Open letter to Ricoh
Last night I posted about my third dust issue with my Ricoh GX100. I couldn’t believe it. After slightly more than a year I finally had some time to test the interval feature of the GX100. I took pictures for two instances of 5 seconds intervals with a total of 220 frames. In the end I had two photos sequences. I imported the sequences into After Effects for a 720p project. I did some adjustments, applied some effects, and started the render queue for a 20 seconds reel. After the render I played the videoclip in full screen and all of a sudden I noticed a dust particle.
No, not again!
It is the third time this happens to me. I love the camera. I don’t care about technology. The ergonomics and user interface are some of the best. So therefore I will apply this open letter to Ricoh:
Dear mister Kondo and Sakurai,
My name is Wouter Brandsma. I live in the Netherlands and I have been a Ricoh customer since 1996 for the photography division. I sold my full SLR Nikon kit with three lenses and a dedicated flash, and bought the Ricoh GR1. A gorgeous piece of engineering and a precious camera to me. I still own it.
I have to admit I have not been faithful to you. Since 2004, when I went digital, I bought an Olympus Camedia C4000z camera. Despite the small sensor inside the camera it was build like a brick. It was slow too. But, I love your work (one of your founding principles). The launch of the GR Digital 1 caught my eye, and when the GX100 was released I knew that would be my new camera. So, last year in June I bought it.
The looks, the grip, it all reminded me of the original GR1. Since then, I shared my experiences with other people on the internet. I started to post my photographs on Flickr, I joined several forums like dpreview, RicohForum.com, and GetDPI. And eventually started to blog here and joined the ranks of contributors for the website SeriousCompacts.com. In case you, or the marketing department, did not noticed, but the Ricoh GX100 thread on GetDPI (which I started) has had 450 posts, and 31,525 views. I have adviced at least two dozen people world wide directly via personal mail for acquiring a Ricoh GX100. You could say I gave Ricoh a lot of free publicity in the last year.
Now, I know that you, as President and CEO of the Ricoh Company and Chairman, want to put yourselves in the other person’s place. So I tell you a little customer story.
I have had very good experiences with the Ricoh Service Team in Germany twice in September/October 2007, and April 2008. I consider, like you probably, the GX100 as a camera with a purpose for photography. Unfortunately though at some times my camera acted like a small vacuum cleaner. Your technical department maybe designed some possible flaws in the lens assembly of the GX100. The lens does not have a very tight fit like you can find with the competitors. On many forums we described the leg of constructed tolerance as “wobbling”. The wobbling lens, in combination with the telescopic extraction/retraction mechanism, may suck up very small dust particles in the lens assembly. I don not live in a country with a dry climate and dusty weather conditions. You can find a description of the climate in the Netherlands here.
I have had dust in the lens twice before. See the periods above. Especially the last time in April the Ricoh Service Team was very helpful to me. My contactperson in Germany made sure my camera was collected by a parcel service, and made sure it returned home in less than 2 weeks. I really think she finds a lot of personal value in her work. And she did a remarkable job I think.
Last night though I rediscovered another dust particle in my camera. Three times within a year. To add some value to it. I spent € 430 Euro to buy the Ricoh GX100. For the first repair it costed me € 15 Euro to sent the camera to the Repair Center. While I own this camera for 12 months I could not use it for 1.5 months, because of service repair. In the meantime though Ricoh have earned some money from new customers who asked my personal advice regarding the Ricoh GX100.
To end this letter I hope you will find a reasonable solution for my reoccuring problem with my camera. At least I can hope the lens assy will be replaced as soon as possible, but some people in forums (and on my blog too) already suggested I should be given a new Ricoh GX200 for my Ricoh loyalty.
I know you are faithful to your customers. You have always given the “customer-first” attitude top priority in developing imaging devices. And I know you do, because many of the new or improved features of the GX200 have been requested by GX100 owners worldwide, including me. Compliments for that.
Since I consider the Ricoh Company as one of the most innovative companies in photography I hope we can settle things as quickly and satisfying as possible.
With sincere regards,
Wouter Brandsma
Ede, the Netherlands
June 28, 2008
Filed under: 2008, Photography | 14 Comments
Tags: dust GX100, GX100, Netherlands, open letter, Photography, Ricoh
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Good letter and a smashing idea to post it here!
Many thanks forkboy.
Wouter, keep us posted, let us know if the letter gets there and what the Ricoh response is..
