The adventure begins: out-of-warranty R-D1 failure...

[newyorkone]

I also think these may have been re-boxed demos. Mine came with only 150 exposures which seems low if it had been returned by an individual owner.

How do you check how many shots have been taken? Thanks.

 

[Socke]

Yes, $1800 or so dollars is alot to spend for a camera, but that's probably less than you spend for a good PC to process your photos. And what is that PC's life expectancy? If you get 4 years out of it, you are doing real well. Probably more like 3. And when you are done with it, do you repair it? Do you upgrade it? Or do you just retire it?
/Ira

My PC case from 1992 holds one of the last "Baby AT" mainboards with an AMD K6-III processor and 256MB RAM and a 8 GB HD, it doesn't do much on the other hand.

The PC I work at is a Fujitsu Siemens from 2001 wich was powered by an AMD Athlon 1400 then and I replaced the Mainboard with a newer one and now I have a dual core Athlon 64, I didn't regret replacing the slow SD-RAM against DDR2 and upgrading from 0.5 GB to 2GB, but I miss my fanless Matrox graphics card which had to be replaced due to the lack of an AGP port.

The 5 year old harddisk and CD burner as well as the case and the 17" TFT are still in use. My keyboard is even older, it's an original DEC keyboard from 1995!

Ok, I retired the 1995 dual pentium 90 DEC PC some five years ago and the 1998 HP Omnibook 900 Notebook in january.
Windows NT4 on the DEC and Windows 98SE on the HP don't offer the tools I need now, but they would work with their full potential if needed.

On the other hand I don't see a posibility to upgrade one of my Contax SLRs from 1976 to 1997 to anything I would want to use today, so I had to buy a Canon d60 in 2002 which I still use and which still works fine after some 30.000 clicks.

I don't buy Epson printers on the other hand, the smaller inkjets are a PITA when you don't print much and I've thrown away two of them after the ink dried, now I now that you have to powercycle them at least once a week so you can waste ink to clean the nozzles.

The bigger lasers don't offer anything over the HP offerings, did I mention that my HP Laserjet 4 from 1995 is still fine.

Same for scanners, my Canon FS2710 from the stoneage works with some tricks for Windows XP and my Agfa Snapscan 1236s does well with the software still available from Agfa.

The only products closely related to Epson I use are two watches with Seiko clockworks 🙂

 

[tmessenger]

My refurb unit had a hand written note in the owners manual form the previous owner indicating the date he registered the camera with epson and he had also written in the serial #. So the one I got was definitely pre-owned.

Tim

 

[Topdog1]

My PC case from 1992 holds one of the last "Baby AT" mainboards with an AMD K6-III processor and 256MB RAM and a 8 GB HD, it doesn't do much on the other hand.

The PC I work at is a Fujitsu Siemens from 2001 wich was powered by an AMD Athlon 1400 then and I replaced the Mainboard with a newer one and now I have a dual core Athlon 64, I didn't regret replacing the slow SD-RAM against DDR2 and upgrading from 0.5 GB to 2GB, but I miss my fanless Matrox graphics card which had to be replaced due to the lack of an AGP port.

The 5 year old harddisk and CD burner as well as the case and the 17" TFT are still in use. My keyboard is even older, it's an original DEC keyboard from 1995!

Ok, I retired the 1995 dual pentium 90 DEC PC some five years ago and the 1998 HP Omnibook 900 Notebook in january.
Windows NT4 on the DEC and Windows 98SE on the HP don't offer the tools I need now, but they would work with their full potential if needed.

On the other hand I don't see a posibility to upgrade one of my Contax SLRs from 1976 to 1997 to anything I would want to use today, so I had to buy a Canon d60 in 2002 which I still use and which still works fine after some 30.000 clicks.

I don't buy Epson printers on the other hand, the smaller inkjets are a PITA when you don't print much and I've thrown away two of them after the ink dried, now I now that you have to powercycle them at least once a week so you can waste ink to clean the nozzles.

The bigger lasers don't offer anything over the HP offerings, did I mention that my HP Laserjet 4 from 1995 is still fine.

Same for scanners, my Canon FS2710 from the stoneage works with some tricks for Windows XP and my Agfa Snapscan 1236s does well with the software still available from Agfa.

The only products closely related to Epson I use are two watches with Seiko clockworks 🙂

A camera is like a Macintsoh, not a PC - It's vertically integrated. Except for the "sensor" in a non-digital camera, where you get to swap it out every 12-36 shots! 😉

 

[saxshooter]

I think I'm only at around 4000.

Can I ask what the symptoms of your failure were? In my case it seems that the front curtain won't stay down. I'll cock the shutter, and the front curtain goes down, but then as the lever is returning it pops back up. And then if I power-cycle the camera, it lets me cock the shutter again (with no shutter press in between). Very odd...

j

The shutter would not fully cock. Advance lever would have a little resistance, as if it were half cocking something. I didn't see the curtain move at all. So I am more inclined to think it was a failure of the Cosina mechanism than an electronic issue. But then again, I've never owned a Cosina camera so I am not familiar with its idiosyncracies and failure rates. But nothing should fail after 13,000 exposures.

