Having done a comparison of the DNG files that Pavel posted I thought at first that it looked like the GRD2 was an major step forward for Ricoh in terms of contrast, sharpness and grain, but I saw that the GRD2 had blown highlights where the GRD hadn't and wondered whether this was an issue or not. After that, there were questions whether the exposure of Pavel's GRD2 samples were a problem; and then Amin posted some 100% crops that raised the question of whether there was some "smearing" of noise in the GRD2 files that wasn't present in the GRD files.

One of the good features of the GRD, particularly for B&W, was that the noise had a film-grain look. If prints from the GRD2 end up looking more like GX100 prints than GRD prints, then I won't be interested in buying the camera. But, with the testing done so far, we don't really know. How can we get at a real comparison between the GRD2 and the GRD?

—Mitch/Paris
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/