Re: Epson R-D1 review by Photographie magazine (sorry french only)
gelmir said:
Just to tell you that the french magazine Photographie has reviewed the Epson R-D1 along with famous professionnal photographers. Sorry this is in french only but you can always look at the photographs which doesn't have that digital feeling at all.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention! This is a very intelligent review, and well worth reading even in a fractured-French Google translation.
It was interesting that the professional photographers interviewed generally weren't disturbed by some of the characteristics of the R-D1 that have caused negative comment elsewhere, such as its manual shutter-winding or lack of automation features.
Their criticisms were more oriented toward practical picture-taking, such as that the numbers on the sensitivity dial are small and hard to see, and especially that wide-angle lens users would need to buy new, wider lenses to accommodate the 1.53x crop factor. Normally I'm not impressed by "what the pros think" articles (since professional photographers aren't necessarily more technically knowledgeable than anyone else!) but in this case they provide a very realistic viewpoint.
It interested me that none of them seemed bothered by the price --- although of course many of them are Leica users, so would not consider this an unusually expensive camera.
The other negative points noted in the article also are well-chosen: not too nitpicky, but things that might actually cause problems for the user. One that's particularly well-observed (even in translation!) is that once the camera has gone into auto-power-off, it requires one press of the shutter release to wake it up and then another to take a picture. I have gotten tripped by this a few times, but never had really thought through what was causing it. Now that I'm aware of it, I'm going to turn up the auto-power-off default time.
Other problems such as the difficulty in seeing the shutter speeds in some light conditions are also ones I have noted, although I feel most of these things are quickly adjusted to after using the camera for a while.
I even gained a potentially valuable tip, in learning that the camera may lock up if you press the shutter release when the battery is fully discharged (this never has happened to me yet.) The review notes that in this situation, the camera can be rebooted (after replacing the battery) by turning it off, then holding the WB/Q lever toward the Q position while turning it on.
So, a very useful review. (It's also reassuring to notice that casual photos made even by very famous photograpers aren't necessarily conspicuously more brilliant than photos made by you or me!)
