Epson’s PhotoPC 3000Z Vies for Top Image-Quality Honors

Ben Long

Competing head-to-head with venerable favorites from Nikon and Olympus, the $999 Epson PhotoPC 3000Z stands out as Epson America’s most ambitious digital camera to date. In image quality, this 3-megapixel model rivals the best that Nikon and Olympus have to offer for the price, and the camera packs enough features to satisfy even serious shutterbugs. Alas, some usability problems detract from an otherwise excellent camera.

Form and Function
With its upright, rectangular design, the PhotoPC 3000Z looks similar to the Olympus 3000. Reasonably sized, it fits comfortably in the hand and has a just-right weight we liked: It’s heavy enough to feel solid and substantial but still light enough to sling over a shoulder. We judged its overall design as top-notch.

The front of the camera houses the 3x zoom lens, which retracts when you turn off the camera. The back of the camera sports a 1.8-inch LCD and the camera’s control buttons. A sturdy metal tripod mount sits on the bottom of the camera directly beneath the lens — a must for panorama photography. The top of the camera holds the small LCD status display, the shutter release, a few control buttons, and the camera’s combination power switch and mode-select dial.

The 3000Z includes not only a built-in flash but also a hot shoe for using an external unit. The camera’s included 16 MB Type I CompactFlash card installs and removes easily from a compartment in the right side of the camera, which can be accessed even when the camera is tripod-mounted.

You select shooting mode using the mode dial on the top of the camera. Three modes are provided: a Viewfinder mode, which leaves the camera’s LCD turned off to conserve battery power (the camera includes an optical viewfinder); an LCD mode, which activates the camera’s LCD for viewfinder user; and a Continuous mode, which lets you use one of the camera’s several burst modes.

The Dark Side
Unfortunately, the PhotoPC 3000Z is not the most convenient camera to shoot with. Though it fits well in the hand, the 3000Z shows performance or design problems in almost all aspects of shooting. The troubles begin when you power on the camera. The power button sits in the middle of the Mode-select dial, only an inch or so from the shutter release, and it’s surprisingly easy to confuse the button with the shutter release. Another drawback: The 3000Z is a little slow to boot, requiring about 5 seconds to extend its lens and prepare for shooting.

The camera’s zoom control is also slow to respond — there is roughly a half-second delay between pressing the zoom control and any actual zooming — and the lens moves none-too-fast even once you’ve got its attention. This sluggish performance makes small, incremental zooms very difficult.

As with other autofocus cameras, you meter and focus by placing its focusing target on your subject and pressing the shutter release (not the power button!) halfway. When the camera has locked focus, a small green light glows in the viewfinder. Unfortunately, because of the positioning of this light, it can be difficult if not impossible to see, especially in bright sunlight.

Metering and focusing seem to take longer with the 3000Z than competitive cameras — sometimes a second or more. And the camera’s shutter lag of half a second is aggravating in a camera at this price point. More reminiscent of first-generation cameras in these respects, the PhotoPC 3000Z often misses “moments” because of its slow shutter response time.

Image processing is fairly slow, but not painfully so until you start shooting uncompressed images, when processing times balloon to 20 seconds or more. Fortunately, the camera includes a buffer that allows you to shoot three high-quality images without pausing.

Simply put, the PhotoPC 3000Z is slow for a camera in this price range, and very possibly too slow for many photographers who demand 3-megapixel resolution.

Control Issues
The PhotoPC’s controls are well-designed, allowing you to change image-quality and flash modes and initiate the self timer using buttons on the top of the camera. You control all other features from within the camera’s menu system. Menus are displayed on the camera’s LCD, with the functions of the seven control buttons changing from menu to menu. Having to enter the camera’s menu system to change metering modes, macro, and exposure compensation is a bit frustrating.

Finally, the 3000Z’s optical viewfinder could also use some work. The viewfinder, which operates at about 85-percent coverage, is somewhat dull and cloudy, which is difficult to accept in a $1,000 camera.

