Buying an RD-1 in the UK? How?

jimbobuk

jimbobuk

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Hi guys,

I've dabbled with my first rangefinder in the form of an old olympus XA camera i won on ebay. Its quite nice to have such a small camera, but with my glasses i find it a bit hard to read the shutter speed needle and as such a lot of my shots are struggling by being too slow to be sharp. The rangefinding process though is intriguing me and i'm considering getting another camera. My options are a cheaper leica film camera, or embracing digital and trying out the RD-1.

Where did those in the UK who brought one of these from get them from? Are they still on sale at these places? Is 2nd hand a viable alternative to buying these cameras, as in are they reasonably stable.. if they were received in great working order by an original owner are they likely to survive the trip to a new owner and years of use? I'm just wondering if the premium on a new one, if they're still on sale is worth the hit just for the support and warrantys on the camera itself? For such a limited run of a camera how many of them are coming out as duds, or breaking after moderate use?

As an aside i guess, is anyone interested in selling one? ;)

Cheers.. no rush i'm going to look into it a lot more, but this is certainly my first question :)

Obviously you guys are enjoying using yours, I'm keen to get a high quality digital "body" that is compact enough for regular use. I have a canon 350D which i like, but i wouldn't want to carry it to everything that i'd possibly like to take pictures of, and out of the rest of the available digital cameras none of them seem to have a good low noise, high quality output.. something the RD-1 is pretty much unique at for its size with its large sized sensor that it has in common with the digital SLRs like the 350d.

Anyways thanks in advance. Cheers

Jim
 
Jim, I reckon you won't find many 2nd hand R-D1s around yet. There were a few offered here in the recent passed, though.

I doubt there are any reliable answers to your questions regarding life span and such. The camera hasn't been on the market very long yet.

About availability in the UK, any UK members here who can shed some light on it?

I posted a little "review" on the R-D1 on my blog: http://shardsofphotography.blogspot.com/2006/02/camera-impressions-epson-r-d1.html .
 
I don't have the R-D1 but I think about it sometimes. Too expensive for me I guess. I have noticed that www.warehouseexpress.com sell them, and I've used them before for Canon stuff. Pretty good company, but their price doesn't look any more competitive than anyone else in this particular case. Usually the prices are fairly keen.

Also, there's a second hand one here: http://www.apertureuk.com/used-Dig.htm

No connection with either company.
 
V. rare s/hand - a couple have passed through RFF, as mentioned.

Most of the well-known companies advertise them (e.g. see the ads in Amateur Photographer), but whether they have them in stock is another matter...! That said, judging by comments in this forum, only about half of the (assumed) 10,000 production has been sold.

I bought mine from Jacobs in New Oxford Street, London - just happened to be the first company I phoned. They had one in stock, and reserved it for me to pick up a couple of weeks later.

There's no variation in the price - everyone sells them new at £1999. It seems to hold it's s/hand value well, presumably because there aren't many around and because of its high reputation among users.

Regarding build quality, it's very solid - more so than my previous, a Canon 10D, which I consider to be a tough old boot itself. A large proportion of the camera is metal. The coating on the LCD isn't as durable as the Canon's (but you can flip the LCD over and hide it, for protection). I can't see why this camera can't keep going for years. Also, its basic workings (ignoring the sensor, LCD and associated electronics) are those of a modern film rangefinder, i.e. robust and proven (read 'old'!) technology.

I've never heard of one dying in use. Any problems seem to arise with new cameras, owing to lack of QA. Unfortunately, Epson don't have the in-house expertise needed for these cameras (Cosina makes the camera parts, which Epson then assemble), so occasionally it seems that cameras are sold with out-of-adjustment rangefinders ( inaccurate focusing or crooked framelines). This is a warranty issue, and Epson will sort it out (by replacing the camera, because, it seems, no one knows how to adjust them in-house). They will even loan you an R-D1 in the interim!

That said, I suspect most R-D1s are fine (mine was). Sean Reid (http://www.reidreviews.com/reidreviews/ ) has surveyed R-D1 owners, and that report will make interesting reading...
 
