Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Ricoh GR1

Ricoh · Fixed lens · 24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back · 1996

Also known as: Ricoh GR-1 · Ricoh GR1s · Ricoh GR1v · Ricoh GR10 · リコー GR1

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
GR1 35mm compact 1996 — No figure published
GR1s 35mm compact 1998 — No figure published
GR1v 35mm compact 2001 — No figure published
GR10 35mm compact 1998 — No figure published
  1. No designer is named for the GR1 anywhere. Ricoh's own product pages credit no individual, and neither does any English or Japanese account consulted here. Four names do attach to the camera in print — Nuno Katsuhiko, Takeda Hiroshi, Kawamura Atsushi and Ohashi Kazuyasu — but they are the credited authors of Ricoh's 1997 technical report on the GR1, which is a different thing from a design credit and is not treated as one here. The paper places them between the Design Department of the Personal Products Division and the Imaging Technology Development Center without saying which name sits where, and the romanisations above are inferred: the kanji are in a CID font that the published PDF does not release, so "Nuno" could as easily be Funo.
  2. The trap on this family is a pair of numbers that are real and belong to something else. English Wikipedia's article on the film GR cameras records that the GR 28mm f/2.8 in Leica thread mount, sold in 1997, was "limited to 3000 copies", and that the GR 21mm f/3.5 in the same mount, sold in 1999, ran to "1700 in total". Those are lens runs, cited to Ricoh Imaging's own library page about the two hand-built optics. Neither is a camera. No production or sales figure has been published for the GR1, the GR1s, the GR1v or the GR10 — not by Ricoh, not by anyone.
  3. Manual film speed is usually described as the GR1v's headline addition. Ricoh's own specification pages show that the GR21 shipped with it, and with auto-bracket exposure, in April 2001 — five months before the GR1v arrived in September. The GR1v is the first 28mm body to get those functions, not the first GR.
  4. The technical report is "RICOH GR1 Slim and High Quality Compact Camera with Superior Image Quality", Ricoh Technical Report No.23, September 1997, pages 124–127. Its English abstract states the camera "has been designed to have the renowned portability of R1 with the high performance characteristics of a top quality SLR lens", and lists three goals: a 28mm f/2.8 lens of high MTF and little aberration, a rigid body small and light enough to carry always, and a design that is easy to use, simple and standard.
  5. Ricoh describes the GR10's economies as aluminium parts in place of the GR1's magnesium die-castings. The wording on its page is ambiguous about which parts, and the English-language accounts simply call the GR10 shell aluminium against the GR1's magnesium alloy.
  6. Sources disagree about how far the aperture stops down. A Japanese specification table gives f/2.8–16 for the GR1 line; Casual Photophile's review of the GR1v gives f/2.8 to f/22 in half-stop increments. Ricoh's own page states neither.
  7. The end of the line is recorded only loosely. English Wikipedia says the film GR cameras were discontinued after the Ricoh GR Digital arrived in 2005, and that Ricoh discontinued service for them in 2014; Ricoh's archive gives no discontinuation date for any of the four. The 2005 in this entry's year range is Wikipedia's statement, not a manufacturer's.
  8. Hamish Gill's February 2014 account of repeated GR1 and GR1v repairs carries an editorial note added afterwards saying Ricoh no longer repairs GR1v bodies. The recurring faults are consistent across every source read here: segments dropping out of the top LCD and the finder frame lines, a weakening film-advance motor, and light-seal foam decaying in the film door, particularly around the rear film-information window.
  9. No serial-number decoder for any GR1-family body has been published. Two GR1s bodies cannot presently be dated or ordered against each other by their numbers.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • A 28mm f/2.8 GR lens in seven elements and four groups — Ricoh writes it the Japanese way round, 4 groups 7 elements — retracting into a body 26.5 mm deep
  • A top-plate LCD carrying aperture, frame count and mode, and the snap-focus setting reached from the same panel
  • Ricoh's pre-wind transport: the whole roll is driven out of the cassette when the back is closed and drawn back one frame at a time, so exposed frames are already safe in the cassette if the door is opened
  • An exposure compensation dial reading ±2 EV on the top plate of a shirt-pocket camera — present on the GR1, GR1s and GR1v, deleted on the GR10
  • Passive autofocus with automatic multi-point subject selection, on every body in the family
  • A CR-2 lithium cell on the GR1, GR1s and GR1v; a CR123A on the GR10

