Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/07/08

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Subject: [Leica] More Epson RD-1 pics
From: bdcolen at earthlink.net (B. D. Colen)
Date: Thu Jul 8 06:32:43 2004

I would suggest that we really aren't going to have much useful
information about the performance of this camera until a site such as
Dpreview, or one of our own, puts it through its paces and reports on
results in a way we can easily interpret them. 

B. D.

-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org
[mailto:lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of
Peter Klein
Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2004 12:22 AM
To: lug@leica-users.org
Subject: Re: [Leica] More Epson RD-1 pics


Something peculiar about the RD-1 review pics posted this morning.  It
is 
very hard to tell the exact point of focus in many of the pictures.  One

thing is for sure, it is not the model's eyes most of the time.  Is this

due to the photographer's unfamiliarity with RF, or because of the short
RF 
baselength?  I would assume the former, as I've seen plenty of
well-focused 
close-up Bessa R and R2 pictures with wide-open fast 50mm lenses, and
even 
with 90mm lenses.

Apart from the obvious operator error, I feel the same disorientation in

these pictures that I feel when I see pictures taken by a mediocre 
high-speed lens, wide open.  A graph of the relative focus vs. distance
is 
a broad hump rather than a sharp peak, and nothing looks exactly in 
focus  If the RD-1 samples are RAW images, converted to JPG but not 
sharpened, that would explain things.  The problem could also be an
overly 
aggressive anti-aliasing filter, or unfinished in-camera software.

What bothers me is that most of the RD-1 pictures we've seen so far have

this soft look.  Something about the review cameras is either unfinished
or 
not right.

All this tells me that we can't really judge the final camera by these 
pictures.  There are just too many unknowns.   And the Altavista
Babelfish 
translation is more amusing than helpful.  When squeezing lens, software

impression becomes sharpness.  Uh-huh. . .   And please not be disturbed
by 
delicate indistinction eyelashes of most attractive model.

Meanwhile, I would suggest downloading a few photos and applying the
same 
small amount of unsharp mask to each.  I did, and things started to look

better.  This may give a better idea of what finished photos might look 
like.  But eyelashes still in bokeh-land.

--Peter "Lost in Translation" Klein
Seattle, WA

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In reply to: Message from pklein at 2alpha.net (Peter Klein) ([Leica] More Epson RD-1 pics)