[Leica] RD-1 and I

[lambroving at worldnet.att.net (William G. Lamb, III)]

Tom,

Any chance of a full film review of the 50 ASPH you were photographed
using with this camera? Observations? Comparisons?

William

At 09:34 PM 12/08/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>Epson, Japan graciously lent me a RD-1 at photokina to try. It has been in 
>my
>hands now for over three months - it has also been in lots of other hands as
>I have lent it to a multitude of friends who are Leica/CV users and also
>digital shooters. The biggest problem has been to get it back from these 
>guys "Oh,
>can I keep it for another day, please" was a common request. It turns out 
>that
>even for a devoted film-user; the RD-1 is highly addictive. You keep digging
>through your lens cabinet for stranger and stranger lenses to adapt to it
>"just to see how it works". In the end I added up the lenses I used on the 
>RD-1
>and it came to more than 55, ranging from 12/5,6 Ultra-Wide Heliar to a 
>200/4
>Micro-Nikkor!
>  Mine came with the Multilanguage printed manual although I have not used 
> it
>since I unpacked the camera in Cologne, just to find out were to put the
>battery and the SD-card. It is an intuitive camera particularly if you are 
>used to
>a Leica M or Bessa RF camera. There is nothing complex about the controls 
>and
>the buttons are few and simple to understand. The menus are easy to grasp, 
>and
>once in black/white mode I left the speed at 400 ASA, put the camera in
>AE-mode and just kept shooting. Only correction I did was to increase the 
>edge
>sharpness slightly and occasionally increase contrast (the prewar Hektor 
>50/2,5
>and Summar are rather flat) or decrease it when using modern, multicoated
>Aspherical lenses (these tend to be a bit over-corrected and often can fry 
>the
>highlights)....

>Analogically Yours,
>Tom A
>----
>Tom Abrahamsson
>Vancouver, BC
>Canada
>rapidwinder.com