GR1:

  • No filter or hood mount on the front of the lens — the bare bezel is the quickest way to tell a GR1 from a GR1s or GR1v
  • No illumination in the finder
  • 175 g without the databack, 177 g with it, battery excluded; 117 × 61 × 26.5 mm, 34 mm at the grip

GR1s:

  • A bayonet on the front of the lens taking Ricoh's dedicated petal hood and filters
  • Illumination inside the finder so the frame lines stay readable in the dark
  • 178 g without the databack and 180 g with it — three grams heavier than the GR1

GR1v:

  • A manual film-speed setting that overrides the DX code
  • Automatic exposure bracketing
  • A manual focus mode, with snap focus selectable at 1 m, 2 m, 3 m, 5 m and infinity

GR10:

  • Program AE only: no aperture-priority mode and no exposure compensation
  • DX only, ISO 50–3200, against 25–3200 across the GR1 line
  • A CR123A cell, where every other body in the family runs on a CR-2
  • 118 mm wide and 35 mm at the grip — a millimetre broader and deeper than the GR1
  • 170 g, the lightest of the four, and no filter or hood mount

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back
Finder
Bright-frame direct-vision finder with a light-collecting window, showing the autofocus indication, the focused distance and parallax marks; illuminated on the GR1s and GR1v, not on the GR1 or GR10 · 0.43× magnification · no rangefinder image
Shutter
leaf, electronically controlled · 2 s – 1/500, plus a Time mode · self-timer
Film advance
motorised pre-wind: the film is driven out of the cassette on loading and rewound one frame at a time as it is exposed
Back
hinged, non-interchangeable; the quartz databack is a separate purchase option on the GR1, GR1s and GR1v, priced 10,000 yen above the plain body on all three
Meter
Program and aperture-priority automatic exposure with ±2 EV compensation on the GR1, GR1s and GR1v; program only, and no compensation, on the GR10. Film speed by DX code, ISO 25–3200 on the GR1 line and 50–3200 on the GR10. A manual film-speed setting overriding the DX code arrives on the GR1v — but not first: the GR21 of April 2001 already had it.
Weight
175 g
Dimensions
117 × 61 × 26.5, 34 at the grip (GR1, GR1s, GR1v); 118 × 61 × 26.5, 35 at the grip (GR10) mm
Country
Japan
Original price
From Ricoh's own archive, all four, without the databack and with it: GR1 90,000 / 100,000 yen (1996); GR1s 95,000 / 105,000 (1998); GR1v 98,000 / 108,000 (2001); GR10 60,000, databack fitted as standard (1998). The GR1 came with a leather case, the GR1s and GR1v with hood and case. (today ¥102,000–¥113,000)
Accessories
Dedicated petal lens hood and bayonet filter adapter (GR1s and GR1v; supplied with the camera) · Quartz databack — a priced option on the GR1, GR1s and GR1v, fitted as standard to the GR10 · Genuine leather case, supplied with every model

Ricoh publishes no magnification or coverage figure. The 0.43× here, with coverage of about 81 per cent vertically and 83 per cent horizontally, comes from a Japanese specification table compiled by a private collector.

Where sources disagree

GR1s, year of introduction
  • April 1998, alongside the GR10 (Ricoh Imaging's own product archive; English Wikipedia, citing the same archive; and three independent Japanese model histories)
  • 1997 (Japan Camera Hunter's buyer's guide; Casual Photophile's GR1v review)

Better supported: April 1998 — Ricoh's own page

This one can be closed. Ricoh Imaging's archive prints 1998年4月 for the GR1s and the same date for the GR10, and gives both a price. The 1997 side has only a bare year and appears only in English-language secondary writing; its likeliest origin is the GR 28mm f/2.8 in Leica thread mount, which really is a 1997 product. It is recorded here because the 1997 date is still repeated in the two guides a buyer is most likely to read first.

