First shown at this year's PMA show and later officially announced in mid-March 2004, the R-D1 features a 6.1 megapixel APS-C sized CCD image sensor, offers both RAW (.ERF) and JPEG file formats, stores images on SD memory cards, and accepts a selection of certain Leica M (or, with an adapter, Leica L)-mount lenses. PC Watch's article features numerous external views of a pre-production camera, and a number of pre-production sample images as follows (unless otherwise noted, exposure control is Aperture Priority, white balance is Auto, and ISO is 200):

PC Watch's article also contains two screenshots of Epson's Photolier software, for conversion of the R-D1's .ERF RAW files. To see the sample images (and read the article, if you speak Japanese), visit the PC Watch website.