New RD-1x

Wiyum said:
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As for the LCD, my guess is that smaller LCDs simply aren't available anymore. While the D40 is still using the same chip, I can't think of a single device still using the old 2" LCDs.
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I can't imagine that it's now impossbile now to get a 2" inch LCD. There are so many devices out there (printers, cell phones) which don't require larger screens.

As for the D40, is it assured that the two cameras share the same chip (only because the D40 is 6 MP)?
 
Pickett Wilson said:
kuzano, and then after all this marketing genius Epson is going to sell it only in Japan.
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A lot of Epson R-D1s were sold on-line from stores located in Japan, when the supply over-seas had dried out. So why starting a worldwide selling and marketing campaign ? :)
 
kuzano said:
For photographers, Epson is known primarily for their superior printing products. I use, and have used, Epson for color printing since the first Epson Stylus Color models. Superior products. Every once in a while somebody... Canon, or HP comes out with a nice printer that falls on it's ass and spurs Epson to greater development and product.

Now, Epson has made a superb marketing choice with this redux of what has been a successful path for them in the digital rangefinder market. To be able to bring out a product involving virtually NO R&D at a competitive new price... Killer Move on their part.

The RD1 has proven to be popular in the used marketplace, considering the used pricing. Clearly Epson calculates that there are not enough RD1 variants on the streets to feed this strong used market.

Second, they haven't screwed up a successful product. There is clearly a demand for it, just the way it was. If they had done any development at all, the market would have been unknown. This product has a known following.

They have made a clear statement about the continued life of this product. Most other manufacturers can't or won't commit to a product model for more than a few months, or even weeks. This is an incredible departure from the norm in a volatile market. This is consistent with Epsons decisions to support successful printer models for longer periods than most other manufacturers. Obviously Epsons decision makers are on top of the real needs of the marketplace.

The 6 megapixel resolution is clearly not a shortcoming in the market that's supported the camera, since it's the reason the camera is:

1) a rangefinder
2) The right size body for the market
3) A reasonable solution for a wide range of lenses, for which bodies are getting old and costly to maintain, particularly Leica.

I gotta say at this point that this re-introduction of the line is no more disappointing than a manufacturer coming out with an anniversary or collector model, such as Leica, Nikon or Canon.

And, as a marketing person, this is a major coup. Wow, the opportunity to sell a product that is known, desired and almost pure profit for one's employer. Epson can be happy about that as the biggest plus in this sales scheme.

Good Job Epson!!!
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OK.
But then they should have left it exactly like it was, as you said. Changing the LCD to be fixed is one of the things which probably will prevent me from buying one. The swivel LCD is one of the most beloved features of this camera. I can't tell for the japanese target market users, but throughout this forum everybody praises it, as far as I recall. So why drop it?
 
mn4367 said:
I can't imagine that it's now impossbile now to get a 2" inch LCD. There are so many devices out there (printers, cell phones) which don't require larger screens.

As for the D40, is it assured that the two cameras share the same chip (only because the D40 is 6 MP)?
Click to expand...

Perhaps you're right. The 2" screen things was just a guess.

The original R-D1 and R-D1s used the same 6mp chip as was found in the D100, D70, D70s, more Pentax cameras than I care to name, and later the D40. I believe that I read that the R-D1x will use the very same chip as the original R-D1, so yes, I think we're confident it is the same chip the D40 used.

The D40 got more out of that chip than, say, the D70 did, so there is hope for the images out of the R-D1x to be better than the R-D1. Given that this is Epson (not known for their software/engineering prowess) and everything about this camera suggests that "minimizing R&D" was the main goal of the team, I'm not holding my breath.
 
mn4367 said:
I can't imagine that it's now impossbile now to get a 2" inch LCD. There are so many devices out there (printers, cell phones) which don't require larger screens.

As for the D40, is it assured that the two cameras share the same chip (only because the D40 is 6 MP)?
Click to expand...

The R-D1 uses the Nikon (Sony) D100 chip.
 
kuzano said:
Now, Epson has made a superb marketing choice with this redux of what has been a successful path for them in the digital rangefinder market. To be able to bring out a product involving virtually NO R&D at a competitive new price... Killer Move on their part.
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The price is far from competitive, and certainly isn't new. The camera launched with that price point five years ago.

This may be "superb" from a marketing standpoint if the goal of the product was short term money. If the goal was to build a brand or to grow the marketplace for more such cameras, then this is by my estimation an abject failure. Almost to the letter, the people here that are excited for this announcement are current R-D1 owners, incredulous that someone could want anything to improve in five years' time, or merely excited at continued technical support for their cameras. Everyone not excited opted against the R-D1 in the past for one reason or another, and relaunching the same exact camera at an outlandish price isn't changing their mind. Epson'll make some money off of those that want an R-D1 badly enough to pay this price, they'll sell through, and then they'll be back where they started from, at least in terms of having a presence or any brand to speak of. In my eyes it is careless and shows no regard at all for the customer nor any confidence in the viability of digital rangefinders in general.
 
Wiyum said:
...The original R-D1 and R-D1s used the same 6mp chip as was found in the D100, D70, D70s...
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Sorry to repeat. The D100 sensor (Sony ICX413AQ) is not the same as that of the D70 & D70s (Sony ICX453AK). The chip of the R-D1, R-D1s and, probably, R-D1x is that of the D100, not the D70. Suffice it to use both Epsons and D70 to see the difference. The D70 is sharper with more moire problems. Pretty good little DSLR by the way. I still use it for my job.
 
