Black is the New Orange

Today’s Post by Mark Toal

This week I bought two new creative photo tools, otherwise known as toys. I picked up an iPhone 6 and the Ricoh WG-M1 action cam.

Both of them brought more questions than excitement from my friends. For the iPhone it was why didn’t I get the iPhone 6 plus? It has a better camera and a larger higher resolution screen. Well, I have a flat screen TV at home and I don’t need one in my pocket. What happened to smaller is better? Everybody I told about the Ricoh immediately thought I was crazy for not buying the GoPro. How boring, everybody has a GoPro.

I confess that I bought the Ricoh mainly for the way it looks. I feel the same way about cameras as car enthusiasts feels about cars; looks are as important as what’s under the hood. For those of you who don’t know Ricoh as a camera company they have been around since 1936. My first Ricoh was a GR1 35mm camera bought for me in the 1990’s by my friend Steve Shepard. I hated to part with that camera when I switched to digital.

The Ricoh comes in either Black or Orange. I have been in love with orange everything for years, but all of a sudden it felt so 2011, so I bought the glossy piano black model.

The train photo was taken with the Ricoh in the 14MP still photo mode. The video was converted to black and white in Adobe Lightroom and slow motion was added in Adobe Premier Elements.