Ricoh GR Digital II review

Performance
The GR Digital II didn't blow us away with its performance, but wasn't painfully slow either. The main area it could speed up is at start-up. The camera took 4.4 seconds to start up and capture its first JPEG. Subsequent JPEGs took 1.4 seconds between shots with the flash turned off and 1.8 seconds with the flash turned on It took 2.1 seconds between raw shots, which is quite fast for a compact camera, though it still might feel a bit slow in practice.

Shutter lag measured 0.7 seconds in our high-contrast test and 1.3 seconds in our low contrast test, which mimic bright and dim shooting conditions respectively. Continuous shooting yielded an average of 2.3 frames per second.

Shooting speed (in seconds)
(Smaller bars indicate better performance)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Time to first shot

Shutter lag (typical)

Canon PowerShot SD870 IS

1.6

0.9

0.4

Fujifilm FinePix F50fd

2.9

1.8

0.5

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T300

1.7

1.9

0.5

Ricoh GR Digital II

1.4

4.4

0.7

Image quality
Images from the GR Digital II are not nearly as good as they should be for a camera of this price. The colours aren't quite as accurate as most compact cameras, though they still look natural, so most users should still be pleased with the results.

More pressing is that the images aren't all that sharp. We've seen sharper results from cameras that cost half as much as this one. Given that the lens is a fixed focal length and that it extends from the camera body, which gives more leeway for the designers to include a better lens, the GR Digital II just doesn't deliver what it should in this case. Ricoh really should've gone with a completely internal lens, which would've made the camera faster at start-up.