JonasYip
Well-known
Well, just wanted to follow up on my previous thread wherein I described the failure of my out-of-warranty R-D1 and whether Epson would/could fix it. That's this thread:
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32209
Since my failure seemed to be something mechanical, I decided to bypass Epson altogether and dropped by my local RF expert repair place (Steve's Camera in Culver City, http://www.stevecamera.com) and let him have a shot. He had never seen an R-D1, and I explained that he most likely would not be able to get any parts or info out of Epson, although possibly CV parts would work. Anyway, he took it, and one week later I have a working R-D1. More importantly, I have the *same* R-D1 back instead of some random new body from Epson. It took $350 worth of labor to do it, however.
Turns out that he didn't need any parts to repair it. So that was good. But he pretty much had to disassemble the entire camera to get to the area that needed repair. I didn't get the exact details, but mechanical piece related to the solenoid involved in shutter cocking was preventing the shutter from actually cocking.
He took pictures of the whole disassembly and reassembly process and gave me a CD of the images... I'll include some of the gory shots here. I'd say that he's probably pretty familiar with the inner-workings of the R-D1 now. He said that in general if anything goes bad mechanically there's a good chance he can fix it. Electronic problems are a different issue, ... but I would expect that anyway. So if, say, your LCD or sensor fails, you're probably better off sending it off to Epson and seeing what the Black Hole spits out 🙂
Anyway, so there is hope for keeping these things alive, even if Epson abandons us. Oh, Steve also adjusted the RF and cleaned the CCD while he was at it, so all in all my R-D1 is looking good.
j
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32209
Since my failure seemed to be something mechanical, I decided to bypass Epson altogether and dropped by my local RF expert repair place (Steve's Camera in Culver City, http://www.stevecamera.com) and let him have a shot. He had never seen an R-D1, and I explained that he most likely would not be able to get any parts or info out of Epson, although possibly CV parts would work. Anyway, he took it, and one week later I have a working R-D1. More importantly, I have the *same* R-D1 back instead of some random new body from Epson. It took $350 worth of labor to do it, however.
Turns out that he didn't need any parts to repair it. So that was good. But he pretty much had to disassemble the entire camera to get to the area that needed repair. I didn't get the exact details, but mechanical piece related to the solenoid involved in shutter cocking was preventing the shutter from actually cocking.
He took pictures of the whole disassembly and reassembly process and gave me a CD of the images... I'll include some of the gory shots here. I'd say that he's probably pretty familiar with the inner-workings of the R-D1 now. He said that in general if anything goes bad mechanically there's a good chance he can fix it. Electronic problems are a different issue, ... but I would expect that anyway. So if, say, your LCD or sensor fails, you're probably better off sending it off to Epson and seeing what the Black Hole spits out 🙂
Anyway, so there is hope for keeping these things alive, even if Epson abandons us. Oh, Steve also adjusted the RF and cleaned the CCD while he was at it, so all in all my R-D1 is looking good.
j