Good luck!!
Wouter – You call this an “open letter,” though I hope you’ve sent a copy to Kondo and Sakurai. – Bob
I have had contact with Ricoh today. All very professional and customer sensitive. I hope I will get a resply from them tomorrow.
Ricoh’s chairman is Masamitsu Sakurai
The President and CEO is Shiro Kondo
Ricoh Building, 8-13-1 Ginza,
Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-8222 Japan
This is the price you pay for accepting the design with non removable lens. It is naiive to assume that another GX100 or GX200 or any other similar design will not be affected by the same issue. I would NEVER but a camera with no access to clean the sensor – non removable lens is simply very bad design which will eventually, sooner or later, let some dust in. Canon G9 is also pretty bad, every other similar design will acts “like a small vacuum cleaner”. The solution is very simple: DO NOT buy a camera with non removable lens. If you do, one day you will get dust on the sensor.
Did I mention that I also own a film camera Ricoh GR1 with a fixed 28mm lens. I never had dust in the lens or camera. I think it is a pretty bold statement to say every camera with a non removable lens will some day get dust on the sensor. I didn’t state there is dust on the sensor. There is dust in the lens! I know owners of the GX100 who never had any problems in more than a year.
I would definitely say it is less likely to get dust in the lens of a camera with a non removable lens, than that you can get dust on the sensor with a SLR camera.
Cheers,
Wouter
Hi Wouter,
Actually, this is not a theory, but a simple fact: if a lens is designed to expand/collapse dust WILL get inside the lens and dust WILL reach the sensor. Yes, some lenses are tighter, some camera bodies are assembled better, but that’s all. Obviously if you use a camera in a relatively dust-free environment it may take many, many years for dust to penetrate, and meanwhile your camera becomes obsolete anyway – this explains responses ‘but I never had a dust problem!’ Try to use your camera in a really dusty environment: most African countries, many regions in Australia (where I live), or even a heavy industrial environment anywhere. What I am saying is simple to understand , agree with and very easy to test: no dust problem tells other people: you always stayed in a relatively dust free environment. Google ‘dust on digital sensor’ for experiences of other people who visited not so friendly places.
Note that dust inside the lens is a very old problem, but dust on the sensor is something new which did not exist in the non-digital, film cameras (with easy access to the film chamber for cleaning, if required). So we have curious state of events where digital technology introduced a new problem, and models with non removable lenses and no access to the sensor are sold to people who… believe that dust will never affect them, and accept this poor technological solution. And some indeed will have long dust-free run, until their first visit to a ‘dirty, dusty air’ place. It all can be summarised in one sentence: depends where you take your camera with you, and how lucky you are.
PS: “I would definitely say it is less likely to get dust in the lens of a camera with a non removable lens, than that you can get dust on the sensor with a SLR camera.” – possibly, but once you get it on your sensor, it is definitely IMPOSSIBLE to clean it if you can not remove the lens at all! (unless you send it for service where they disassemble your equipment). I am one of people who prefer to own a car with the bonnet not permanently welded, so I can access the engine if I decide to do so
cheers, Derek.
Hi Derek,
Thanks for your lenghtly response. The Netherlands isn’t considered the most dusty location on earth, no where near some parts of Australia for sure.
If you still want a compact camera for usage in Australia, you might want to consider an older Olympus camera. I used for a C4000z for some years and you really good trash that camera. It not only looked like a brick, it was build like one too. I never had any dust issues with that camera.
Wouter
Great letter – do let us know if you hear back from them.
I used a GR21 and GR1S for the longest time [still do, less frequently] and bought the GRD. I now have a speck of dust somewhere in the system – either within the lens or on the sensor. A quick call to the US service facility suggests that repair costs will be between USD190 and USD270 – about half the price of a new GRD2 – brilliant!
As someone’s mentioned before, this seems to be a new problem with digital – and one with no good solution. If anyone has any ideas on how to solve this / fix this, I would love to know.
I am sorry to hear about your dust spec in your GRD.
In my case Ricoh was so kind to replace my camera for the newer Ricoh GX200 (free of cost). And since than I had no problems anymore. The GX200 is absolutely a much more reliable camera.
Maybe the problem with digital cameras is a problem in general with consumer products. We expect more, pay less, think it will last forever, but in the meantime as a result of market competition the quality of products have diminished. I think that products are produced to replace soon unfortunately.