Features Aplenty
The PhotoPC 3000Z may be a little disappointing when it comes to speed, but it’s certainly not lacking in features. Spot metering, adjustable ISO settings, manual white balance, and exposure compensation are all provided. The camera also includes all the expected flash modes, and a good macro feature that can focus to within 2.5 inches.

In addition to its fully automatic mode, the 3000Z includes an aperture-priority mode and a full manual mode. When using aperture priority, you set the aperture from the camera’s LCD screen using two buttons. Aperture ranges from a fast f/2 to f/8. In full manual mode, a separate set of buttons controls shutter speed, which ranges from 8 seconds to 1/600th of a second.

Unfortunately, Epson opted against including a shutter-priority mode. This omission is especially frustrating given that the 3000Z has a tendency to use slow shutter speeds — as slow as 1/30th of a second — when shooting with its flash. During our testing, it also chose a wider aperture in some daylight shots than we would have liked, frequently resulting in slightly blurred images because of shallow depth of field.

The 3000Z lets you add sound annotations to images using the camera’s built-in mic. In Continuous mode, the camera can capture 320-by-240 video clips with audio up to 25 seconds long. A Burst mode lets you shoot as many as seven fine-quality images at 1 frame per second or as many as 37 standard quality images at 2 fps.

The camera also includes a time lapse mode that allows you to shoot in intervals ranging from 1 minute to 24 hours. This is a great feature that we wish more vendors would adopt.

Extra, Extra
Epson has also done a great job of accessorizing the camera. Included in the box you’ll find a set of rechargeable batteries with a charger, Mac and Windows serial cables, a USB cable, a video cable, and a soft carrying case. This is far more than you get with any other camera in this class, and we’re pleased that a vendor has finally recognized that when you spend $1,000, you want to find more in the box than just a camera.

Epson should also be commended for its excellent documentation, which is a large step beyond the reference manuals that accompany many digital cameras. It offers the best manual we’ve seen with a digital camera.

Looking Good
Apart from the not-so-rare blurred image, the 3000Z needs no apologies for its image quality. Color reproduction was excellent throughout the camera’s tonal range. We also found little of the shadow noise reported by some users of this and other 3-megapixel cameras. Images occasionally had a very slight green cast, but they showed truer color than images shot with a Nikon Coolpix 990. In general, we also found the contrast ratios of the 3000Z’s images to be superior to those of the Coolpix.

The PhotoPC 3000Z’s image quality is top notch with excellent color reproduction, dynamic range and detail.(The uncompressed sample image may be viewed here. Be warned: The uncompressed image is just over 700K, so downloading might be slow depending on your connection.)

Like most other 2- and 3-megapixel cameras, the PhotoPC 3000Z has some problems with chromatic abberations (particularly with large apertures). For instance, we detected purple fringes around areas of sharp changes in contrast. Then again, although we could force the camera to produce these artifacts, we did not find them troublesome in normal, everyday shooting.

Our only real complaint with the 3000Z’s image quality was the number of pictures that we shot that were out of focus. Whether or not this was caused by the camera’s choice of a larger aperture or long exposure is unclear. Other users have theorized that the camera’s focusing target is so tiny that it’s easy to assume that the camera is focusing on one object, when it’s actually focused somewhere else.

Though the camera’s 3.3-million-pixel CCD provides excellent detail and quality, the 3000Z’s images did seem a little soft. We found that applying a bit of Unsharp Masking improved the sharpness of the images immensely.

As with some of its other cameras, Epson employs its HyPict technology with the 3000Z. This on-board interpolation scheme resamples the camera’s images to a higher resolution — 2,544 by 1,904, up from 2,048 by 1,536. Though the results are good, we prefer not to have our camera alter our images this way, opting for the control of a good image editing program instead. Postponing any interpolation to the editing stage will also help preserve space on the camera’s CompactFlash card.

Who Needs It
The slow speed and few design quirks of the Epson PhotoPC 3000Z may well make it an unattractive option for many would be buyers, but the camera’s image quality is good enough that you’d be remiss not to at least give this camera a closer look if you care about such things. Buyers who put a premium on value and image quality rather than on speed should put this camera at the top of their 3-megapixel digital camera list.

For specifications, click here.