And then it’s not even all that compact, with its stick-out lens.
It’s just a shame that the fixed-prime compact went away. The likes of the Fuji X70, XF10, Nikon Coolpix A, Ricoh GR originally sold for 500 or less… only the Ricoh survived, at double the price. And, arguably, the Fuji X100 and Sony RX1 and Leica Q, but those are in a different price bracket entirely.
As a market product, yes. But the point of this topic is that you can make something like that pretty easily.
Just to continue in the spirit of the game: what about a stylish Pen E-PL8 body for around 340 eur, plus a Panasonic 25mm f/1.7 for around 110?. Of course it looks better with the Olympus 17mm f/2.8, but that is out of the budget (buying locally is probably cheaper). Same vintage as the Fuji X70, only a tiny bit bigger.
I have a GR III as well, and I’ve heard lots of people complain about dust. I take good care of my gear, and it hasn’t been an issue for me. I live near a freeway and go to the desert pretty often.
Yes, I’ve read about that, unfortunately it did not work with our camera.
My entry would be a camera I already own, although don’t have with me at present and am missing it - Sony Nex5r with Sigma 30mm f2.8.
Small, fun, lovely lens and cheap enough not to worry too much about taking it everywhere.
Or a Panasonic 14mm f/2.5, one of my favorite lenses on my E-PL5, for a similar price (at least on ebay).
I like the idea of this camera but the lack of viewfinder puts me off. Do you ever feel like you miss it, or are you happy with just an LCD?
I have the same camera and it goes everywhere with me too. I also was put off by lack of a view finder first, so much so that I went thru a few Fuji bodies before I bit the bullet and got the GR III (the fuji bodies were still too bulky to carry casually, they needed their own bag essentially), and after a few outings, I don’t really miss the viewfinder. After more than a year with the GR III, I’d say I’m surprisingly good at composing with it, even when the sun is directly on the LCD screen. I just sort of have internalized where the frame is and it comes out pretty well.
I’d guess that using a smart phone, even though I don’t use my phone that much, has helped a lot in this regard.
If you’re on the fence about the GR III, I’d say go for it, if you don’t like it, you’ll hardly loose any money if you resell it. Hell, right now, I could sell mine for more than I bought it for probably!
(emphasis in the above quote mine) Interesting observation. I read this as “I’ve learned this camera so well that I only need a vague idea of the composition on the LCD screen to frame it up and shoot it”. If I’m interpreting that correctly, kudos. I totally couldn’t pull that off…I’d be getting home and saying, “I wonder what I got today”. My (Fuji) camera customization has gone in the direction of minimizing the use of the LCD screen, particularly the touch screen aspect.
I’ve been using GRs for five years straight now. That 18mm perspective might as well be part of my body.
I actually shoot a good part of my pictures completely blind: Just point, and shoot. 18mm is wide enough to allow some imprecision in composition. With kids especially, this is a bit of a super power. I take pictures without breaking eye contact, or, in other contexts, without taking my eyes off the road.
When there’s enough time, the back screen works fine. To be honest, I’ve never been particularly bothered with not having a viewfinder. It’s not like a laptop, where I need to position a mouse cursor at a precise pixel position, or read tiny text. I don’t need the screen to judge details; those are visible in the scene itself, just a quick glance away. I just need the screen to judge my composition, and it’s perfectly adequate for that even in bright sunlight.
What I do miss, especially when shooting blind, is a more reliable autofocus. It’s a bit slow, and positioning can be a bit finicky (eye detection is not perfect). If the rumors of a GR IV in 2025 are true, this is the number-one feature I’d like to see. I’ll buy one on day one regardless, though. The current AF is fine, but it’s a bit slow, and better subject-detection and -tracking would really help.
There are so many little things about this camera that are so delightfully refined: like the cute little counter it shows whenever you switch it off, of the number of pictures you’ve taken today. Like the menu which explicitly controls which settings reset when switching the camera off and which don’t. Like the extremely useful crop modes for shooting 16 MP 23mm, and 8 MP 27mm. I use those constantly, even the 27mm one. Like the smartphone app that actually works well, and quickly. Like the macro mode that is accessible at the touch of a button. Like the control layout that actually works well for one-handed use. The way the camera switches on extremely quickly, such that I can typically pull it out and take a picture before people had time to react to the presence of a camera.
