I have recently gone to visit my parents at their place of dwelling in the South of Russia. For certain reasons, I haven’t been there since 2019, and I thought I would just take the GR iiiX with me for some casual photography – should be just right.

Until then, I never truly felt that this 40 mm field of view might be too tight for me. It kinda always felt just right – where I live in Dubai, the streets have space, and when we travelled to the Nordics, everything I wanted always fit in the frame.

However, roaming around the neighbourhood in Russia, and even just some random streets, I realised that perhaps 28mm really does fit better here. Very often, the frame felt just so tight and definitely needed some breathing space around.

Ricoh HDF – a gimmic or something useful?

So apart from never feeling that 40 mm is too tight for me, I also never considered that I might enjoy the diffusion effect of the HDF version of the Ricoh cameras. In my opinion, it was like, why would you want the effect of a slightly greasy lens in your photos? But then I got this Leica Q3, and the images from it felt too sharp, and the micro contrasts were killing me. Therefore, I thought, let me put a pro mist filter on it and see if it was any better. The diffusion filter makes the photos less sharp, and the highlights turn out to be glowing magically. I kind of really liked it. So, for the proform, I still don’t have an HDF Ricoh, but I would now really like one.

Turns out, it all depends on where you are in the world to figure out which Ricoh model would suit you better. You might think the one you have is perfect, until you are stuck being too tight.

In any case, I am sure you will figure out how to work the scene.

With that, I wish you good luck, and as always, just go out and take some photos with the equipment you already have.