R-D1 Holding Up Well...mostly

S

Sean Reid

Guest
My R-D1 has spent much of the summer travelling in a small padded case in the trunk of a motorcycle. Still seems to work great overall and focus is still spot on. I did just e-mail Epson, though, because the various niggling things may make a replacement a good idea...maybe

1. The rubber covering has started to come loose a bit on the front of the camera, shutter side (could be glued easily)

2. A couple of weeks after I bought it, the paint flaked off much of my power switch

3. The rubber surround on my eyepiece has split in one place.

4. A double press of the shutter release is frequently required when the LCD is swung out but switched off. I started a thread on this sometime back.

I can live with 1 - 3 but 4 is a problem sometimes. If Epson is going to replace the camera, I want to test the replacement before mine goes anywhere because my current camera has:

1. very few hot pixels
2. accurate focus with most lenses
3. square to the finder framelines

Since I now use the R-D1 professionally, I can't afford to be without a body for a repair, etc...

Yet...despite those hassles...this is still my favorite camera by far and I still love it. In fact, I'll be using a second body for weddings.

Cheers,

Sean
 
Same story here Sean ........ paint starts coming off on body front near shutter and had to glue the rubber grips all around. Technical the camera is flawless though ............ so i have to live with ......... would not know what to do if there is no successor to the R-d1 in the near future.
Any idea what to expect from the shutter in the future .. how many actuations?? And is the shutter replacable in the future?
Thinking about a 2nd body myself .... just to play safe!


Kind Regards

Han
 
J. Borger said:
Any idea what to expect from the shutter in the future .. how many actuations?
Click to expand...

Speaking of which, I've seen various people post how many shutter firings their R-D 1s have had (often in connection with problems which did or did not appear.)

Where are you getting this information? Is it displayed in a setup menu somewhere? Or is everyone just estimating?
 
J. Borger said:
Same story here Sean ........ paint starts coming off on body front near shutter and had to glue the rubber grips all around
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Your paint is flaking off! Hold on to those cameras! In a few years collectors will be drooling over their beat-up appearance just like they are drooling over beat-up black-paint Leicas right now. You guys are getting richer all the time.

I'm relatively new to digital. How does a "hot pixel" manifest itself in a photo? Can you use longer lenses like 75's or 90's with the RD-1? Isn't the viewfinder limited to 28-35-50mm?
 
I've made about 8000 exposures with the camera so far, based on the file number of my last picture. The paint flaking off the lever happened early on and doesn't bother me much. In fact, the more it flakes off, the more the camera starts to look like Winogrand's M4. The rubber piece can be glued back on but it's annoying as is (J., what did you use for glue?). The eyepiece can replaced in seconds so that's no big deal. Functionally, it's a wonderful camera except for the double shutter press thing which, as I understand it, does not happen on all examples of the R-D1. The problems are mostly cosmetic and superficial, otherwise it's just a wonderful tool.

You can use lenses longer than 50mm on the R-D1 but:

1. You need accessory finders for framing (135 for a 90)
2. The rangefinder may or may not focus longer lenses accurately.

I don't go above 50 with this camera myself but many do.

Hot pixels show up as small blocks of white where picture data should be.

The second body is so that I can work with a 28 and a 50 at the ready during fast changing events.

Cheers,

Sean
 
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Sean,

For glue i used Patex "second glue" ... very powerfull and fast. No time for mistakes!
If you ever have to glue the right part of the rubber grip be carefull with the door to the SD card. Mine would not open at first .. luckily it opened with some force and without damage.
Move it open-close-open-close a few times after gluing the rubber.


JLW,

I made about 5500 exposures .. looking at file names.
For DSLR camera's like the Canons there is software available to test the number of exposures made with a camera. With the Epson, like Sean said, you can tell from the file names.

The cheaper Canons (like 20D) have shutters that last about 20.000-30.000 exposures (on average).
The 1 series somewhere in the 150.000 range.

I have no idea what to expect from the R-d1.


Zeos,

I have no serious issues with hot or dead pixels ... never noticed one in a real picture.
I see about 3-4 when shooting with the lens cap on though.
They show up like white blown out dots. There is software to handle these. It is for instance less of an issue when shooting raw and using a converter that handles these compared to shooting jpegs.
And ..... you can always cloon them out in Photoshop .. an easy job to do.
Hot pixels are not unique to the R-D1 ...... they are reported in relation to most other digital cameras too. There seem to be R-D1's around with unacceptable high numbers of hot pixels though!

