[Leica] RD-1 Catfight--comment on camera reviews in general

[wrs111445 at yahoo.com (Bill Smith)]

It seems to me that the camera reviews from the UK appear to be a great deal 
more honest/ critical than those of the USA. Most of the stuff I've read 
from MY country is pure B.S. w/ a huge note below to "Buy it here"!  What we 
need is less "Rah-Rah" and more objectivity. 
 
Bill

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.

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