RFH
rfhansen.wordpress.com
I finally went and did it: Bought an Epson R-D1 with the firmware upgrade. Thank you to all R-D1 owners for convincing me to acquire this amazing tool. Your recommendations and great images helped my decision along.
I halfway feared that Photokina would reveal a new innovation that would make the R-D1 obsolete. (Un)fortunately that didn't happen.
The build quality is excellent. Beautiful finder. A few years back I held a Leica M8 in my hands for a few shots, and I was disappointed to miss the rock solid feeling of the M6. And the body was too thick for a RF, at least in my opinion. With the R-D1, no such expectations and hence no disappointment. For a guy with big hands, the R-D1's size is perfect. I added a tall screw to the shutter button to make the release softer.
I already had a set of three M-lenses (35, 50 and 90), an Industar 22 and a Jupiter 26. For $20 I purchased an Industar 69 so I would have a cheap 28mm to play around with. At the price, that's all I expected to get, but after a bit of re-greasing and adjusting for infinity focus, this little pancake lens is actually quite charming.
Upon disassembling it, I discovered that one of two the stop screws behind the focus ring was missing. “Typically Russian" I thought. But then I realized that the missing screw allows me to focus past the 80 cm mark and down to 30 cm. Not too bad after all.
At anything below 5.6 it's soft as butter, but from there sharpness and detail increase to a surprisingly acceptable level. Vignetting isn't too bad, and it's easily corrected in the RAW processor anyway. Of course the lack of rangefinder coupling makes its use a bit cumbersome, but when you get the focus right, the I-69 is actually quite good.
The I-26 has proven to be surprisingly sharp from appx. f4, and on my screen it's easy to mix up the images from the I-26 and my Summicron 50 (gasp!).
I also tested the I-22 stopped down a few steps, and it too performed very well.
To me, one of the greatest advantages of the R-D1 is the ability to use the high ISO modes and still get pleasantly looking images. 1600 in B&W RAW is amazing with its film-like grain. As much as I like my Ricoh GX100, that small sensor doesn't exactly shine when used for low-light work, now does it?
No more words for now. Peep the images.
Industar 69
Summicron 35
Summicron 35
I halfway feared that Photokina would reveal a new innovation that would make the R-D1 obsolete. (Un)fortunately that didn't happen.
The build quality is excellent. Beautiful finder. A few years back I held a Leica M8 in my hands for a few shots, and I was disappointed to miss the rock solid feeling of the M6. And the body was too thick for a RF, at least in my opinion. With the R-D1, no such expectations and hence no disappointment. For a guy with big hands, the R-D1's size is perfect. I added a tall screw to the shutter button to make the release softer.
I already had a set of three M-lenses (35, 50 and 90), an Industar 22 and a Jupiter 26. For $20 I purchased an Industar 69 so I would have a cheap 28mm to play around with. At the price, that's all I expected to get, but after a bit of re-greasing and adjusting for infinity focus, this little pancake lens is actually quite charming.
Upon disassembling it, I discovered that one of two the stop screws behind the focus ring was missing. “Typically Russian" I thought. But then I realized that the missing screw allows me to focus past the 80 cm mark and down to 30 cm. Not too bad after all.
At anything below 5.6 it's soft as butter, but from there sharpness and detail increase to a surprisingly acceptable level. Vignetting isn't too bad, and it's easily corrected in the RAW processor anyway. Of course the lack of rangefinder coupling makes its use a bit cumbersome, but when you get the focus right, the I-69 is actually quite good.
The I-26 has proven to be surprisingly sharp from appx. f4, and on my screen it's easy to mix up the images from the I-26 and my Summicron 50 (gasp!).
I also tested the I-22 stopped down a few steps, and it too performed very well.
To me, one of the greatest advantages of the R-D1 is the ability to use the high ISO modes and still get pleasantly looking images. 1600 in B&W RAW is amazing with its film-like grain. As much as I like my Ricoh GX100, that small sensor doesn't exactly shine when used for low-light work, now does it?
No more words for now. Peep the images.
Industar 69
Summicron 35
Summicron 35
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