Ricoh GRIII with the GW-4 (21mm equivalent) lens attachment

A few months back I posted a sort of mini-review or the GRIII as a comparison to the GRII: https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/topic/ricoh-grii-and-griii---a-few-comments-631...

At the time I didn't own the wide angle attachment (the GW-4) and didn't really intend to get one, but as I've grown into the GRIII and looked through some old photos from the GRII I realised that the extra-wide feature was very useful in some situations - so I've now obtained the GA-1 adaptor and GW-4 attachment and this morning I had my first "play" with it.

First thing to note is that the arrangement is no less clunky or clumsy than its predecessor. It doesn't feel right in that it feels a similar weight to the camera so can be a bit unbalanced. The fitting is fiddly - removing the lens ring, followed by fitting the bayonet adaptor, followed by screwing the attachment lens onto the adaptor and making sure the hood is in the correct orientation (to avoid unwanted vignetting).
Second thing to note is that you no longer have to use the menu system to tell the camera that you are using the lens, by fitting the adaptor the information is relayed to the body - this is a welcome improvement, many images from my GRII report the wrong lens info!

Once set up, it does start to feel complete quite quickly and although it's too early to tell it does seem very high quality (it should be at this price level ) and using it with the Macro facility is particularly useful. I'm not sure that the rubber petal hood actually helps very much - the trademark flare spots common on ultra-wides are present when the light source is visible in the view - but we'll see in time.

Here are a few sample shots from around the garden and house:

























Hope that's of use or interest to someone

---

LennyBloke

Thank you for the review. The rendering of this camera is very nice. I have the original APS-C GR and still use it, as well as the original small sensor GRIII and IV. Ricoh know what they are doing with these cameras.