Buying guide

Which Ricoh GR should you buy?

There are seven GR bodies on sale or announced right now, and they differ in exactly three ways that matter: the focal length, the generation, and what sits in the lens where the ND filter used to be. Pick those three and the camera picks itself. The short version: buy the GR IV if you want 28mm and can buy new, the GR IIIx if you want 40mm today, the HDF versions only if you want a built-in glow, and the Monochrome only if you already shoot black and white and nothing else.

Every body at a glance

Figures are Ricoh's own. Prices are launch MSRPs in the US where Ricoh published one; the GR III and IIIx have been discounted and sold used for years, so their number is whatever the market says this week.

• Stabilization: 3-axis on the III generation, 5-axis on the IV generation.
• Storage: about 2GB internal plus a full-size SD card on the III generation; about 53GB internal plus a microSD card on the IV generation.
• Battery: DB-110 (about 200 shots) on the III generation; DB-120 (about 250 shots) on the IV generation. They are not interchangeable.
• Video tops out at 1080p60 on every body. None of them is a video camera.
• GR IVx: announced as in development on August 26, 2026, with a 40mm equivalent lens and the GR IV's 25.7MP sensor, planned for winter 2026 or later. No price yet.

28mm or 40mm

This is the first decision and the one you cannot change later. 28mm (GR III, GR IV, both HDFs, the Monochrome) is the classic GR view: wide enough to take in a street, forgiving of framing, happy at arm's length. 40mm (GR IIIx today, GR IVx when it ships) is closer to how your eye frames a scene, flatters faces and pulls subjects out of the background, and it needs a step back indoors. Both have in-camera crop modes (35mm and 50mm on a 28mm body, 50mm and 71mm on the IIIx), which cost resolution but let you try the other view before you commit.

Recipes do not care which you pick. A recipe is a set of JPEG settings, and the GR III and IIIx share identical menus and identical processing. Every recipe on the GR III & IIIx page runs on either lens.

GR III generation or GR IV generation

The GR IV looks like a GR III and shares almost nothing with it under the skin. What you get for the extra money, in the order most owners notice it:

• A bigger battery. The DB-120 is rated for about 250 shots against the DB-110's 200, and the IV charges faster over USB-C.
• 53GB of internal memory. Most owners shoot a whole trip without a card; the III's 2GB was a buffer, not storage.
• 5-axis stabilization instead of 3-axis, and a redesigned 7-element lens that is sharper at f/2.8.
• Two more Image Controls, Cinema (Yellow) and Cinema (Green), a third custom slot, and film grain on the color modes, not only on black and white. The Cinema recipes only exist for this generation.
• Faster wireless (Bluetooth 5.3 and Wi-Fi 6) and the GR WORLD app, and an electronic shutter to 1/16000s since firmware 1.11.
• A warmer, slightly brighter rendering at the same settings. That is why recipes made on a GR III are called starting points on the IV.

What the GR III still does as well: it takes the same 28mm pictures with the same 12 Image Controls, it fits the same pocket, and it costs far less used. The one thing to check on a used GR III is the firmware version, because Negative Film only arrived with firmware 1.70 in January 2023 (1.20 on the IIIx), and a good share of the most-saved recipes are built on it. The update is free.

HDF or ND

Every standard GR has a 2-stop neutral density filter inside the lens for shooting wide open in bright light. The HDF versions remove it and put a Highlight Diffusion Filter in its place. Ricoh's own description: it diffuses incoming light, lowers overall contrast and blurs the whites in bright areas for a soft look. Point lights bloom at night. It switches on and off with a button, so you are not stuck with it, but you cannot have the ND back.

Who it is for: people who already screw a diffusion filter onto the front of their GR and would rather not. If that is not you, the standard body keeps the ND, and on the GR IV the electronic shutter handles bright-light wide-open shooting anyway. For recipes, an HDF body loads every recipe its color sibling does; it just skips the ND step, and the diffusion filters on the gear pages have nothing to add to it.

The Monochrome

The GR IV Monochrome has a sensor with no color filter array, so every pixel records luminance and nothing else. The gains are real: more per-pixel detail, finer noise at high ISO, and a physical red filter in the lens that darkens blue skies the way a red filter does on film (owners measure its cost at roughly two stops). The menus lose white balance, saturation and hue entirely, and the Image Controls are its own six: Standard, Solid, Soft, High Contrast, Grainy and HDR Tone.

Buy it if black and white is the whole point for you and $2,199.95 at launch does not hurt. Do not buy it as a "better GR IV": a color GR IV shooting Monotone gets most of the way there and keeps the option of color. The recipes confirmed for it are on the GR IV Monochrome page.

What it means for recipes

Within a generation recipes are one-to-one: GR III equals GR IIIx (minus the ND step on an HDF), GR IV equals GR IV HDF. Across generations they are starting points, because the IV renders a touch warmer and up to about a third of a stop brighter at identical values. The recipe pages here already handle that: pick your camera on any recipe and the walkthrough uses that body's menu names, and the Image Control guide explains what each mode and slider does if you want to tune a look yourself.

Accessories for the body you pick

Batteries, cards, screen protectors, caps and filter adapters are cut per generation, and the filter adapter is per body. The gear pages are ranked by what owners of each camera actually click through to buy:

Questions people ask

GR III or GR IV in 2026?

If you are buying new, the GR IV. It gets a newer 25.7MP sensor, 5-axis stabilization, 53GB of internal memory, a bigger battery, faster wireless, the two Cinema Image Controls and grain on color modes. The GR III makes sense used: same 28mm field of view, the same recipe vocabulary, and every recipe on this site was either made on it or dials into it. Its weak points are the smaller battery, the 2GB internal memory and a lens that is a generation older.

28mm or 40mm: GR III or GR IIIx, GR IV or GR IVx?

28mm is the classic GR view: wide, forgiving, good for street and travel where you want the scene. 40mm is closer to how you see and flatters people, at the cost of needing to step back indoors. The IIIx is the only 40mm GR you can buy today. Ricoh announced a 40mm GR IVx as in development on August 26, 2026, for winter 2026 or later, with no price yet.

Is the HDF worth it?

Only if you want a soft, glowing look built in. The Highlight Diffusion Filter replaces the 2-stop ND filter, so you give up the ND to get it. It can be switched off, but you cannot have both. If you already like diffusion filters on the front of the lens, the HDF saves you the adapter and the glass. If you shoot wide open in bright sun, the GR IV's electronic shutter (up to 1/16000s) covers what the ND used to do.

What does the GR IV Monochrome give up?

Color, permanently. The sensor has no color filter, so there is no white balance, no saturation and no hue anywhere in the menus, and no way to get color back from a RAW file. In return you get finer detail and cleaner high ISO than the color GR IV, a physical red filter in the lens that darkens skies, and six black and white Image Controls of its own. It costs $700 more than the GR IV at launch price.

Do the same recipes work on all of them?

Within a generation, yes: a GR III recipe is a GR IIIx recipe, and a GR IV recipe is a GR IV HDF recipe. Across generations they are starting points. The GR IV renders a little warmer and up to about a third of a stop brighter at the same settings, so a GR III recipe on a GR IV usually needs a small white balance nudge toward blue. The Monochrome is its own thing: black and white recipes carry over as a tone curve, and the color side of any recipe is skipped.