I'm forced to sell mine

I'm forced to sell mine

I've posted my Epson R-D1 up for sale...look a few posts back. It is in perfect operating condition and is only 3 months old. I've sold 4 VC lenses the past few weeks and believe that the buyers would vouch for the quality of the equipment if asked. But I'm in the US...I sent a lens to the UK as a "gift" to avoid duties...don't know if a whole camera body could be called a gift...I'd be willing to try, though.
 
Thanks for everyones replies, really helpful so far.

Its such a big jump to even consider this camera as i'm sure everyone appreciates. I was reluctant to get the 20D when i brought my SLR, plumping for the 350D and saving a few hundred pounds and getting a camera more in range with what i thought was a decent camera price. Having since brought 5 lenses for it I've realised how the initial body cost can be made insignificant by the buying of different glass.

Its a lot of money, but its an appealing camera, and as i said before even without its rangefinding sensibilities its the only small (ish) sized camera with a decent size sensor ready to grab some clean images.

Does anyone know if the warranty of epson replacing and otherwise fixing a problematic camera have a date on them.. the 2nd hand one linked below may be just under a year old, not sure though. Not sure if the receipt of original purchase has been kept. Its model # is 2297 which puts it somewhere in the middle of the 5000 or so supposedly been made so far. I dont know whether >2000 is part of the batches that are supposed to have fewer of these QA problems compared to the earlier ones.

DWzM, thanks for pointing out your sale. I had seen it, its good to know you'd be buying from someone on this site who has been exposed to lots of other owners and has tested it well. I'm afraid that I couldn't risk an international delivery on such an expensive item. Its a strange thing the declaring an item as a gift. It by no means guarantees any exemption on import duty, if you look into the rules of it it may stretch the limit allowed slightly to £30-£40 if that. The issue of downvaluing (genuinely, being 2nd hand) the camera to reduce the tax though obviously leaves it with less cover should something go wrong. Whether that insurance is worth anything is not certain anyways, I am also a keen collector of headphones and audio hifi kit, and have recently been stung buying a classic portable cd player, it arrived in an unideal state and over a few days ended up in a completely non-working state. Still trying to chase up the insurance on that one, having never had to try before. I'm not holding my breath, it hurt and that was only a £200 item. Good luck with your sale though DWzM, i'm sure there are plenty of buyers just around the corner.

Any more advice from you guys would be greatly appreciated. I MUST resist an impulse buy on this one and think it through some more :)
 
Like Rich, I brought mine from Jacobs in New Oxford Street for £1998 (GBP) they usually have them in stock and I can recommend them as a dealer. Jessops New Oxford had one in stock a couple of weeks ago (same price), but even though this branch is supposed to be the professional dept. I find they have poor product knowledge and are not very helpful. As servers_babylon says Robert White sells them (same price again) and usually has them in stock. He is a good dealer and of course a sponsor of this site. Ffords in Beauly, Scotland may also stock them.

Secondhand, Aperture in Museum St. (off New Oxford St. had a mint one a couple of weeks ago at £1,650 again a good dealer. R.G. Lewis, Southampton Row, Holborn had one at £1500 (GBP) a couple of months back, but I think thisthis sold quite quickly.

It is possible to purchase new from Hong Kong new for about half the price in the U.K. and a friend picked up one while there in May for £972, you of course don't get a U.K. valid warranty and risk getting stung for a fairly high mount of taxes in the U.K. if you have it shipped. (there is much more about buying from Hong Kong in other threads if you do a search).

As has also been said in other threads secondhand prices on the R-D1 are at this time holding up well and only you can judge what is an acceptable price to pay. Apart from a few hot pixels my camera has been very reliable for over a year, but is now out of warrenty (serial batch 0024xx, purchased Dec. 2005. I have another friend who purchased new in the U.K (serial batch 0023xx, purchased August 2005) and found the rangefinder and framelines out. His dealer got an immediate replacement (serial batch 0033xx) and this was fine. I personally given what I know now and with the helpful shared knowledge from this forum, I would want to personally check the camera I was buying, secondhand or new, for the obvious reported faults. This could be done quite quickly given the digital feedback. Then decide if secondhand if the lower price is worth going with a shorter or no warranty.

