Tim Parkin - Landscape Photographer

When I was on the Light and Land course in Gower with Joe Cornish and Davd Ward, I was using my 5D and 24-105 as a finder and also as a note taker. This worked fine apart from the fact the combination is large and heavy.

Joe was using a small digicam during the course with a Lee grad system mounted to it. The camera was a Ricoh GX100 and had a lot going for it as a finder replacment (especially considering it’s a similar price to a linhof finder). Obvisouly it takes photos but most digicams only go as wide as 28mm wheras the Ricoh goes to 24mm.. This is the equivalent to about an 80mm lens. The zoom also goes out to 72mm which is equivalent to a 240mm lens. The lens also zooms in steps (28,35,50) which are equivalent to (93,115,170). These steps aren’t a perfect match with my lenses but are close enough to give me a good idea of what lens to pick (good excuse to buy a 90mm too :).

The ability to mount a lee filter system (the new RF75 kit which is being released in June) is one of the real attractions. To have something I can keep in my pocket with filter holder mounted and then just pull out and slip a grad in is quite cool. So far I’ve used the camera up at Twistleton and it’s been a pleasure to compose with. I need to get used to the zoom settings on it (knowing which ‘step’ you are on is not immediatly obvious, but it doesn’t need to be in most cases). The photographs in the previous post about Twistleton are from the Ricoh.

I don’t think I’ll stop using the 5D completely but it will be demoted to jobs where I know I’m not walking far; the mix of usage is still open.

It’s also interesting to note that Joe said he would have to think carefully about buying another linhof finder, if a replacement were needed, as the Ricoh does such a good job.