[Leica] Henning's RD 1 report

[cummer at netvigator.com (Howard Cummer)]

Hi Luggers,
First a special thanks to Henning for his comments on his RD1 test 
drive. As reported here previously the Epson RAW plug in has 
programming to reduce vignetting on all lenses from 12mm all the way up 
to 90mm. You just select the focal length and click on it and edge 
vignetting is gone. Please see

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder.tcl?folder_id=434937


for an example with my 15mm heliar.

I have tried Adrian Bradshaw's 90 APO and 50 Noctilux while visiting in 
Beijing and the APO back focusses by a couple of cms in the close range 
as does the Nocti, but at intermediate distances, the APO goes 
progressively out of focus in relation to the rangefinder focus point 
until you hit infinity and then the image is sharp. But as reported at 
infinity (where my rangefinder is out) the lens cuts a sharp image on 
the CCD. We didn't test the Noctilux at infinity but by 3 meters its 
focus point was way off the rangefinder indication. I do hope my 
replacement camera is better. If not I think, sadly - because I like 
other aspects of the camera,  Epson has a serious problem on its hands 
about the design and manufacture of the 1:1 rangefinder.


Cheers


Howard (in cool Beijing this morning)