Solved: Ricoh GR Not Using Auto-Hi ISO

I spent a few frustrating evenings shooting on aperture priority with the original Ricoh GR. It held my shutter speed at 1/40s and varied the ISO so that it was always at 1/40s.

I’ve finally sat down to figure out what the heck was going on as I’d never previously experienced this issue. For some reason each time I tried to set the ISO to Auto-High (with a 5000 ISO maximum and shutter minimum at 1/160s) it kept defaulting to Auto, instead.

The Problem

My Ricoh GR was stuck at 1/40s when shooting aperture priority (i.e., ‘Av’) with the ISO varying to ensure it could hit that shutter speed. My work-around solution was to take manual control of the ISO. When I manually raised the ISO I could get a much faster shutter speed.

The Solution

I had previously disabled ‘Continuous Mode’ when I had been experimenting with an external flash. In doing so I had, unknowingly, simultaneously disabled the camera’s ability to use ‘Auto-High.’¹ Auto-High is used to set a maximum ISO and minimum shutter speed.²

To enable Auto-High on the Ricoh GR:

1. Open the menu
2. Enter the Shooting Menu (Camera symbol)
3. Scroll down to ‘Continuous Mode’
4. Press the right button on the control dial
5. Scroll to ‘Continuous Mode’
6. Press ‘OK’

You may, also, need to set the maximum ISO and minimum shutter speed for Auto-High. To set these values:

1. Open the menu
2. Enter the Setup Menu (Screwdriver and Wrench symbol)
3. Scroll down to ‘ISO Auto-High Settings’
4. Press the right button on the control dial
5. Set the Maximum ISO and Change Shutter Speed to preferred values
6. Press ‘OK’

At the conclusion of this you should hopefully have (re)enabled Auto-High ISO.

Note: My solution to this problem differs from some on the Internet. A post in the DP Review forums, as an example, suggests that you must disable ‘dynamic range compensation’ to solve the problem. This is not the case in my experience as I have dynamic range compensation set to ‘Medium’ on my Ricoh GR.