Just to make my self clear, I think the R-D1 is an excellent picture making machine. Too me it has been worth the price asked and I have not regretted paying it for one minute, but there are some Q.A. problems and Epson support sould be better for a product at this price. I personally therefore would probably go for new if the S/H prce was £1,650 (GBP) without a warranty, but would be tempted at about £1500 (GBP).
 
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Jim Watts said:
It is possible to purchase new from Hong Kong new for about half the price in the U.K. and a friend picked up one while there in May for £972, you of course don't get a U.K. valid warranty and risk getting stung for a fairly high mount of taxes in the U.K. if you have it shipped. (there is much more about buying from Hong Kong in other threads if you do a search).
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What are the options if an R-D1 bought in HK turns out to have the QC issues? Does it have to go back to HK? Can Epson UK do the adustments (even if it costs as its out of warranty)?
 
Thanks again for your posts, I feel a lot more informed than i did when i woke up this morning :)

It would be interested to know what Epson UKs stance on repair would be, for such a statement product you'd hope they'd go out of your way to fix it, even if it was a charged for action (though hopefully not inlign with its £2000 purchase price for modest realignment).

I guess an aside to the RD-1 is a much broader rangefinderforum type question of where in the UK to buy some lenses for this camera. I'm reading through the luminous landscape articles, without them i'd know a heck of a lot less about it!!! Robert White for one seems to stock a wide range of everything to do with this type of photography, i can see why they are a site sponsor!! :)

I must look through the gallery on site and in places like flickr to try and find some more images taken with it, chaudigital have a collection of what looks like full resolution pics which is nice to see, though as with all 6 megapixel images you can't really look at that size image on a 19" monitor :) perhaps temporarily i'll go to this monitors max res of 1600x1200 to have a better look. If anyone has some quick links to RD-1 group shots then that would be appreciated, if not i'll try to find them myself on this site.

Thanks again.
 
Jim Watts said:
Like Rich, I brought mine from Jacobs in New Oxford Street for £1998
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Hey! Jacobs charged me £1999 - I've been robbed!! :eek:

jimbobuk, I don't know if it helps you decide, but this is how I ended up with an R-D1:

http://snipurl.com/m8cx.

(That's my leaving post on DP Review - I used to hang out in the Canon 10D forum, but, having sold the 10D, my only camera now is the R-D1, so I jumped ship to here. Anyway, folk seem nicer and more laid back on RFF :D )

Having learnt photography with an SLR, the R-D1 was a big change. Something I thought long and hard about for a year, particularly as I knew I would have to sell the 10D to buy the R-D1. Once the deed was done, I did spend a couple of days wondering if I'd done the right thing!

I've owned the camera for 6 weeks now, and feel much happier. Some of my worries were groundless. Two of my greatest worries were the manual focus and aperture rings, but, suprisingly, using them became second nature after a couple of days; and I'm starting to get the hang of the metering (compared with the 10Ds computerised metering, it's crude, but fairly easy to predict its behaviour - centre weighted with a bias towards the bottom of the frame, and a tendency to underexpose slightly (0.3 stop?)).

My third concern was framing accuracy, or, rather, its lack - recall that my previous camera was an SLR, and that I've never used a rangefinder. It's been an, err, interesting experience! In some ways the framelines are quite accurate - I find the parallax correction reasonably effective, and what's within the framelines is always captured. However, the framelines are very loose, and, to avoid cropping images, I have to imagine my image edges finishing well outside the framelines. (Never having used other rangefinders, I'd be interested to know if other cameras have this amount of slop - answers, anyone?)

That said, I'm not overly worried about the "loose" framelines, although it's a little frustrating, as at some point I'm sure it'll become second nature knowing where the image edges will fall.
 
