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

Ricoh GR21

Ricoh · Fixed lens · 24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back · 2001

Also known as: Ricoh GR-21 · リコー GR21

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
GR21 35mm compact 2001 — No figure published by Ricoh. Japan Camera Hunter reports "supposedly only 4000 or so"; the 1,700 often quoted belongs to the L-mount lens, not the camera
  1. The camera came out of a lens, and Ricoh says so. Its library page on the two hand-built GR optics records that after the 3,000-unit GR 28mm f/2.8 in Leica screw mount sold out in 1997, the company developed a 21mm f/3.5 in the same mount "looking ahead to the next camera development"; that lens was released in 1999 in a limited run of 1,700, was very highly rated, and led on to the GR21. The interchangeable lens is therefore the camera's ancestor rather than a spin-off from it — which is the opposite of how the 28mm went.
  2. Ricoh describes the optical design in three points: a construction close to symmetrical overall, holding distortion to a minimum; the front group's convex element split across two groups so that manufacturing tolerance costs less performance; and the front and rear barrels individually adjusted on each lens.
  3. Ricoh also states that these lenses and the lens units fitted to the GR cameras were assembled by preparing several barrel types and selecting the one best suited to each individual lens, with precise per-unit adjustment — a level of hand-fitting the company contrasts with conventional lens assembly. That claim is Ricoh's own and no independent measurement of it has been found.
  4. The 1,700 figure is the standing trap on this camera. It is a real number from Ricoh, and it counts the 1999 L-mount lens. It is regularly repeated as the GR21's production run, which would make the camera an order of magnitude rarer than the only estimate anyone has actually offered.
  5. Weight figures that look contradictory are not. Ricoh gives 200 g excluding the battery; Japan Camera Hunter gives 240 g with film and battery loaded. The 40 g gap is a CR-2 and a roll of 35mm.
  6. The minimum focus distance here — 0.33 m — rests on one Japanese specification table compiled privately. Ricoh's page does not state a focus range, and no second source consulted gives one.
  7. Japan Camera Hunter records the same fault the rest of the family has: the top LCD is "renown for its unreliability", with the numbers fading in and out, especially after swings in temperature. Ricoh withdrew repair service for the film GR cameras in 2014.
  8. Awarded the 2001 TIPA prize for best 35mm prestige camera. The GR1 had taken the 1997 award for best 35mm compact — different category, four years apart, same lens department.
  9. No end-of-production date is published for the GR21. Ricoh's own product archive gives an April 2001 release and nothing after it; English Wikipedia's table of the GR film line likewise carries release dates only. The 2005 that circulates for the film GR cameras is an inference from the arrival of the GR Digital that year rather than a Ricoh announcement, and it is not carried in `years` here. That leaves the length of the run unknown, which matters more on this model than on the 28mm bodies, because the run's length is the only thing anyone has to reason about its scarcity from.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • A GR Lens 21mm f/3.5 in nine elements and six groups — Ricoh writes it six groups, nine elements — near-symmetric overall to hold distortion down
  • A bright-frame finder built, in Ricoh's account, out of an advanced optical system using many aspherical elements with complex curved surfaces, because a 21mm finder in a body this size was the hardest part of the camera to design
  • Manual film-speed setting and automatic exposure bracketing, five months before the GR1v got them
  • The same GR1 controls otherwise: aperture priority, exposure compensation, snap focus, pre-wind transport, one CR-2 cell

GR21:

  • The lens barrel protrudes even with the camera switched off — no other GR does this
  • 64 mm tall against 61 mm for the GR1 line, and 38.5 mm deep at the barrel against 34 mm at the GR1's grip
  • Black only; no silver finish was offered
  • 200 g without a battery, against 178 g for a GR1s
  • A near-circular aperture, which Ricoh lists as a feature of this camera and not of the 28mm bodies

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back
Finder
Bright-frame direct-vision finder with a light-collecting window, covering the 21mm field; Ricoh publishes no magnification or coverage figure · no rangefinder image
Shutter
leaf, electronically controlled · 2 s – 1/500 with a Time mode, per Ricoh. Japan Camera Hunter's specification list splits it by mode — 2 s to 1/500 on programmed AE, 2 s to 1/250 on aperture priority — which Ricoh's page does not mention · self-timer
Film advance
motorised pre-wind, as on the GR1: the roll is driven out of the cassette on loading and drawn back one frame at a time
Back
hinged, non-interchangeable; quartz date imprinting
Meter
Program and aperture-priority automatic exposure, film speed by DX code over ISO 25–3200 with a manual override, and automatic exposure bracketing. Passive autofocus with automatic multi-point subject selection, as on the GR1 line.
Weight
200 g
Dimensions
117 × 64 × 26.5, 38.5 at the lens barrel mm
Country
Japan
Original price
138,000 yen at the April 2001 launch, supplied with the hood and a leather case (Ricoh) (today ¥155,000)
Accessories
Dedicated lens hood, supplied with the camera · Genuine leather case, supplied with the camera

Two figures circulate for the magnification and they disagree — see the disputed block. Neither comes from Ricoh.

