-and-white photography software for street shooting mobile phone

Although Ricoh's new generation street camera GR III has been briefly tested, it is a pity that the weather was not beautiful during the test. But there happened to be two overseas business trips from March to April, so I decided to borrow GR III from the agent again. After all, I prefer simple and easy-to-control fixed-focus portable phones to AI high-performance multi-lens smartphones.

The characteristics and details of GR III have been introduced in previous evaluation articles. This paper will not introduce the characteristics and functions, but only further describe the actual shooting thought that is beneficial to GR III.

Why did you choose GR III as your photography partner? Everyone has different emphasis on tourism photography, and nothing is the best tourism camera. Some people can accept carrying multiple lenses and a professional body just to take the most beautiful photos, while others just want to take photos at will with the lightest equipment. If we use the focal length feature, GR III seems to be able to do something quite similar to a mobile phone, and the picture quality of the mobile phone is not the same as that of Amon Wu. What is GR III's choice as a photography partner?

Let's start with focusing. Although I didn't learn photography from negatives, when I first came into contact with Pentax monocular camera system, I shot with DA40LE fixed-focus lens in the early stage, and then gradually expanded this series of mirrors. Before the fuselage was upgraded to the present K- 1, the most common combination of travel and shooting was DA 15LE. The most important key is super wide angle. The author thinks that the focusing distance and magnification of DA 15LE are even easier to shoot various subjects than that of DA2 1LE.

Although the wide angle limits the comprehensiveness of composition on the one hand, it is not difficult to think of suitable composition conditions if you are familiar with the focal length. Moreover, 28mm is also the standard starting focal length of many cameras. Just like relaxing the small wide angle characteristics of human eyes, it is easy to master street scenes and snap shots. Moreover, compared with the more evolved close-up ability of the previous generation, which is more conducive to shooting small objects, and of course, the SR body that the previous generation did not have can prevent hand shock, so it is easier to shoot ideal works with higher ISO.

The advantage of GR III is that compared with mobile phone street shooting, it used to take pictures with a monocular camera, and the larger appearance and lens always gave passers-by a more obvious sense of aggression. Sometimes even if people accidentally pick up the camera and press the shutter, it will make passers-by nervous, or deliberately avoid the camera to avoid entering the lens, resulting in unnatural pictures. However, the smaller GR III can be hidden in the palm of your hand like a smartphone. At the same time, even blind shot can anticipate the pictures that may appear when shooting.

Compared with GR, I like GR III better, because GR III moves quickly with the focus on the touch screen, so there is no need to force the composition of the central point in order to grab the speed, and the preferred composition focus can be roughly configured when the finger slides, which is also difficult to achieve when using GR street shooting before. After all, although you can switch to autofocus selection, sometimes the system judgment is different from the focus that the photographer thinks, and I prefer to use manual selection of the central focus to shoot.

I prefer street shooting with a small camera. Another key is to return to the camera's stable grip. Although there are many models that provide shutter buttons in smart phones nowadays, it is quite contradictory to pursue a thin body and stable handheld operation. Usually, in order to use the mobile phone stably and reliably, you still need to operate it with both hands. If you use your mobile phone with one hand, you will still worry that it will fall off during operation. However, the grip of traditional cameras can still maintain the advantage of taking pictures with one hand.

Compared with GR and GR III in my current Pokemon, it greatly improves the shooting reliability, such as focusing speed, ISO availability, hand shock prevention of the fuselage, etc., but it also maintains the characteristics that common functions can be almost completed with one hand. The author thinks that street shooting, snapshot and random blind shot will have a great sense of promotion, but at the same time, they can still maintain the special composition of occasional blind shot and snapshot uncertainty.

The fun of the certainty and uncertainty of GR III street shooting lies in the author's shooting method. Personally, I am used to setting ISO at auto 100-6400 and safety shutter 1/30 seconds. Although I live in P mode, the front wheel is linked with the aperture (strictly speaking, the author's use method is similar to the A/ aperture prerequisite mode). Usually, I will use functions such as style adjustment and exposure compensation.

The purpose of setting it to 1/30 seconds is to keep the shutter speed of the author more confident when shooting with one hand. But if you capture it in a slightly dim or moving way, occasionally some unexpected pictures will appear. Although sometimes unexpected results will appear, occasionally some excellent photos will be taken.

Because the color style of GR III is still slightly different from GR, the author's usual style in GR is positive and negative influence, but in GR III, positive and negative influence and black and white are used alternately. Although I still think GR's positive and negative impact is an excellent style, it is quite appropriate to show the scenery of the trip if GR III's positive impact and black and white series are used in these two business trips. Occasionally, if you bleach retro, you will have excellent works, but you will use standard tones and bright colors instead.

Of course, for everyone, the size and function of the acceptable photography partner are different, and photographers who know him insist on carrying a complete monocular combination. However, even before I bought GR, I preferred to use Pentax APS-C camera with DA limited lens as a photographic combination, but the key to choosing GR at that time was the size of fish, the size of photosensitive elements, image quality and operability.

Although the lightest photography companion should still be a new generation of smart phones, I still hope to record my excellent travel photos without complicated post-production and a certain degree of control. At this time, GR series should still be my favorite choice because of its acceptable image quality, lightness and color style.

Although there is no built-in electronic viewfinder or zoom function, for the author, the focal length that can be easily controlled, the ability to shoot with one hand and the appropriate close-range shooting ability are the biggest advantages of GR series, while GR III is a choice made on the original basis. Although some operations and color styles may not meet the needs of the original GR users, we can't ignore this newly designed body.

After four years, GR III designed from scratch really made consumers feel the sincerity given by this new model, and at the same time, it provided an updated version to improve the focusing performance of dark parts shortly after it went on the market. According to Ricoh's convention, the function should be continuously improved through firmware update. Of course, it would be great if selfishness can add the negative style of the positive film back.