Epson is finally set to end support for its line of digital cameras next year. While it signals the end of an era, some of these still-supported cameras haven't been seen on store shelves for more than 20 years.
In 2010, when I started working as a journalist in Tokyo, layoffs of newspaper photographers had reached the stage where reporters couldn't expect a decent layout unless they provided their own story art. I couldn't afford a camera, but I also couldn't afford to see my stories published without illustration, so I bought a DSLR and soon learned to hate it, or at least to hate the self-conscious way it made the people I was photographing behave.
Epson has revealed the designs for what would have been the successor to the R-D1s camera. The company says it was being developed in 2010 but was scrapped due to its shrinking digital camera market share.
Epson released the R-D1s rangefinder in 2006 and sold it for three years before taking it off the market. Recently while organizing a warehouse, the company discovered 30 brand-new ones and rather than throwing them out, wants to offer them to fans.
When you hear the name "Epson" you probably think of printers, but if you've been around cameras long enough, you may just remember the Epson R-D1: the world's first digital rangefinder and one of the coolest cameras that never got its due.
Japanese camera blog Egami found an interesting just-published patent by Epson that was first filed last year. The goal of the technology appears to be to make older vintage lenses more useable on newer cameras. Basically, it seems that the company wants to add a small camera/mirror/lens component to the front of camera that's designed to track the settings on old manual lenses. The photos in the patent show what appears to be Epson R-D1 cameras enhanced with special arms that are dedicated to spying on the lens' settings.
Did you know that the first digital rangefinder camera to hit the market was the Epson R-D1 back in 2004? What's more, rumor has it that Epson may be considering a followup digital rangefinder to succeed the R-D1, which was made in a partnership with Cosina.