I went in NYC for a week before going to see relatives in Texas, I haven’t been in New York for around fifteen years. Needless to say, I didn’t have a lot of memories of that last time ( one exception being the Met ).

Also, what made it special was that I decided to travel light, no laptop ( sold my iBook G4), no DSLR ( the nikon D2H is too bulky and heavy ). I bought a Ricoh Digital GR as a Christmas gift for my father, I did try it out a little bit and I was really impressed ( review: here ). As we were both leaving for trips at the same time ( but in opposite directions around the world ) and he brought a DSLR with him, I borrowed his Digital GR for my trip.

The nice thing about having a small camera like that is that street shooting is much more discreet, it is also quite fast for a small digital camera, you can leave it in your pocket and get it out and power it on in a few seconds. The build quality and the feature set really impressed me, it’s like having a miniature DSLR in your pocket. It is all magnesium body, the “photographic” features are very easily accessible with a button and the same adjustment wheel present in DSLR. A nice touch is the optional optical viewfinder which is very bright and give you 100% of the camera field of view ( very rare for small digicam ). Also to note is the fixed 28mm focal length of the lens ( 35mm equiv) , something that doesn’t bother me at all as I almost do only wide angle.

In conclusion, this camera is a pleasure to work with and is a really nice alternative or complement to a DSLR.

There were a few occasions where I would have preferred to have my DSLR with me, but most of the time I was enjoying the lightness of just having a small digicam.