Finally made the plunge

[rvaubel]

Fellow R-D1ers
Well I finally did it. After driving the Calument salesman insane, testing 3 bodies over a six week period, I finally found the perfect specimen. Actually, the original demo model with close to 1000 exposures on it. I paid the new price (as it was never sold) just to get the warrenty. Well, its been thoroughly road tested thats for sure. Focus is right on, no hot pixels, framelines OK.
I can hardly wait for this weekend to field test it. I already have a couple hundred shots of the inside of Calumet that I doubt are going to win any awards!!
I just discovered that my Leica 90mm F4 collapsible retracts all the way into the body. That was not possible with either of my Bessa's (R3a & "T")

Having Fun in BeZerkeley
Rex
R3A, Olive Anniversary "T" w/olive winder,
black "T", an "L", 15mm Heliar, 25mm Skopar,
40mm F1.4 Nokton, 50mm F3.5 Heliar, &
90mm F4 collapsable Elmar
and a bunch of canon SLR stuff

 

[RML]

Good for you, Rex!

Enjoy it!

 

[jeff laitila]

Welcome to the wonderful world of the R-D1!

It may have only 6 megapixels, and be a couple of years old (downright ancient in the digital world) but in my humble opinion it is still THE BEST digital camera around. Nothing else even comes close to it in terms of "usability" and pure joy of operation.


If you are anything like me, you will find it almost PAINFUL to shoot film again once you get used to a digital rangefider.

 

[Gid]

Good choice. You'll love it. Welcome to our small band.

Gid

 

[rvaubel]

Using my "M" lenses on the R-D1

Using my "M" lenses on the R-D1

Fellow RFers
I spent all day Saturday trying out my collection of lenses on my new camera. I've been trying to figure out which viewfinder setting (50,35 & 28) works best with the lenses I have. So far, the best match, and one of my favorite lenses on the R3a, is the 40mm F1.4 Nokton with the 35mm framelines..... almost a perfect match. I had a blast taking pictures around the house at various ISO settings, F ratios, shutter speeds. Some of the available pictures of my wife working in her home office, came out particularly nice.
One of the things that I wondered about is what is the ACTUAL field of view vs the 40mm I get with a full frame. I know the crop factor is 1.5X, so the 35mm format equivalent should be around 60mm. But with all the factors involved, I decided to actually measure the TRUE view of view of both the framelines AND the image delivered by the sensor to Photoshop. In order t o do this I stuck a couple of pieces of tape on my wall and moved them apart untill they were coincedent with the horizantel framelines. Measuring the distance between them (70" in this case) and from the wall to the camera (126") calculates out to a 31 degree field of view. This agrees with the apparrent field of view you would get with a 60mm lens (closer to 62mm by the math) on a full frame camera.
Next I checked to see how well the moving parallex correcting framelines worked. Much to my surprise, very well!! I framed pictures at both 36" and 126" , then compared the results with the results in Photoshop. At 126" the difference was only about 3" over the 70" baseline. Even more amazing was the results at 36" which looked to be dead on!
Finally, I checked the focus error at 1 Meter. Using newspaper angleing away from the camera at 45 degrees, with the apeture set at F1.4, I fired away a half dozen shots, carefully focusing between shots. Again, everything was right on the money, down to the centimeter.
So far, I consider myself pretty lucky with all the QA issues I heard about. Of course I spent 5 weeks selecting my sample at Calumet, driving the salesman insane.
Onward to the next lens!!

Rex

 

[pfogle]

One of the things I LOVE about this camera, as everyone has noted, is the lens choice. I use a Canon 1Dm2 for the pro work, but my favourite portrait lens is a 1935 uncoated Summar, which has a quality I wouldn't begin to know how to emulate with PS and a modern lens.

And, the beauty of it is, with this camera, you don't need to!

So while the Canon nuts are arguing over whether to spend a couple of grand on some fancy 'L' lens, we can scour the discard bins for old lenses that get a new lease of life with this body.

 

[rvaubel]

Suggestions for a fast semi-wide

Suggestions for a fast semi-wide

Now that my 40mm Nokton has evolved into 60mm, I don't have a fast wide angle at all. The 25mm heliar at f4.0 is pretty slow.
Anyone have a suggestion for something to replace my Nokton? I guess that would be something between 21mm and 28mm.
I have been using the Nokton all weekend, what a revealation. I never thought of slightly long "normal" lens to be of much use, but I find myself using it as low available light portriat lens. It's good because you can get pretty intimate shots without getting too much in anyones face. People relax around it. Not to mention the rangefinder aspect of the camera helps. I've been using it almost wide open to maximize the bokoh, which needs another stop it seems. Its nice that it goes all the way to F1.4 ....thank God the rangefinder works good.

Rex

 

[Doug]

Well, sounds like you're convincing yourself to keep the useful Nokton at hand! This is virtually the same FoV as the "normal" 40mm f/1.4 Zuiko on my Olympus Pen F, which is indeed useful.

Something fast and wide would sure be good though... but you're at f/2.8 and slower once you dip below 28mm. The new 25mm f/2.8 Zeiss Biogon would be a great choice, 38.3mm equivalent, if you can put up with the speed. There are two fast 28's... Voigtlander's f/1.9 which is rather bulky, and the very svelt and lovely f/2 Summicron... but you're up to 42.8mm FoV equivalent here, useful but not very wide. You can still find f/2.8 in a 21mm, and that gets you 32mm equivalent which could be a nice wide one, though large and pricy.

Edit: Incidentally, since the sensor size is about the same as half-frame 35, it might occur that Pen F lenses might be useful... but probably not. WA lenses for this system are scarce, comprising only a 25mm f/4, a rare 25mm f/2.8, and a 20mm f/3.5. But the film plane to lens flange distance is 28.95mm so one could glue on a Pen lens with a 0.15mm shim in between and achieve infinity focus!

 

[rvaubel]

Doug
I was hoping that something would be available under 28mm and faster than F2.8. On my Canon 20Da, I use a 24mm F1.4 but at 1lb,4oz X 3.25" X 3.25" it is not exactly indiscret!!
Calumet had a Leica 21mm F2.8 which they let me use out in the street for 1/2 hr or so. Wonderful looking lens but @ $3300 a little pricey. Plus it was a little bigger than I would like. After all I'm trying to get away from the howitzer look of the DSLR. However, I could live with the size, if not the price.
I saw an ad for an Olympus OM 21mm F2.0 that looked ideal except I dont know if it can be adapted to an M mount. It was about as compact as the Nokton which is pretty amazing.
I suppose I could go for a F2.8 if I had too. ISO 800 looks pretty doable on the RD1 at least for low light, moody type stuff. However,I still have a lot of experimenting with regards ISO and noise issues . However, if I could, I'd take an F2.0 over a slower lens.

Rex