Han
 
You can only use the file number to check the total number of exposures if you have Sequential Numbering turned on in the basic camera settings and keep it that way. If it is set to off (at any stage) a new sequential number is given each time you replace the memory card. Mine came set in the off position when I first got the camera and it was some time before I reset it. I'm on about 2,000 exposures now but have shot about a 1,000 more than this.

My rubber covering is also coming loose at the front hinge side.

Black paint is wearing off on most bottom corners, around the bottom of the card door hinge and the gap where you flip it open.

Rangefinder accuracy and frame lines were fine from the start and have remained so. (There is a slight problem with front focus with my 35mm Cron as reported here in the past, cam compatibility, but all other lenses its fine). Mine has been subjected to some vibration, but not the rigors of Motorcycle transportation like Sean's, so if it stands up to this it bodes well.

I've had 3 Hot/ Stuck pixels in jpeg from the start, these show red not white and I think I have seen a few more that are white at the highest iso's when I have shot in jpeg, but these don't show in A4 prints and the others are easily cloned out. I have though seen other examples of the R-D1 showing bright Red or Green hot spots on the LCD when zoomed in and in jpeg mode. Probably hot pixels "Clumping" together.

Rubber around the eyepiece is fine so far even though I wear glasses and press these hard against the finder to see the 28mm framelines.

I think none of this is too bad as I don't traet cameras as precious objects or worry about the resale value. I still really love how camera performs and I too would like a second body, but I'm still hoping for a x0.7 viewfinder version that would have parallax corrected framelines down to at least 21mm (32mm with factor). :angel:
 
One slight quibble I have with my R-D1 is the battery life. I seem to get much less than most people have reported here. At best I get about 200 shots with the Epson 1500 mAh And about 150 with a generic 1350 mAh, with really minimum use of the LCD. If I use the LCD even bit more the frame count drops much further and the problem then is if I don't keep an eye on it the camera can miss shots if the camera dies while I'm shooting. I tend to leave the camera in the on position with the time out set to 5 mins all the time I'm out with it, but frequently tap the shutter to avoid the double press problem. Do people find they get better battery life when shooting say 200 frames over 20 minutes as to 200 frames over a day and leaving the camera on? I suppose I could set the LCD brightness lower than the "5" default to see if this helps. Is anyone doing this?

Most days I can get away with two fully charged batteries, but keep meaning to get a couple more.
 
Paint off in various places, a lost eyepiece ring, but most importantly, I have had to re-trim the RF once since DAG did the repair for me. I am at about 3700 exposures.

Ed
 
J. Borger said:
Same story here Sean ........ paint starts coming off on body front near shutter and had to glue the rubber grips all around. Technical the camera is flawless though ............ so i have to live with ......... would not know what to do if there is no successor to the R-d1 in the near future.
Any idea what to expect from the shutter in the future .. how many actuations?? And is the shutter replacable in the future?
Thinking about a 2nd body myself .... just to play safe!


Kind Regards

Han
Click to expand...

Hi Han,

I don't think anyone's made enough exposures yet to kill the shutter but perhaps its happened and I haven't heard about it. I would think the shutter would be replaceable but can't say for sure.

Cheers,

Sean
 
Jim Watts said:
I still really love how camera performs and I too would like a second body, but I'm still hoping for a x0.7 viewfinder version that would have parallax corrected framelines down to at least 21mm (32mm with factor). :angel:
Click to expand...
That makes sense. The ideal would be two optional viewfinders. One for the 21-28-35-40 range and a second high magnification viewfinder for the 50-75-90-135 range
 
Ed Schwartzreic said:
Paint off in various places, a lost eyepiece ring, but most importantly, I have had to re-trim the RF once since DAG did the repair for me. I am at about 3700 exposures.
Click to expand...
That's interesting. When I asked him, Don told me he wouldn't be working on digital cameras.

(After I initially posted this comment it occurred to me that the RD-1 is very similar to the Leica RF's that Goldberg works on all of the time. I assume that he has recognized, like the rest of us, that digital is the future.)
 
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I have some of the above mentioned issues, such as paint wear around the power switch, rubber decay around the eyepiece, when focusing out and back there is minimal slack space on the return, I need to double depress the shutter button before the light meter is fully oriented, and there are as many as 15 hot pixels dependant upon exposure times and low-level light environments.

Here's a view of the paint wear, which doesn't look so bad. Then again it clearly will never look like a Barnack brassed historical item...

http://peterbilitch.smugmug.com/gallery/661699/1/28556657

Peter
 
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