THE RICOH GR III HDF DIGITAL CAMERA
This point-and-shoot camera is even less obtrusive than your iPhone
This column has often discussed how the type of camera you have in your hand can dictate—and to a considerable extent enhance—the kind of photographs you take.
It’s almost a tail-wagging-the-dog thing. Pick up any Leica M series, from a 1930s III-model to the latest M11, and you’ll feel not just equipped but encouraged to hit the streets as a latter-day Cartier-Bresson. With a big Nikon or Canon D.S.L.R., you’ll be ready for sports and wars. Holding a medium-format Hasselblad or Fujifilm GFX, you’ll want to take landscapes and fashion shots.
What might be the effect, then, on a photographer’s inclinations when using a tiny, plastic-looking, point-and-shoot-style camera that seems somewhere between a $19.99 Alibaba special and the kind of thing cereal manufacturers used to put in the box as a “free gift” for children?
Japan’s Ricoh, which you are more likely to know as a maker of photocopiers, has a range of such understated, pocket-size digital cameras that, despite looking like toys, cost $1,000-plus, have an armory of professional-level controls, and achieve D.S.L.R.-quality photos.
Your columnist has used a few of the Ricoh GR range over the past 30 years, and for street and travel photography, they are rather remarkable.
One photo I took with an early Ricoh GR 35-mm.-film model, of some hikers on a mountaintop in Morocco, ran across a large-format, double-page magazine spread. The magazine art desk had no issues with the image quality, but what I found even more impressive was that the subjects of the photo didn’t seem to register that I was taking pictures. The Ricoh, whose digital descendants look almost identical, was so unobtrusive that it was possible to be almost invisible as a photographer.
The Ricoh GR range has grown up—or, more accurately, grown down, as 2025’s models are still smaller than the originals. I have used a couple of them, and they are remarkable, other than when, as has happened on occasion, I have removed one from my pocket to take photos for a magazine article, whereupon there has been a detectable frisson that I must be a time-wasting impostor.
The latest Ricohs are the GR III HDF and its brother, the GR IIIx HDF, which has a slightly less-wide-angle lens. I would opt for the wider one. The “HDF” (Highlight Diffusion Filter) is a physical element inside the camera that you can switch on to soften bright highlights—a beautiful effect if you are shooting night city scenes or against the sun. It also lends a rather lovely effect to even mundane scenes.
Some photographers love the HDF, others less so. I like it a lot but would be perfectly happy with the slightly cheaper GR III. These are superb cameras so long as you are happy that, apart from aficionados and pro snappers, most people will either think you are a bit peculiar or not notice you at all.
THE YEYEEYYEE HEATED VEST
For heated clothing that packs a punch, look no further than Amazon
The last time I tested heated clothing, a few years ago, it was almost comically useless. The battery lasted about 20 minutes, and the heating effect was negligible.
Then, just after New Year’s, I had to build some shelving in a storage unit, just in time for a spell of freezing weather. Storage units are not heated, and propane-gas heaters, unsurprisingly, are forbidden inside of them.
So, with my skepticism turned up to 11, I thought I’d see if heated jackets had improved. There were more than 100 different models on Amazon, all advertising revolutionary carbon-fiber heating elements that are thin and flexible, along with rechargeable lithium battery packs.
Most of these jackets were Chinese, with seemingly spurious and unlikely brand names. One imagines all the products coming from the same town—and, in some cases, the same manufacturer—as is the custom in China. I shopped by following Amazon’s user ratings and, even though it had good reviews, assumed I would be returning the one I chose within hours.
Far from it—the gilet-style jacket was an enormous success. It was a well-enough-made thing, comfortable, with a slim, powerful battery pack, and on its top setting delivered actually too much heat for more than two hours. Even in the Arctic storage unit I felt slightly nauseous, and I dimly recalled my mother saying in about 1960 that it was a bad idea to put your back to a radiator.
The second day, I used the medium setting and got four hours’ worth of excellent heat. The “brand” I purchased disappeared from Amazon within days, so I’m now recommending one from the esteemed house of, er, Yeyeeyyee. The product appears to be exactly the same. I imagine the more you spend, the more warming time you get. These run from $80 or so up to $500, but my $90 model is magnificent.
THE NEBO BLACKOUT BACKUP EMERGENCY BULB 2-PACK
A light bulb that saves power for when there’s an outage
If you worry about winter power outages, this ingenious hybrid light bulb could keep your home bright, if not warm.
The Nebo Blackout Backup emergency bulb has a built-in battery that charges while the bulb is in normal use. It fits and looks exactly like a regular bulb.
When the power goes out, the Nebo bulb immediately switches to its own power and shines on, albeit at a slightly dimmer level. You can also unscrew the bulb (it won’t be hot as it’s lit by L.E.D.’s) and use it as a flashlight. Additionally, it comes with what the maker calls a power cap—a false socket with a plastic hook, which enables you to hang the lit bulb on a nail or hook.
A Nebo bulb turned down to its lower level will burn for around 12 hours, which should see you through a long, power-free winter evening.
THE WRENSILVA Hi-FI CONSOLE
Listen to your vinyl the way they do at Abbey Road Studios
Your parents very likely owned a record player that doubled as a substantial piece of furniture. You probably don’t.
Now a nine-year-old San Diego company, Wrensilva, has re-introduced the music-as-furniture concept with a small range of beautiful, hand-built record players that, naturally, do all the modern streaming stuff, too.
Wrensilva players are big—up to 70 inches across and weighing as much as 280 pounds—and have enormous speakers fired up by 300-watts-per-channel amplifiers and high-end components throughout.
These luxury consoles are becoming quite the thing among musicians and creative folks with a choice bunch of owners, including the singer St. Vincent, director and photographer Danny Clinch, producer and songwriter Adrian Quesada, and My Morning Jacket’s songwriter Jim James.
Wrensilva has a Los Angeles showroom on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood, or you can hear the systems at their San Diego headquarters and at locations in Austin, Texas, and Asbury Park, New Jersey. They also hosted a three-week residency at New York’s Hotel Chelsea in October.
Your columnist went to hear a Wrensilva M1, the $16,900 flagship model, demoed at Abbey Road Studios, in London, where the producer and musician Giles Martin has one in his office. It produced a mighty, classic hi-fi sound when Martin played a Beatles album recorded by his dad, George Martin, in Studio 2, just a few yards away.
“It has a real quality sound. We actually use it here for reference,” Martin said. (“Reference” is the term music people use for quality control.) “Everyone who comes in here is surprised to see it, and then wants to listen to everything on it.”
Based in London and New York, AIR MAIL’s tech columnist, Jonathan Margolis, spent more than two decades as a technology writer at the Financial Times. He is also the author of A Brief History of Tomorrow, a book on the history of futurology