Jim Watts said:
It is possible to purchase new from Hong Kong new for about half the price in the U.K. and a friend picked up one while there in May for £972, you of course don't get a U.K. valid warranty and risk getting stung for a fairly high mount of taxes in the U.K. if you have it shipped. (there is much more about buying from Hong Kong in other threads if you do a search).
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I got mine from Hong Kong. Bought it from Dr Yao. It was more expensive than what Jim reports, though. On the other hand, even with shipping and Dutch customs fee I saved myself 500 euro on the retail price. I have no idea whether Epson Holland would take my specimen in under warranty or whether I'll have to send it back to HK. To be fair, in another 4 months the 1-year warranty will have ended anyway, so the issue will becomemute by then. Dr Yao is really good to deal with, and he's well aware of all the issues that plague(d) the R-D1. He had mine checked and adjusted before sending it off to Holland.

http://shardsofphotography.blogspot.com/2006/02/camera-impressions-epson-r-d1.html

.
 
RichC said:
Hey! Jacobs charged me £1999 - I've been robbed!! :eek: .
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Ha Ha!

I got mine for 1990!

nearly a tenner cheaper, now that is what I call a good deal! :bang: :bang: :bang:
 
RichC said:
Hey! Jacobs charged me £1999 - I've been robbed!! :eek:
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O.K. I checked my receipt. I was charged £1999.99, but then as I brought a second battery and an SD card I was given a £5.30 line discount. So I'm not sure who was robbed?? :confused: :p

Purchase date was Dec. 2004 by the way not 2005, one of the many typo's I noticed in my post. :bang:

On a more serious note Jacobs said they could not offer any discount on the camera as the price to them gave them even less profit margin than the mainstream digital SLR's, but they did give me a very good part exchange deal to offset the cost and were great people to deal with.

My friends £972 Hong Kong price was based on him having no warranty at all. I think he said they were going to charge him about £1100 with a Hong Kong valid warranty. Not much use in the U.K. probably given shipping ect.

£1,100 = about 1,620 Euro's at todays exchange rate with shipping to add. So it was a bit cheaper than RML's but he had the worthwhile advantage of Dr. Yao checking the camera out before purchase and shipping, together with the knowledge that Dr. Yao is a reputable Hong Kong dealer, which many are not by all accounts. Latest prices from Hong Kong reported here seem to be about U.S. $2,500 = 2,070 Euros = £1,400 (GBP), which I think includes shipping? Then there is U.K. tax as noted before.

LCT says: "2,400 EUR (1,637 GBP) in Germany with 2-year warranty" Good, but I'm not sure about the amount of tax to import into the U.K. from the E.U. and there is still the validity of the better 2 year warranty in the U.K.

Robin Harrison asks: "What are the options if an R-D1 bought in HK turns out to have the QC issues? Does it have to go back to HK? Can Epson UK do the adjustments (even if it costs as its out of warranty)?" As far as I know there is no international warranty and Epson won't honour other than a U.K. one. So if you had a Hong Kong one you would have to ship it back there. Also as far as I know (and especially as Sangers, Epson's (& Voigtlander's) original U.K. distributers are no longer in business) Epson are not able to repair the cameras in the U.K. and are shipping them to France? I think. If in warranty you (eventually) get a loan and/or replacement camera for/while (awaiting) your repair. I think that is the crux of the problem for me. If you are out of warranty (as I am) or don't have one what support can you expect in your own country. This is one area where Epson need to clarify to potential puchasers and current owners the nature of their ongoing support for the R-D1. It is a fairly expensive bit of equipment, which should have the excellent comensurate support into the future that is expected by purchasers at this level. It seems at present you will almost certainly will not get a loan camera without a valid current warranty and repairs seem to take a couple of months at least.

I hope I don't need a repair, the camera seems pretty rugged and should give a long life but I not sure about the durability of the electronics and its really too early to tell. If I should need a repair I would be reluctant to loose my camera for this amount of time and what would be the cost of an out of warranty repair if Epson are are having such difficulties over simple adjustments? Has anyone paid for an out of warrany repair by Epson yet? IMHO It would probably be sensible for Epson to supply the parts and have a competent independant U.K. repairer work on the cameras here, as they should with say DAG in the States.

I believe that Epson saw the R-D1 as a status product that would bring them prestige among serious photographers. Hopefully they still see it as this and will regognise that they need to offer excellent ongoing support if they are to have credibility. Even more so if they intend to produce an R-D2.
 
