[Leica] The Epson RD 1 - a lemon

[rangefinder at screengang.com (Didier Ludwig)]

Lovable? My conclusion first: I would not buy it again, and I would not 
recommend to any LUGger to buy neither a new nor a used one.

I bought mine in may 06 from Robert White in UK. RF was out of alignment at 
infinity and at close up. Sent it to Epson Switzerland (whose service 
department is outsourced to a company where they had never seen such a 
camera before). Got the camera back after 7 (!) weeks - poorly packaged, 
disalignment even worse than before. Did not have the nerves to send it back 
to them, so I sent it on my costs to DAG Wisconsin, who did a fine job 
within a few days. After some more time I noticed almost all of my pictures 
were tilted. I inspected the camera again, and found out the sensor ist not 
built in correctly - it's tilted, clearly visible by eye when opening the 
shutter with B! And to make framing even more tricky, the framelines are 
slightly tilted, too - the other way! Not enough, I had a massive hot pixel 
issue (correction did not help much), and the batteries (new, original) did 
not work for more than 75-100 shots while it should be 250 (Raw+jpg, LCD 
off, shortest energy saving time). I contacted RW in UK and described my 
problems. They wrote to Epson UK and did not receive a satisfactory answer 
within two months(!!)... Now I lost my patience and shipped the camera back 
to RW. Don't know what will happen. Probably it's gonna take months. Maybe 
they can repair it, maybe they replace it, maybe I get the same lemon back. 
Or another lemon.

I regret having spent that money as I got no value for it. Definitely feel 
cheated. 

Happy to use the M6 again, but very angry about the crappy QC and service of 
Epson. These guys would have better stayed with consumer printers and inks, 
where people do not care that much about quality and service as Leica users 
do.

The digital M would have come anyway, if R-D1 or not. 

Didier


>...The RD1 was (is) in my view a lovable dog.
>Howard (in HK)