The GR III is about as close to a perfect camera as I’ve ever seen one. It aims to do one thing, being a pocketable snapshotter, and implements that with utter perfection (for the available technology). Perhaps that’s what you should expect from a continuous line of cameras spanning almost three decades (analog GR1 in ’96, small-sensor GR D in 05, modern GR in '13). But such refinement is unique in a piece of technology in my experience. And they kept improving it with meaningful firmware updates, too. Clearly a labor of love for what must be a tiny camera division at Ricoh.
This post was the perfect advertisement for a GR. We shall all have a GAS-Anonymous meetup after this 
To be fair, the GR is a very specialized tool. It lacks a viewfinder entirely, video is laughable it might as well be missing, the IBIS is not particularly strong, it takes maybe three shots per second, battery life is limited, the screen does not articulate, it is limited to one focal length, the lens is not particularly bright, dust can be an issue…
It’s very close to perfect at what it’s trying to do, but it’s not trying to be a versatile all-purpose camera. You’ll need to want exactly this to find it useful.
Jfyi, there’s a comment under the fujirumors story that has a denial from “internal sources” cited in Chinese on Weibo. So unnamed sources denying unnamed sources. Yay internet publishing!
How do you get reasonable focus with kids then? My daughter moves around at a reasonable fraction of the speed of light, so the only way I get pictures that are in focus on my Panasonic GX9 is burst modes and/or focus bracketing.
That said, I understand the fascination with a small camera that does one thing and does it well. However, to get a similar experience, I would consider the Panasonic GX850 or the Olympus Pen E-PLx (for various x) with a pancake lens, the bodies is almost the same size as the GR III, but feature articulating screens, tons of dials, etc.
Maybe the camera’s snap focus (zone focus) feature and a narrower aperture?
I have a Panasonic GX9 with a few lenses.
When I want a compact setup I mostly choose the Panasonic Leica 15mm f1.7.
Sometimes the Panasonic Lumix 12-32mm f3.5-5.6.
For a smaller camera I would choose the Panasonic gx850/gx880. Too bad it doesn’t have the 20mp sensor of the gx9.
I would also prefer a 17mm pancake lens.
The GR’s AF is usually good enough, and the relatively deep DOF of the wide/slow lens is fairly forgiving. From 2m onwards, it’s not much of ab issue.
But closer, and especially when shooting blind, I do miss AF occasionally. The recently-added three-by-three AF box actually helps a lot with that, as does the face detection. And I know to factor in a small delay for focusing when shooting blind.
In the past, with the first GR, I instead relied heavily on snap focus: You pre-set a focus distance, and whenever you mash the trigger all the way, without waiting for AF, the camera will fire immediately at the pre-set distance. These days, the GR III’s AF is good enough that I don’t need to rely on snap focus any more. (To say nothing of the wonders that IBIS brought to this tiny, lightweight camera).
But there’s no denying that (even?) my Fuji focuses faster and more confidently on faces in particular. The Fuji I just set to focus priority and that’s it. The GR does need some manual focus management.
Thanks. It just sort of happened for me, it wasn’t something I really put effort into. When I was first using the cera, I’d review the photos on the screen after shooting them, so I wasn’t wondering what I’d get. After using it a while I review less on camera. I will generally shoot two frames of the same thing tho.
It comes naturally if you keep shooting with the same prime lens for a while. That’s part of the reason why it’s a good exercise to do so.
That matches my own experience. I originally went with Fuji to have a more compact system, but it’s still not a pocket-sized solution. Even with the 27mm pancake on my X-T5, it won’t easily fit in a jacket pocket. I’m not sure the next X-Pro or X-E will be pocket-sized either.
I know we have smartphones for a pocket-sized solution, but then you lose the ergonomics of a proper camera. I think I will take a serious look at the Ricoh. While I still love to take a larger camera out and do some “serious” photography, there are days when I just want to shove something in my pocket and still do some semi-serious photography. I like my Pixel, but it’s just not a satisfying ergonomic experience for me. And I’m trying to de-Googlify myself.