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jimbobuk said:
Thanks again for your posts, I feel a lot more informed than i did when i woke up this morning :)

It would be interested to know what Epson UKs stance on repair would be, for such a statement product you'd hope they'd go out of your way to fix it, even if it was a charged for action (though hopefully not inlign with its £2000 purchase price for modest realignment).

I guess an aside to the RD-1 is a much broader rangefinderforum type question of where in the UK to buy some lenses for this camera. I'm reading through the luminous landscape articles, without them i'd know a heck of a lot less about it!!! Robert White for one seems to stock a wide range of everything to do with this type of photography, i can see why they are a site sponsor!! :)

Thanks again.
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Jim,
See my post above about repairs.
Re. lenses. You can buy lenses for the R-D1 just about anywere, especially secondhand. The joy of the R-D1 is that it takes all the standard Leica M fitting lenses and others that fit to this mount and many, many more Leica screw thread lenses via the adapter. Easily obtainable focal lengths from 12mm - 135mm (plus a x1.53 factor to allow for the sensor crop) and price range is from very low (Russian screw lenses etc.) to expensive new M mount Leica ASPH lenses. The new Voigtlander lenses as Robert White sells are good quality and value (see Sean Reid's Luminous Landscape lens reviews, if you haven't seen these yet) and a good place to start or check out the ads. from dealers in 'Amateur Photographer' under Leica M or Leica screw.
 
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RichC said:
My third concern was framing accuracy, or, rather, its lack - recall that my previous camera was an SLR, and that I've never used a rangefinder. It's been an, err, interesting experience! In some ways the framelines are quite accurate - I find the parallax correction reasonably effective, and what's within the framelines is always captured. However, the framelines are very loose, and, to avoid cropping images, I have to imagine my image edges finishing well outside the framelines. (Never having used other rangefinders, I'd be interested to know if other cameras have this amount of slop - answers, anyone?)

That said, I'm not overly worried about the "loose" framelines, although it's a little frustrating, as at some point I'm sure it'll become second nature knowing where the image edges will fall.
Click to expand...

Rich,
Rangefinder cameras need more "slack", even those with parallax adjusting framelines to avoid the possibility cutting off parts of your subject as you are not seeing through the lens. All have some amount of slack and the R-D1 and the Voigtlanders are supposed to see 85% of the llens field of view (15% slack). My perception is that I have more "waste" than with the R-D1 than with the parallax corrected framelines in my Leica M4.

One solution for the R-D1 35mm (53mm) framelines is to use a 40mm (60mm) lens. The 40mm Summicron 'C' exactly matches the the 35mm lines and the 40mm VC Nokton is very close (difference is due to very slight variations from the nominal 40mm length). I'm thinking of getting a 40mm Nokton myself as I like to frame tightly and would also welcome the extra stop over my 35mm Cron. You can of course make an allowance as you suggest and it becomes second nature after awhile. When I was solely using the M4 and 35mm Cron I didn't really need to look through the camera to know where the edges of the frame would be, but swapping between cameras with the equivalent of different focal length lenses and safety factors for the framelines makes it much more difficult.
 
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Jim Watts said:
...LCT says: "2,400 EUR (1,637 GBP) in Germany with 2-year warranty" Good, but I'm not sure about the amount of tax to import into the U.K. from the E.U. and there is still the validity of the better 2 year warranty in the U.K....
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I bought mine at SH Photo in November 2004.
I've got the normal Epson warranty then but i don't know how it works by now.
As for taxes, there is no additional VAT to pay normally when it's paid in another EU country but i'm not sure if it's the same in UK.
BTW i asked SH Photo to check the RF accuracy before shipping.
I don't know if they did it actually but i've had no misalignment problems with that body.
FWIW
Best,
LCT
 
LCT said:
As for taxes, there is no additional VAT to pay normally when it's paid in another EU country but i'm not sure if it's the same in UK.
LCT
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I should have said from within the E.U. of course and not "from the E.U." as we are a member even if we haven't signed up to the Euro. I am fairly sure the VAT situation is as you say, but I don't no about other taxes. We get import duty charged on goods costing over £17.50 from the Channel Islands and they are part of the U.K. ??? :confused:
 
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