[Leica] RD-1 Catfight

[dcm at pobox.com (David C. Mason)]

Ah, but the difference here Ian is that you actually wrote a review
that appears to be *above* a grade school level. Having never owned
the camera I can't pretend to know if the guy was right or not, but I
can laugh at the way he said it! ;)


Dave



On 11/10/05, Ian Watts <i.watts@virgin.net> wrote:
>
> > David C. Mason" wrote:
> >
> > My favorite bit is learning that a "movie mode" is a "handy feature".
> > No wait, my favorite bit is the reviewer admitting that he/she just
> > doesn't "get it".
>
> I think the reviewer makes it clear that he is not a fan of the
> rangefinder concept. That prejudice runs all the way through the
> review. However, apart from a few factual errors, I don't think his
> review of the RD-1 is that wide of the mark. As somebody who put his
> money where his mouth is (about a year ago to the day) and bought one
> of these things, I feel I can legitimately add my tuppence worth to
> this discussion. I tried hard to like this camera and persevered with
> it until only three or four months ago (almost to the exclusion of my
> M cameras), but my conclusion is that the RD-1 is pretty much a dog.
> Image quality is decent for a 6mp class sensor (with some M lenses,
> though not all) but the camera itself is quite poor. Personally, I
> was never bothered by the wind lever nor it's notoriously small RAW
> buffer but the RD-1's other quirks left much to be desired. The
> viewfinder is bright but the framelines are woefully inaccurate and,
> on my camera at least, at an angle in relation to the sensor. My
> camera also suffered from a random problem of an unresponsive shutter
> release which was totally unrelated to the camera's 'sleep-
> mode' (ideal for shooting those decisive moments). I fully agree with
> the reviewer that the exposure metering could be much better
> (consistent would have been nice). Some have commented that Epson
> probably made the RD-1 underexpose deliberately to avoid blown out
> highlights but I think it is probably just a piss-poor implementation
> by Epson. Strangely enough, my camera never really suffered from the
> focus problems many have reported (although, if I'm honest, it did
> front-focus with my 28/2 and the rangefinder patch never quite lined
> up properly at infinity). To use a popular American analogy, Epson
> hit less a home run with the RD-1 and more one of those hits that
> goes flying back into the crowd.
>
> Ian Watts.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>
>