GR1 minimum aperture
  • f/16 (Japanese specification table at shige-art.net)
  • f/22 (Casual Photophile, GR1v review)

Small, but it decides whether the snap-focus depth of field a street photographer relies on is what the reviewer says it is. Ricoh's own page gives no aperture range at all.

What reviewers say

History

The GR1 is a 28mm lens with a camera built around it, and Ricoh said so at the time. The company’s technical report on the design — published in September 1997, eleven months after the camera went on sale — opens by stating that the GR1 “has been designed to have the renowned portability of R1 with the high performance characteristics of a top quality SLR lens”, and lists three goals in order: a 28mm f/2.8 of high MTF and little aberration, a rigid body small and light enough to carry always, and controls that are simple and standard. The lens comes first in the sentence because it came first in the project. Ricoh’s own product page adds the demand side: R1 owners wanted to shoot slide film, and wanted a better lens to do it with.

What that produced was seven elements in four groups — Ricoh writes it the other way round, four groups and seven elements — aspherical and multicoated, retracting into a magnesium-skinned body 26.5 mm deep and weighing 175 grams. The controls that survived the compression are the ones an enthusiast would have fought for: aperture priority, an exposure compensation dial reading ±2 EV, and a snap-focus mode that parks the lens at a set distance so the shutter fires without waiting for autofocus. The transport is Ricoh’s pre-wind, which drives the whole roll out of the cassette when the back closes and pulls it back a frame at a time — slow, audible, and the reason an accidentally opened door costs nothing already shot.

Four bodies carry that lens, and Ricoh’s archive prices all four, which makes the hierarchy legible in a way the marketing never did. The GR1 of October 1996 is 90,000 yen, or 100,000 with the databack, and has no filter mount and no illumination anywhere. The GR1s of April 1998 is 95,000 and adds a bayonet for a dedicated hood and filters and a light inside the finder — Ricoh says it was built from what the professionals who had adopted the GR1 asked for, and does not mention the uprated lens coating that every reviewer since has. The GR1v of September 2001 is 98,000 and adds precisely three things: auto-bracket exposure, manual film speed, and a manual focus mode. And the GR10 of April 1998 is 60,000 yen — the same lens, the same shutter, the same pre-wind, with aperture priority and exposure compensation taken out and a bigger battery put in because Ricoh expected this buyer to use the flash. That is a trim level, not a design, which is why it is a row in the table above rather than a page of its own. Emulsive shot a GR10 against a GR1s and could not tell the negatives apart.

Two things the guides get wrong are worth stating flatly. The GR1s is dated 1997 by both Japan Camera Hunter and Casual Photophile; Ricoh’s archive says April 1998, gives it a price, and dates the GR10 to the same month. And manual film speed is routinely called the GR1v’s headline feature, when the GR21 shipped with it — and with auto-bracketing — five months earlier. The GR1v is the first 28mm GR to get those functions, not the first GR.

What nobody has is a number. Ricoh has never published a production or sales figure for any of the four, and there is no serial decoder to build one from. The two figures that circulate — 3,000 and 1,700 — are real, and they belong to the hand-built GR 28mm and GR 21mm lenses in Leica thread mount, which are not cameras at all. What is documented instead is the ending: the film line stopped once the GR Digital arrived in 2005, Ricoh withdrew repair service in 2014, and the surviving bodies now run on parts taken from the dead ones while the LCD segments fade, the advance motor weakens and the door foam turns to paste.

Expand Collapse

This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

Example photos

Sample photo taken with the Ricoh GR1
Ricoh GR1 — Zebrio from Tokyo, Japan, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Sample photo taken with the Ricoh GR1
Ricoh GR1 Daido Moriyama edition — Zebrio from Tokyo, Japan, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Sample photo taken with the Ricoh GR1
Nerudova, Prague — shot on a Ricoh GR1 (ketou-daisuki) — ketou-daisuki from Kyoto, japansko, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Sample photo wanted — shot with a Ricoh GR1? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $680 across 50 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $610–$990). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 3 days: unchanged from $680.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-11$680$610–$99050
2026-09-10$680$610–$99050
2026-09-06$680$580–$99051

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Related: Fujifilm Klasse W · Olympus mju-II · Ricoh GR21 · Yashica T series

Sources (15)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this camera, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.