Ricoh GRII – Off For Cleaning – Deja Vu
A couple years ago I sent my Ricoh GR off to have a speck of dust removed from the sensor… It was in every photo and it was driving me nuts. Luckily the camera was under warranty and Ricoh (via CRIS Camera) cleaned it up and sent it back no questions asked… This time my Ricoh GRII has a dust spot on the sensor and Ricoh recommends I send it to Precision Camera in Connecticut.
I hate to send it off anywhere. I hate the dust spot too though. I swore when this happened to he first Ricoh GR that I’d only have interchangeable lens cameras from there on out. The Ricoh though… it’s such a cool camera. I’m pretty smitten with it. I’m loyal enough to that little guy that I kept the first one until the GRII came out. Then I immediately ordered it. I sold the first one on Ebay and now I wonder if they fixed it to the point that it won’t get dust in it ever again? Should I have kept it just because it had the warranty repair performed?
You can see the speck of dust on my photos below. Can I clone it out in post? Of course. It’s not even hard. It’s just annoying. With any interchangeable lens camera a user could spot the dust in a series and just pop off the lens and clean the sensor. Not so here. Users are stuck with it. I hate the feeling that I’ll be dealing with this in post for as long as I own the camera – which in the Ricoh’s case would be another year at least. That’s a lot of fixing photos in post. Not impossible, but annoying. I want better dust sealing. I also want better focus during video, and 4K video, and a 24 megapixel sensor (preferably full frame), but that’s a rant for another day.
I boxed up the little guy added some stickers to the mix – maybe the guys at precision camera will be nice to me and get my camera back quickly. I hate to have to jump ship after such a great relationship.
We’ll see in a few weeks…