 

[pfogle]

Does anyone know what the shutter module actually is? These shutters should be pretty much drop in replaceable units, if you have the right spares. I had assumed it was a standard Cosina shutter, but who knows???

Sooner or later someones gonna have to take one apart 🙁

 

[JonasYip]

OK, so this appears to be the "official" path to repair:

The very friendly people at the electronics place that I was referred to by Epson tech support called their Epson rep and apparently I'm supposed to bring it to the electronics place, I guess because they handle invoicing and stuff, and they'll ship it to Epson, and for a flat rate of $511 (shipping included) it gets fixed.

Mind you, the flat rate is apparently without regard to the what the problem might actually be. Which probably means they ship it off to Epson Japan, and they ship back a different camera which may have a different set of problems...

So my question now is: if parts were actually available, how much would a shutter module replacement generally cost? I have little experience with camera repair...

j

 

[SteveM(PA)]

Expensive, but interesting...there are channels...and a process...comforting, sorta...

 

[Socke]

A camera is like a Macintsoh, not a PC - It's vertically integrated. Except for the "sensor" in a non-digital camera, where you get to swap it out every 12-36 shots! 😉

And neither can I upgrade my Contax RTS to a 1/8000th shutter and TTL flash so it reaches RTS III specs.

La vida es una puta!

 

[saxshooter]

OK, so this appears to be the "official" path to repair:

The very friendly people at the electronics place that I was referred to by Epson tech support called their Epson rep and apparently I'm supposed to bring it to the electronics place, I guess because they handle invoicing and stuff, and they'll ship it to Epson, and for a flat rate of $511 (shipping included) it gets fixed.

Mind you, the flat rate is apparently without regard to the what the problem might actually be. Which probably means they ship it off to Epson Japan, and they ship back a different camera which may have a different set of problems...

So my question now is: if parts were actually available, how much would a shutter module replacement generally cost? I have little experience with camera repair...

j

Jonas, please post who you are supposed to ship to, it should be public knowledge to those who own the camera, and if the "vendor" or subcontractor changes, we should all be aware. We should publically account for this process. Cheers, Charlie

 

[ampguy]

For those whose shutters have gone out, what lenses were you using? I've been reluctant to use my J12 with my new refurb RD1, since unlike a film camera, I can't see the clearances during a test exposure. I now have an Ultron 35mm, but am just curious if some J12's combined with some RD1's cause contact?

 

[Terao]

Does anyone know what the shutter module actually is? These shutters should be pretty much drop in replaceable units, if you have the right spares. I had assumed it was a standard Cosina shutter, but who knows???

Sooner or later someones gonna have to take one apart 🙁

Given that its and aperture-priority body I assume its a Bessa R2/R3A shutter. Of course assumption is the mother of... 🙄

 

[saxshooter]

For those whose shutters have gone out, what lenses were you using? I've been reluctant to use my J12 with my new refurb RD1, since unlike a film camera, I can't see the clearances during a test exposure. I now have an Ultron 35mm, but am just curious if some J12's combined with some RD1's cause contact?

I used mostly a 15mm 4.5 super wide heliar and a 21mm Elmarit, so I believe no bearing on the shutter (rear element did not come close). I remember reading somewhere that non OEM batteries were not recommended because due to slight difference in voltage (or something) can result in shutter problems. Don't know if this is myth or if there is some truth to it. That said, up until the time my first camera died, I only had one OEM Epson cell and the other 4-5 were 1300 maH cells.

 

[ampguy]

Thanks Erik and Sax, that's good info. I hope you get yours fixed soon and for a fair price. I guess I will play it safe and use the recommended stuff for year one at least.

 

[wintoid]

Given that its and aperture-priority body I assume its a Bessa R2/R3A shutter. Of course assumption is the mother of... 🙄

I have an R2a and a RD1s and the shutters *sound* completely different. I suppose that could be body resonance though.

 

[Terao]

I have an R2a and a RD1s and the shutters *sound* completely different. I suppose that could be body resonance though.

Like I said, assumption is the mother of... 😀

Given the well-known hassles with Bessa shutters I kind of hope it is different...

 

[John Robertson]

Well I've had four Bessas in total over the last 6-7 years, put a hell of a lot of film through them, and several friends have done the same, including a professional who has done God knows how many weddings with a Bessa R + 35 pancake! What well-known hassles??
I always am reminded that people who are happy with any product tend to say nothing, but a vocal minority who have troubles shout the loudest!
In some ways I hope that this is the case here!

 

[JonasYip]

For those who were following this thread about R-D1 repair, I posted an update about my (successful) repair in a different thread:

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?p=445081

j