R-D1 Owners: Wides and action

[froyd]

Anybody here photographing young kids or other images with quickly moving subjects with anything wider than a 28mm (on the R-D1, of course)?

I've always been fascinated by the R3 and R-D1 VF, but I like the 35 and 28 focal lengths on film, so I would have to resort to external VF.

I imagine using an external VF cumbersome when focus needs to be readjusted often. In sunny conditions, I could probably zone focus with a large DoF and be OK, but I wanted to hear stories and see examples from people who do this in practice. It's one of the reasons that has me leaning towards the M8 even though I think I would like the R-D1 better.

 

[paradoxbox]

with the r-d1 and a 28mm you get something approximating the 35mm FOV on film, and there are framelines built into the camera for that, so you can use the camera normally for any kind of photography you like and always be able to keep your eye on the rf patch.

if you want the 28mm fov you'll want a 15 or 18mm lens and finder basically. IMO those focal lengths keep everything in focus anyway so you'll rarely need to look at the rf patch and just end up always using the external finder to frame.

in practice using an external finder is not a problem at all but it definitely needs to be parallax corrected as the r-d1 is a fairly tall camera.

 

[back alley]

i stopped using external finders early on with the rd1. it has the lcd screen to check against and really, it doesn't take all that long to become very adept at quesstimating what will be in the image.
i have used 12/15/25 lenses without problem and without external finders.

 

[froyd]

with the r-d1 and a 28mm you get something approximating the 35mm FOV on film,

Wish it were true!

Unfortunately 28 x 1.5 = 42

Hyperfocal or scale focusing would be a passable solution outdoors, but indoors, shooting at 800 ISO, it would translate into speeds of 1/30 f2.8 or 1/30 f4 depending on the room. On the Zeiss 25mm, that would give me a DOF as shallow as 3.5 feet. For me, that's too small to track moving subjects.

 

[LCT]

Why wouldn't you focus normally with the rangefinder? It is not that difficult to guesstimate framing with 21mm lenses. Or you might use an external finder to get an idea of the frame and focus with the RF as usual. As for moving subjects, the wider the lens the wider the DoF and it can be useful to focus on a close fixed point if any (the white pot in my pic below). R-D1, CV 21/4, no external VF, 10% cropping more or less.

 

[kermaier]

With a 25mm lens you get a 37.5mm equivalent FOV, and using the entive VF window is a good approximation of the image area (of course, not parallax corrected).

With a 21mm lens, you get 31.5mm equivalent FOV. You can use a 28mm external VF; the framelines usually include a 10-15% safety margin, so 31.5mm probably matches the 28mm frame better than a 28mm-equivalent lens. (Voigtlander also made a 21mm "D" finder for the 21mm lenses on the R-D1, but that's hard to find these days.)

In any case, you can't shoot action with a rangefinder unless you can either: pre-focus on the distance where you expect the action to occur; or stop down and zone focus with decent DoF. You need to do the former if you have low light and need to open up the lens/slow the shutter; you can use the latter if you have good light. This is not unique to the R-D1, of course.

::Ari

 

[froyd]

In any case, you can't shoot action with a rangefinder unless you can either: pre-focus on the distance where you expect the action to occur; or stop down and zone focus with decent DoF. You need to do the former if you have low light and need to open up the lens/slow the shutter; you can use the latter if you have good light. This is not unique to the R-D1, of course.

::Ari

Agree 100%. Just that on my .72 VF I can frame and focus in one step. Perhaps I'm imagining the two step dance is harder to do than I imagine. LCT clearly seems to use wides on the 1:1 VF with good effect when photographing kids --though they did not really seem to be too mobile 🙂

 

[ncaleffi]

Froyd, I use the RD1 on a daily basis coupled with a 21mm lens - the pre-aspherical Leica Elmarit M, and kids (my sons) are the most sought after subjects. I don't use an external viewfinder. This is a shot done yesterday, I hope it may help in understanding the kind of frame you can get with the 1,5 crop:

 

[Lss]

In any case, you can't shoot action with a rangefinder unless you can either: pre-focus on the distance where you expect the action to occur; or stop down and zone focus with decent DoF.

It can be very difficult, but hardly impossible. Pre- and zone focus are naturally important tools, but rangefinder focusing is not only for static scenes. Personally, I find focus tracking near impossible with a rangefinder (although, there are special cases where I can do it fairly well), but shooting action is much more than just focus tracking.