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Sorry if it has been discussed already - but has anyone, who can read the japanese Epson page, found out if the grip would also work and be be available for the older R-D1/R-D1s models? T.I.A.,
Didier
 
mani said:
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Incurring the extra costs in development (there's a new image processing chip in there, and possibly new developing software), marketing and support doesn't make sense just to get rid of (at most) a few thousand unsold units.
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I found an old R-D1 brochure on the austrian Epson site (link) containing the following paragraph:

"Die einzigartige Bildverarbeitungs-
technologie Epson Digital Image
ARTist (EDIART) gibt die optischen
Informationen vom Kameraobjektiv an
den CCD-Sensor weiter und erstellt
daraus eine Bilddatei."

Short translation is that there is some EDiART image processing used for transfering image data and creating an image file.

So even in this aspect there doesn't seem to be anything new or improved (as the image of the chip on www.epson.jp may pretend).
 
Hard to be convincing here. The R-D1 has the same sensor as that of the D100. Not the same as the D70's (see my post above). IQ differences between the R-D1 and the D70 come mainly from the weaker AA filter of the latter.
 
Absolutely.....another major plus to the program

Absolutely.....another major plus to the program

Pickett Wilson said:
kuzano, and then after all this marketing genius Epson is going to sell it only in Japan.
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Why ship (and incur that expense) when the local market will snap up all your production.

If you made a product and knew that you wouldn't have to pay any freight on it to get it to customers, would you ship.

Again, a truly master stroke for Epson.

I'd love to have the bonus that's going to the guy or focus group that came up with this program.
 
mn4367 said:
OK.The swivel LCD is one of the most beloved features of this camera. I can't tell for the japanese target market users, but throughout this forum everybody praises it, as far as I recall. So why drop it?
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My quick response. There don't seem to be a lot of things really wrong with this camera. However, I've always wondered why swiveling LCD's are not more problematic than they are. My suspicion is that dropping the swiveling LCD reduced mfg cost, and hedged against potential maintenance issues on the swivel, if there were problems there.

I believe this intro is a money grab at a propitious time and the reward will be large profits, with limited expenditure.
 
LCT said:
Hard to be convincing here. The R-D1 has the same sensor as that of the D100. Not the same as the D70's (see my post above). IQ differences between the R-D1 and the D70 come mainly from the weaker AA filter of the latter.
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My apologies for missing wherever you stated that earlier... I wasn't intending to be obtuse. I genuinely thought the Nikon D100, D70, D70s, D40, and Pentax *ist D, *ist DS, *ist DS2, *ist DL, *ist DL2, and K100D all shared the same sensor.

Do you know, then, which chip ended up becoming the basis for the numerous Pentax DSLRs and the D40? Are any of those yet another 6mp Sony sensor?
 
I'm fascinated by the LCD screen ... if this is just a re-hash by Epson to unload some cameras on the local market why re-design the screen and change it from folding to fixed?

They could have left the camera exactly as was ... or perhaps they needed to be seen as having done some 'visible' re-design to justify their claims of an improved item.

I've got nothing against what they've done and the price doesn't bother me either because I ain't buying one ... there's just a few things about this whole deal that don't quite add up for me!
 
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Keith said:
I'm fascinated by the LCD screen ... if this is just a re-hash by Epson to unload some cameras on the local market why re-design the screen and change it from folding to fixed?

They could have left the camera exactly as was ... or perhaps they needed to be seen as having done some 'visible' re-design to justify their claims of an improved item.

I've got nothing against what they've done and the price doesn't bother me either because I ain't buying one ... there's just a few things about this whole deal that don't quite add up for me!
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they did have that questionnaire out in the japanese market. (and the screen *is* crap though i prefer the swivel)....

we can only hope that perhaps someone at Epson has an ace up his sleeve and this is just sticking his toe in to test the waters (excuse me for completely mixing my metaphors) :D
 
kuzano said:
My quick response. There don't seem to be a lot of things really wrong with this camera. However, I've always wondered why swiveling LCD's are not more problematic than they are. My suspicion is that dropping the swiveling LCD reduced mfg cost, and hedged against potential maintenance issues on the swivel, if there were problems there.

I believe this intro is a money grab at a propitious time and the reward will be large profits, with limited expenditure.
Click to expand...

Maybe you are right. The question is how big cost for the swiveling LCD really are compared to the total mfg costs. Difficult to judge for us 'outsiders'. A redesign also produces costs.

With regard to the prevention of maintenance issues with the old screen, wouldn't it have been wiser to establish a better QC in other areas and advertise that? I think a lot more users had problems with RF misalignments and locked shutters than with the screen. Also, I don't think it is that hard to get a swivel screen reliable. Others have done that before (Canon PowerShot G5, for example).
 
kuzano said:
Why ship (and incur that expense) when the local market will snap up all your production.

If you made a product and knew that you wouldn't have to pay any freight on it to get it to customers, would you ship.

Again, a truly master stroke for Epson.

I'd love to have the bonus that's going to the guy or focus group that came up with this program.
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Shipping is a very small cost per camera compared to the $3000 or even $2000 asking price, and it is payed many times over by the overseas customer, not the producing company.

The posts by Wiyum cast very serious doubt on the wisdom of Epson policies regarding this camera.
 
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