andyturk
Established
Ever since the the D30 came out, I've been a Canon dSLR user. I held onto that body for a while but eventually upgraded to a 1D Mk II, which I still have. The 1D is a fantastic camera, but it's huge. So this summer, I took the plunge into the world of rangefinders and got myself an Epson R-D1.
After several several thousand exposure on the Epson (between 5K and 8K, I'd guess) I've started to notice some consistent problems in what I end up with from the R-D1. I'm sure operator error is the most significant cause, but I wonder if the camera itself contributes sometimes.
Here's are some problems that I've seen:
1. Front focusing
A significant percentage of my shots have the focus just a little bit too close. Using a 35mm lens, the focus is off by maybe an inch at a "loose" portrait distance. It's not much of an issue with wider lenses or smaller apertures, but it's still there. I've had great difficulty being able to get accurate focus at all with a 75mm lens at anything wider than F4.0. Since this problem shows up with different lenses and those same lenses work fine on my M6, I suspect it's a camera issue.
2. Contrasty Underexposure
I've been using AE (Auto Exposure) quite a bit. When an image has even a small patch of backlighting--say a piece of cloudy sky--then that shot is typically underexposed by a stop or more. In these cases, the highlight is still blown out and the shadows are typically washed out in noise. This may just be the way the meter is designed to work and I should avoid compositions with bright patches of sky. Even so, the meter on the 1D would do a much better job in the same conditions. When the scene isn't too contrasty, the exposures are just fine.
3. Misframed Shots
This one is a real puzzle. It doesn't happen often enough for me to blame it completely on the rangefinder, but I've got a surprisingly large collection of shots where the subject is just off to one side by a bit. I can understand this when I'm shooting with a 21mm or a 75mm lens, since the R-D1 doesn't have framelines for those focal lengths and I visually guess at where the frame is. But I've got portraits taken with a 35mm where I wanted to put someone dead center and they end up with part of an arm out of the frame. It's weird because these are often shots where I'd move around and pay close attention to what I was seeing in the viewfinder. Casual tests shooting rectangular objects around my apartment don't reveal any obvious flaws with the rangefinder, so maybe it's how I'm holding the camera or something.
4. Other Issues
My body seems to have a bunch of hot pixels. It's not really a big deal since ACR maps them out, but sometimes I have to go back in and clean shots up by hand. I avoid shooting JPG for this reason, since then I *always* have to fix the images. The discarding of the first shutter release in sleep mode drives me nuts. I'm sure that in another year or so I'll be used to it. The only other annoyance is that the grippy plastic is peeling off. Of course, I did lug the camera through the heat of SE Asia for two months and maybe that had something to do with it.
So these are the gripes. They may just be part of the personality of the camera, but none of these problems ever came up with my Canon digitals and they received similar (or much worse) treatment.
On the plus side, while I get a lower percentage of clean technical shots with the R-D1, I seem to get more images that work as interesting photographs. Maybe it's the lenses or simply the fact that I use a smaller camera differently than a larger one. These happy surprises are enough incentive to stick with the Epson and try to work around it's quirks.
Another advantage of the Epson (and rangefinders in general) is that the lenses are small and very sturdy. I've wrecked several Canon lenses, including the L variety, by dropping them on camping trips and vibrating them to death on bumpy motorcycle rides. While I haven't subjected the R-D1 body to that kind of punishment yet, I'm pretty sure the purely mechanical rangefinder lenses can put up with much more abuse than the delicate innards of EOS lenses.
On the whole, I really like shooting with the Epson. I'm going to have to be much more careful about my technique, but I think that's a solvable problem. I may also send my R-D1 into the factory and see if they can do something about the focus problem.
My hope is that within a year or so we'll have either a Digital M from Leica or an R-D2 that really delivers the digital rangefinder concept without the quality control problems in the R-D1.
After several several thousand exposure on the Epson (between 5K and 8K, I'd guess) I've started to notice some consistent problems in what I end up with from the R-D1. I'm sure operator error is the most significant cause, but I wonder if the camera itself contributes sometimes.
Here's are some problems that I've seen:
1. Front focusing
A significant percentage of my shots have the focus just a little bit too close. Using a 35mm lens, the focus is off by maybe an inch at a "loose" portrait distance. It's not much of an issue with wider lenses or smaller apertures, but it's still there. I've had great difficulty being able to get accurate focus at all with a 75mm lens at anything wider than F4.0. Since this problem shows up with different lenses and those same lenses work fine on my M6, I suspect it's a camera issue.
2. Contrasty Underexposure
I've been using AE (Auto Exposure) quite a bit. When an image has even a small patch of backlighting--say a piece of cloudy sky--then that shot is typically underexposed by a stop or more. In these cases, the highlight is still blown out and the shadows are typically washed out in noise. This may just be the way the meter is designed to work and I should avoid compositions with bright patches of sky. Even so, the meter on the 1D would do a much better job in the same conditions. When the scene isn't too contrasty, the exposures are just fine.
3. Misframed Shots
This one is a real puzzle. It doesn't happen often enough for me to blame it completely on the rangefinder, but I've got a surprisingly large collection of shots where the subject is just off to one side by a bit. I can understand this when I'm shooting with a 21mm or a 75mm lens, since the R-D1 doesn't have framelines for those focal lengths and I visually guess at where the frame is. But I've got portraits taken with a 35mm where I wanted to put someone dead center and they end up with part of an arm out of the frame. It's weird because these are often shots where I'd move around and pay close attention to what I was seeing in the viewfinder. Casual tests shooting rectangular objects around my apartment don't reveal any obvious flaws with the rangefinder, so maybe it's how I'm holding the camera or something.
4. Other Issues
My body seems to have a bunch of hot pixels. It's not really a big deal since ACR maps them out, but sometimes I have to go back in and clean shots up by hand. I avoid shooting JPG for this reason, since then I *always* have to fix the images. The discarding of the first shutter release in sleep mode drives me nuts. I'm sure that in another year or so I'll be used to it. The only other annoyance is that the grippy plastic is peeling off. Of course, I did lug the camera through the heat of SE Asia for two months and maybe that had something to do with it.
So these are the gripes. They may just be part of the personality of the camera, but none of these problems ever came up with my Canon digitals and they received similar (or much worse) treatment.
On the plus side, while I get a lower percentage of clean technical shots with the R-D1, I seem to get more images that work as interesting photographs. Maybe it's the lenses or simply the fact that I use a smaller camera differently than a larger one. These happy surprises are enough incentive to stick with the Epson and try to work around it's quirks.
Another advantage of the Epson (and rangefinders in general) is that the lenses are small and very sturdy. I've wrecked several Canon lenses, including the L variety, by dropping them on camping trips and vibrating them to death on bumpy motorcycle rides. While I haven't subjected the R-D1 body to that kind of punishment yet, I'm pretty sure the purely mechanical rangefinder lenses can put up with much more abuse than the delicate innards of EOS lenses.
On the whole, I really like shooting with the Epson. I'm going to have to be much more careful about my technique, but I think that's a solvable problem. I may also send my R-D1 into the factory and see if they can do something about the focus problem.
My hope is that within a year or so we'll have either a Digital M from Leica or an R-D2 that really delivers the digital rangefinder concept without the quality control problems in the R-D1.
