Grober said:
SO ....... doesn't this mean that Epson is planning to announce the R-D2 at Photokina?
I rather suspect not. Considering that the reception the R-D 1 got was less than unanimously enthusiastic*, I suspect that Epson will shake its corporate head with relief at having escaped alive, and never dip a toe in such troubled waters again.
*Granted, aside from legitimate QC complaints from some adopters, and intelligent discussion of the concept's limitations from RF-savvy users here, most of the reviewer put-downs elsewhere showed a painful lack of "get-it" of the R-D 1 concept; taxonomically, the vast majority can be summarized as follows:
-- The Digi-Kid: "Dude, what's with this, like, thing you have to flip with your thumb? Don't they know digitals are supposed to be EZ?"
-- The Professional Photo-Stud: "No real professional photogs (like me!) use rangefinders anymore. Not enough megapixels and you can't even use a zoom lens. This thing is just an expensive toy. Save your money for my next workshop instead."
-- The Leicadolator: "It's just a piece of cheap Japanese junk made in Japan by some no-name Japanese bunch of Japanese people in Japan. How can you expect it to have that indefinable air of superlative quality and mystical mystique that can come only from precision German craftsmanship? I've never used one and never seen one and wouldn't be caught dead with one, but I can tell you it's crap."
-- The film diehard: "It's digital, and digital is evil . For the same money I could buy 300 more Feds and have them overhauled by Oleg, and then I could use them to shoot film, because I'm a quality-conscious image-maker who insists on maximum image quality. That's why I shoot film in the 672 Feds I own already, then throw all the negatives on my $49 flatbed scanner, burn JPEGs onto a CD, and take it to Wal-Mart to get 4x6 prints for 29 cents each. No way digital is going to match the superlative quality of THAT!"
