EPSON R-D1

The world’s first digital rangefinder camera

A review and photo examples of the Epson R-D1 rangefinder digital camera.

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The lenses used in the photographic examples were the RICOH GR 28mm and the HOLOGON 16mm.
Details are given in the gallery captions.

1．About camera

The R-D1 is a Leica M-mount compatible digital rangefinder camera with a 6 megapixel APS-C size sensor released by Epson in 2004.

The R-D1 is equipped with a clock-like analog meter and a rotating LCD panel, making it a fun camera in contrast to the practicality of the later LEICA M8.

Although the sensor is APS-C, I feel that it is a very advanced technology to have the digital part housed in the mechanism of a film camera BESSA without making the camera too large.

The raw format of this camera is Epson’s original ERF format, which produces 3008 x 2000 pixel images from the 6 megapixel sensor. The capacity is 10MB per image, so if you use a 2GB SD card, you can take about 200 images.

The battery is a small EPALB1 (NP-80, Fujifilm, DB-20, Ricoh) . Although it is small, it has enough capacity to drive this camera, and although it is a camera that cannot take continuous shots, I was able to take 200 pictures on a 2GB SD card and the battery never ran out. According to the information on the Epson official website, it can take 1000 pictures under shooting condition 1 and 360 pictures under shooting condition 2.

Epson also provides software for developing image data free of charge, and EPSON Photolier is still officially distributed as of 2024.
It is a very easy-to-use software that has only been released for Windows, and I used Photolier to develop the images taken by the R-D1.

2．Usage

The R-D1 was released by Epson in 2004 as the first ever digital rangefinder camera, two years before the Leica M8.

For those who started taking up photography in the 2020s, Epson is likely known as a printer manufacturer, but in the 2000s, Epson manufactured and sold not only printers for image output, but also compact digital cameras for image input, and this camera was an extension of that.

The image sensor was a 6-megapixel APS-C size sensor, which was commonly used at the time, and the low-pass filter was made as thin as possible to make the most of the lens’s characteristics. Although Leica, Sony, Pentax, Ricoh, and others later released cameras without low-pass filters, support for low-pass filters was a rare specification in 2004.

With this camera, you can obtain images that directly express the characteristics of various lenses, even though it is 6 megapixels, and you can realize that the number of pixels is not everything when it comes to cameras.

Cosina technology appears to have been used for the camera’s mechanical parts, such as the viewfinder and shutter, and the maximum shutter speed has been increased to 1/2000, making it compatible with lenses with bright F-numbers to a certain extent.

However, the metal-curtain vertical focal-plane shutter makes a high-pitched noise like metal interfering with each other, so it cannot be called a quiet camera by any stretch of the imagination. Leica’s shutter sounds were loud on the Leica M8 and M9, but they became quieter with successor models.

APS-C size sensors cannot use the focal length of a 35mm lens as is, but with lenses such as wide-angle lenses where the amount of light in the peripheral areas drops and image quality deteriorates, there is the advantage that you can use only the good image quality in the center, even though you lose some of the individuality of the lens.
For example, when using the HOLOGON 16mm (the manufacturer does not recommend the use of lenses with rear lenses inside the camera like the HOLOGON, and as a rule, use at your own risk and no one will help you if the camera breaks), even if you cut the edges, there is a certain amount of vignetting, but there is no color cast around the edges of the image, which is a problem with the LEICA M9, so it can be used as a 24mm wide-angle lens.

Also, taking advantage of the fact that the camera does not have a mirror box, it is very thin and light, and it matches well with the small Cosina Voigtlander Color Skopar lenses rather than large lenses with large apertures.

This R-D1 is the camera that got me hooked on rangefinder cameras, and I used it for three years from 2005 to 2007, while the manufacturer adjusted the vertical misalignment of the viewfinder, which is a problem with this camera, several times, before moving on to the LEICA M8.

In the 2020s, the number of used cameras that work properly has decreased, and they are rarely seen on the market, and even if you do see one, it is quite expensive, so I probably won’t use it again.
A few years after I sold it in 2007, I bought an R-D1x as a clearance item and took some photos with it. I felt that the camera itself had not evolved at all, which was disappointing compared to the LEICA M digital.

The minor change version of the R-D1s has a heat sink added to the CCD to reduce sensor noise. The R-D1 does not have a heat sink, but I have never found it inconvenient in practice. Also, as far as I have used the R-D1x, I have not felt a significant difference in the way noise is handled compared to the R-D1. The results may be different if the CCD heats up during continuous shooting, but I did not use it in that way.

In contrast, Leica has evolved its digital rangefinder cameras, but as of 2024, the high price of the camera itself and the ever-widening gap between the evolution of digital sensors and the performance of the rangefinder mechanism seem to show the limits of the rangefinder system.
Everyone uses their camera differently, but I personally don’t think it’s a good way to use an M digital camera and check the focus position on the VISOFLEX or the rear LCD every time, so I have become estranged from the M digital.

3．Unreleased successor camra R-D2

What’s unfortunate about this camera is that it only underwent minor changes, and the second-generation R-D2 was never released. It’s easy to imagine that it would have been difficult for Epson, whose main business is not the camera body, to continue the business as the costs of developing and manufacturing digital cameras increased.

For example, if Sony, a direct descendant of Konica Minolta, which made rangefinder film cameras, had taken over this model, it would have been possible to create a rangefinder digital camera with its own sensor and image processing technology that only Sony could have.

However, since this camera uses a lot of Cosina’s technology in the camera part, if the rights were to be transferred to another company, there may have been an issue as to what to do with Cosina’s rights and technology.

If Cosina had continued to make it themselves, there would have been problems with software development, and since Cosina stopped making the BESSA film camera series after the release of this camera, there may have been problems with the design of the rangefinder camera’s mechanical parts and the supply of parts. It seems that it would have been difficult to continue either way, but it is very unfortunate that a successor to this rare camera was not released.

In 2017, the French company Pixii released an M-mount compatible rangefinder digital camera. Like the R-D1, Pixii started with an APS-C size sensor, and in 2024 released the Pixii Max equipped with a 35mm full-size sensor.

Although digital camera technology has become relatively versatile due to improvements in the technical capabilities of outsourced manufacturers, I think it is amazing that they continue to plan, design, and sell this product. Since there is no distributor in Japan and it is quite expensive in euros, I don’t have much chance to use it, but it is one of the cameras I would like to try someday.

Specification and Competitors

Model name	R-D1	R-D1s	R-D1x G
Effective Pixels	6.1 Mega Pixels	←	←
Finder	Real Image	←	←
Max shutter speed	1/2000	←	←
Battery	EPALB1	←	←
Back LCD	2.0-inch color LCD 235,000 pixels Rotatable	←	2.5-inch color LCD 230,000 pixels Fixed type
Recorded media	SD	SD	SD/SDHC
Release date	2004	2006	2009
Size(H x W x D)	142.0 x 88.5 ｘ 39.5	←	←
Weight (Body only)	560	←	570
Body Color	Black	←	←

Lens

Focal length	Lens name	35mm equivalent focal length
12mm	Ultra Wide Heliar 12mm	18mm
15mm	Super Wide Heliar 15mm	22.5mm
21mm	Color Skopar 21mm	31.5mm
25mm	Snap Shot Skopar 25mm	37.5mm
28mm	Color Skopar 28mm	42mm
35mm	Color Skopar 35mm	52.5mm
40mm	Nokton 40mm	60mm
50mm	Nokton 50mm	75mm
75mm	Color Heliar 75mm	102.5mm
90mm	Apo Lanthar 90mm	135mm