Covered port next to SD slot?

[Charles D. Orze]

Hi,

Does anyone know anything about the small rectangular 'cover' just below the SD slot on the R D1? Looks suspiciously like an intended usb port that was deleted from the production camera.

Charlie Orzech

 

[mtokue]

If Memory serves correctly, I remember reading on the Epson Japan site that during the Preproduction trials they had produced three cameras with firewire connectors and three with usb2 connectivity. but was deemed unnessisary for the production camera! I know I wouldnt have minded a connector, I also wouldn't complain to a DC power option aswell!!
Perhaps in the next reincarnation!
Mike.

 

[jlw]

If Memory serves correctly, I remember reading on the Epson Japan site that during the Preproduction trials they had produced three cameras with firewire connectors and three with usb2 connectivity. but was deemed unnessisary for the production camera! I know I wouldnt have minded a connector, I also wouldn't complain to a DC power option aswell!!
Perhaps in the next reincarnation!
Mike.

There's a picture in the prototypes section (p 29) of the 'Epson R-D 1 World' book that Mike obtained for some of us, that shows an R-D 1 with a round coaxial jack (video out? DC in?) below the card slot, and a USB connector below that.

Other interesting prototype variants pictured include one that goes to ISO 3200 (which would have been nice if noise didn't get too intense) and one that has the exposure compensation dial around the rim of the gauge cluster, with the WB and Q settings on the shutter speed dial rather than a separate lever on the back (glad they didn't follow through on that one; would have required 'unsetting' your chosen shutter speed to change WB or Q settings!)

Since I can't read the text, I have no idea whether or not the captions provide any additional info.


Interestingly, the configuration of the ports in the prototype picture appears different from the blanked-off opening seen on production cameras. Wonder if the one on the production camera might cover some sort of factory-only diagnostic or debug connector...? There's an exploded view of the camera on p27 of the 'World' book, but it doesn't show the details of the port area.

 

[Charles D. Orze]

Thanks for the info Mike. The camera would be great for Astrophotography but not having a cable out makes things unecessarily complex.

Charlie

 

[dmihajlo]

No Astro-Cam

No Astro-Cam

Hi,
I did some astrophotography with my RD-1, but came to the conclusion that the RD-1 is not suitable for astrophotography, or at least mine isn't.
The FPN (fix pattern noise) is very heavy on exposures of more than 30seconds at ISO 400+, especially the numerous hot pixels and the extreme readout noise in the upper left image corner... no dark frame will help here, there is just too much noise.

Sad but true.

Best

Dragan