Ricoh’s GR III Camera Has Become Too Popular to Keep Stocked
News | By Stephan Jukic | September 1, 2023
Sometimes slightly older cameras gain a delayed renaissance of fan adoration, and this is what’s happening to Ricoh’s GR III.
The ultra-compact point-and-shoot camera emerged on the market way back in 2019 but has now become so popular among enthusiasts that Rich is having a hard time stocking it with retailers.
The hottest markets for the sleek little camera seem to be China and Japan so far, and in both of these countries, delivery dates for the GR III are delayed by as much as several months.
In Japan in particular, where the Ricoh brand is based, some stores can’t even guarantee any kind of specific delivery date to would-be buyers.
In China on the other hand, the brand has informed fans of the camera that its manufacturing facilities can’t quite keep up with national and global demand
That’s how popular the GR III has become.
The obvious question here is why? Well at least so far, nobody seems to know for sure why demand for this particular model has spiked so much.
According to PetaPixel, the GR III may just be an outlier in a mirrorless camera market that’s generally heating up worldwide.
Furthermore, it’s possible that the Chinese market is particularly to blame for this trend and for the GR III’s specific popularity surge.
Another possibility put forth so far is that the GR III is widely seen as a decent alternative to the Fujifilm X100V, which also saw its popularity surge like crazy in the last couple of years despite it too being an older camera model.
Like the GR III, the Fuji X100V is also impressively hard to find online and in stores these days. For example, on B&H it’s fully back-ordered.
Whatever the case may be for these market demand twists, the GR III is indeed a pretty good POS camera that delivers lots of performance for its size.
Its particularly useful specs include an outsized 24-megapixel APS-C sensor instead of something smaller for such a compact camera, and a 28mm F 2.8 Lens. Oh, and it also has a Touch Screen LCD.
The Fujifilm X100V also offered a large APS-C sensor and some pretty decent features that made it similar to the GR III, so maybe there is some truth to the former’s popularity having caused a little domino effect.
We should also note here that Ricoh, for whatever reason, also sells a completely different camera with a very similar name if you search for the GR III on sites like B&H or Amazon.
They’re easy to confuse among search results but the other model has only a 10MP sensor and much more basic build.
It’s called the Ricoh GR Digital III, as opposed to the Ricoh GR III we’re talking about here. The placement of the “Digital” is a crucial distinction.
The 24MP APS-C GR III isn’t quite as sold out in the U.S. and some other markets, but we do note that it’s hard to find on Amazon and temporarily unavailable on B&H and several other sites.
Adorama is still selling copies, so hurry up to buy one if you’re interested. Even if you don’t want it for photography, it could easily develop a resale markup value down the road.
Ricoh also released Diary, Street, and Urban editions of the GR III in 2023, but those are now generally sold out too.
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Stephan Jukic is a technology and photography journalist and experimental photographer who spends his time living in both Canada and Mexico. He loves cross-cultural street photo exploration and creating fine art photo compositions.
