The latest version of the GR1 is the GR1V - it has the GR1S's illuminated display and threaded lens barrel for hood and filters, plus a few extras that increase its versatility even more, making this one very serious tool - it's the best GR1 yet.
At first glance it looks like a GR1S and has a similar spec.
But check out the main control dial! There's a new position - for setting film speed manually.
DX-code over-ride is especially useful for monochrome film, allowing you to set your own film speed from ISO 25 to 3200.
Custom film speed settings are reset to default when the film (or battery) is changed.
There's provision for pre-setting focusing distances manually, running 1m/2m/3m/5m/infinity. Now, this isn't really manual focus; it's ust a list of focus presets in a menu, accessed via the shooting mode button, and set with the self timer (-) and mode (+) buttons. As with the other pre-set focus modes, it gives you more real-time shutter release options.
Never a fan of scale focusing myself, I've always preferred the precision of a good old-fashioned rangefinder. Owners of earlier GR1's and GR1S's won't miss having this feature. Scale focusing's not accurate enough up close (the 1m position), and for everything else there are Snap mode (~2m), Fixed Focus mode (for any distance you want to set) and Infinity mode. These are quicker to use than a scale focusing menu accessed by buttons (a quibble for Hexar reviewers), but it looks good in side-by-side comparison tables in magazines (compared to the Rollei AFM 35, for instance), and is an alternative to Snap Mode.
I use Snap mode more and more as time goes on, and find it covers just about everything. With the depth-of-field of the 28mm lens, manual focusing would seem useful only in conjunction with specific apertures to cover certain specific situations. I'm sure anybody who needs it will be glad of it, but I have not only not missed it, I came to realize, with a little experience, how smart the Snap Mode/Fixed Focus Mode idea was as an alternative to electronic scale focusing.
The GR1v also has a 3-frame, ±0.5EV auto-bracketing (something else I can live without). This is only available with flash OFF.
Pedantic bit:
IMHO, bracketing is no substitute for proper metering. It's no good for that decisive moment, that's for sure.
Use spot metering of a specific tone instead - meter off any mid-tone for uncorrected (no ± compensation) straight readings (your palm is +½ to +1); or use the compensation dial to cover the range of tones from textured shadow (say, a black horse: darken by -2 stops) to textured highlights (a white horse: lighten by +2 stops). Without compensation, filling the meter with either horse will make both come out pretty much the same middle grey - which is all any meter actually thinks it sees (it's up to us to tell it otherwise with the compensation dial).
That's what spot meters are for, and even though it isn't a true spot meter, it's still another reason the GR1 series of cameras are peerless among compacts.
Go ahead and bracket if it's easier. But everyone who uses cameras should familiarize himself or herself with the range of tones film responds to and how to identify them, and how meters respond to them. It would end a lot of confusion in camera reviews. Specific tones, for instance, are the same regardless of color. That means, if you meter something red and get f/8 on a 250th, then in the same light get f/8 on a 250th for something blue, they are the same tone, and they'll both be an identical grey on a monochrome print in spite of the fact that your brain says they're very different. If both the red thing and the blue thing are on green grass chances are they'll all meter the same. So, in color, the whole scene is all exactly the same as far as the light meter is concerned, and such a scene is no trouble for any light meter. So you wouldn't need to bracket! Fortunately, at least 80% of all scenes average out this way, and for those that don't, most of them contain mid-tones that can be spot-metered for straight exposures without the need to dial in compensation.
End of pedantic bit.
Below: the retro-look ever-ready case shown on the Ricoh international website. These may never have been available outside Japan.
Just to show they work, here are some
...courtesy of our friend Bob - who got one to replace his stolen GR1
"Musee d'Orsay is the big museum of impressionist art in Paris.. in a converted railway station. This was handheld in low interior light from a balcony.
The Museum shot was handheld with elbows leaning on a balcony rail to support the GR1V with the flash switched off (because of the distances involved) in low available light. I remember hoping for the best and am delighted with the result, as the internal vibration from an SLR would have made a similar shot less likely to be successful. From memory I think the exposure was under a 30th of a second, F/5.6 (maybe). I used Fuji Superia 400; I never use anything else. Available light was low; shot was taken late afternoon at the end of April."
"I almost NEVER use snap mode. All pics shown were taken in aperture priority mode enabling me to go for max depth of field allowing for handholding without undue camera shake in existing lighting conditions, and using fill in flash for the portraits." - RW
(That wouldn't have been possible without a decent shutter speed scale in the viewfinder.)
As to manual focus my experience of the GR1 taught me that it's totally unneccessary - a gimmick - given the wide depth-of-field with any 28mm wide angle lens. Never had a blurred snap with the GR1 even when I fired it accidentally once or twice. I sometimes use spot focus, which is really handy to have when I want, for example, to pinpoint an architectural detail on a white backlit sculpture.
http://www.gr1.artsociety.net/