On the face of it, the GXR is a crazy idea. It’s an interchangeable lens camera with the added cost of a sensor built into every lens. But it has enabled Ricoh to produce carefully tailored pairings of lens and sensor, and there are advantages. The body/camera unit combinations are smaller than rival cameras, even Micro Four Thirds models, and the sealed camera units mean no more problems with sensor dust.

Not only that, the lens designers can choose any back-focus distance they like between the lens and the sensor – there’s no need to allow for pre-determined lens mount/sensor distances with complex retro-focus designs.

It’s a shame that the standard 24-72mm camera unit uses a smaller 1/1.7-inch sensor, but Ricoh’s A12 macro unit does not – it boasts an APS-C sized sensor the same size as those in digital SLRs. The question is, can it match a DSLR for quality?

We’d normally leave that verdict to the end, but the answer is a resounding ‘yes’! The A12 camera unit’s images are saturated, aberration-free and beautifully detailed. They rival and even surpass the quality you could expect from a conventional macro lens on a DSLR. There are certain handling and operational differences that we’ll get on to in a moment, but this lens demonstrates that the GXR really is a serious rival to conventional DSLRs and hybrid cameras.

In an attempt to make its lenses’ focal ranges easier to compare, Ricoh is quoting their equivalent focal lengths rather than their actual focal lengths. Otherwise, the different sensor sizes in the different cameras would quickly make things confusing. This lens has a quoted focal length of 50mm on the box, but its actual focal length, as marked on the barrel, is 33mm.

This could upset purists who prefer to stick to exact, real-life focal lengths. And they won’t much like the fact that the maximum reproduction size of this lens is 1:2, where a true macro lens should render things life-size on the sensor.

This lens does let you get very close to your subjects, then, but not quite as close as other macro lenses. It’s also worth pointing out the extraordinary 1cm macro mode on the standard 24-70mm GXR lens, which gives this one a good run for its money.

There are a couple of operational issues with the 50mm macro too. First, it has two focus ranges – normal and macro – and you have to use the macro button on the camera body to allow super-close focusing. Some other macro lenses also have adjustable focus ranges, but these are usually switches on the lens and are a bit more obvious.

The second issue is the autofocus, which isn’t particularly fast at the best of times, but which can fail completely if the detail under the focus point is low in contrast. The lens also has a strange habit of going straight past the focus point but then returning to it at the end of its travel, as if it’s doing a whole focus ‘pass’ before making its mind up. There is a manual focus ring, and it’s both smooth and precise, but the lack of an optical viewfinder does make it quite difficult to judge the focus perfectly, despite the very high resolution of the GXR’s LCD display.

This camera unit does cost £600, but that’s not actually a lot for an own-brand macro lens, despite the fact that this one also includes a sensor. And while the Ricoh 50mm does have some focusing issues, the results it produces are quite superb. If there was every any doubt about the Ricoh GXR’s quality potential, this lens should dispel it for good.

Final Verdict The clumsy focusing can make some close-up shots quite hard work, but the results produced by this camera unit are excellent even by D-SLR standards, with real depth and saturation, very high resolution and minimal aberrations. OVERALL

Our lens reviewer, and technical expert, Rod is a veritable photographic encyclopaedia. His illustrious CV has seen him write for many mags, websites and journals.