Where sources disagree

Production
  • No figure published (Ricoh Imaging's product archive gives dates, prices and specifications for the GR21 and no quantity)
  • "Supposedly only 4000 or so of these cameras ever made it into production" (Japan Camera Hunter, 2021)
  • 1,700 — quoted widely as the camera's run, but Ricoh's own library page attaches that number to the GR 21mm f/3.5 L-mount lens of 1999

Better supported: No published figure

Japan Camera Hunter hedges its own number with \"supposedly\" and gives no source for it, so 4,000 is an estimate in circulation rather than a count. The 1,700 is a real figure attached to the wrong object. The honest answer is that nobody outside Ricoh knows how many GR21s were built, and this entry prints no number as though it were one.

Viewfinder magnification
  • 0.33× (Japan Camera Hunter, 2021)
  • 0.43× with about 83 per cent coverage (Japanese specification table at shige-art.net)

Better supported: Unresolved, but 0.33× is the more plausible

0.43× is the figure that table also gives for the GR1, and a finder covering a 21mm field in the same body cannot magnify as much as one covering a 28mm field. That reasoning favours the lower number without confirming it. Ricoh publishes no magnification for either camera, so there is nothing to check either claim against.

What reviewers say

History

Most compacts are a camera with a lens fitted. The GR21 is the other way round, and Ricoh’s own account of it says so. After the GR 28mm f/2.8 was rehoused as a Leica-screw-mount lens in 1997 and its 3,000 units sold out, the company built a 21mm f/3.5 in the same mount — explicitly, in its words, looking ahead to the next camera. That lens went on sale in 1999 in a run of 1,700, was received extremely well, and led on to the GR21 of April 2001. The camera is the second thing that happened.

What it is, physically, is a GR1 that could not quite swallow the optic. Nine elements in six groups, near-symmetric so that a 21mm can be made to draw straight lines, and too long to retract flush: the barrel stands 1.7 cm proud with the camera off and pushes out to about 3 cm in use. The body grew three millimetres taller than a GR1s and nothing else about it changed — same pre-wind transport, same aperture priority and exposure compensation, same CR-2 cell, same 2-second-to-1/500 leaf shutter. Ricoh says the hardest part was not the taking lens at all but the finder, which had to show a 21mm field from inside a shirt-pocket body and was solved with an optical system full of aspherical elements with complex curved surfaces.

Two features arrived here first and are usually credited elsewhere. Manual film speed, overriding the DX code, and automatic exposure bracketing are both on Ricoh’s GR21 specification page in April 2001 — five months before the GR1v, which is the body those functions are normally attributed to. The GR1v is the first 28mm GR to have them; the GR21 is the first GR.

The number everyone wants is the one that does not exist. Ricoh’s archive gives the GR21 a date, a price of 138,000 yen with hood and leather case, dimensions to the half-millimetre and a weight to the gram, and no quantity at all. Japan Camera Hunter offers “supposedly only 4000 or so” and marks it as supposition. Against that sits 1,700, which is quoted constantly as the camera’s production run and is in fact Ricoh’s own figure for the 1999 Leica-mount lens — the lens that caused the camera. Repeating it turns a scarce camera into a mythically rare one on the strength of a filing error. What can be said is what Ricoh says: several barrel types were prepared for each of these lenses and the best-matched one selected and adjusted per unit, which is a slow way to build anything and an argument that the run was never large.

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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 GR21
Ricoh GR21 — Lordcolus from Taoyuan country, Taiwan, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Sample photo taken with the Ricoh GR21
Ricoh GR21 at Tokyo GR Space — John Cummings, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sample photo taken with the Ricoh GR21
Chungli Station — shot on a Ricoh GR21 (Lordcolus) — Lordcolus, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Sample photo wanted — shot with a Ricoh GR21? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $1,700 across 8 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-06 (middle half $1,400–$2,100). First day tracked.

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

eBay links are affiliate links. If you buy through one, Glass Bodies earns a small commission from eBay at no cost to you. It does not change which listings appear, their prices or their order — those come from the search and the sort described above.

Listings updated 2026-09-05. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Fujifilm Natura · Ricoh GR1

Sources (6)

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.