Product Reviews

Spot the difference. After two years' gestation, it seems Epson's camera lab has given birth to twins: the L-300 and L-400. Look a bit closer, though, and you'll see that while the L-300 is home to a 3.2 megapixel CCD (2048 x 1536 pixels), the sensor in the L-400 is a far more impressive 4 megapixel (2304 x 1728); more than enough for producing full-size A4 prints.

Both cameras have a 3x optical zoom, but while the digital zoom on the L-300 tops out at 2x, it stretches to 3x on the L-400, giving a combined zoom of 9x. The cameras are shipped with 16Mb SD cards, which slide into place among the four AA batteries. Although we'd have preferred rechargeables, you can at least buy replacements for the bundled alkaline cells pretty much wherever you happen to be. Epson claims this shouldn't be for at least 500 shots in normal use.

The cameras are well-balanced units that are comfortable to hold and quick to start up. They have 1.5in LCD panels on the back to supplement the optical viewfinders and in a nice touch the optical viewfinders are mounted above the lenses. The tripod mount points, though, are offset from the CCD, which could play havoc if you want to shoot panoramas. The aperture range of both is a fairly pedestrian f2.8-f4.9, ISO settings stretch from 100 to 400, and exposure adjustment is on a scale of +/-2EV in chunky 0.5EV strides. The focal length of each is equivalent to 34mm-102mm in a conventional 35mm camera.

Sensor sensibility

There are as few differences under the hood as there are on the outside. The most obvious is the sensor. While the L-400 can boast a full megapixel on top of what the L-300 has to offer, both are squeezed into fairly small 1/2.5in chips. This can cause a problem for some cameras, as the smaller the CCD the greater the potential for noise.

By contrast, Nikon and Olympus package their 4 megapixel chips in a 1/1.8in format in the Coolpix 4500 and Camedia C-4040Zoom respectively, although Kodak matches Epson's penchant

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for miniaturisation with its 4 megapixel DX6440 using the same 1/2.5in form factor.

We were disappointed, then, that the output of both Epson cameras demonstrated considerable noise in a range of conditions. With the ISO setting left on automatic, they insisted in employing the flash even in a brightly lit conservatory at midday. In a controlled test scene set up under three 100W household spotlights the flash still fired when set to auto. Switching it off resulted in a slightly speckled image. Used in a more casual manner, taking pictures under dimmed interior lighting, the results were particularly grainy.

They also had fairly shallow depths of field and in a couple of images we had difficulty working out quite where either of them had chosen to focus. It's not that there was anything intrinsically wrong with the results, just that something seemed to have gone a little awry.

This is a shame, as both performed very well in many other ways. There was no evidence of compression artefacts unless we zoomed the images considerably, and the lenses were first-class; no matter how hard we hunted we couldn't find a single instance of chromatic aberration. Macros were among the best we've seen, and edges were crisp and well defined, while in most cases colours were a true representation of the original subject. However, in areas of dense texture, such as a carpet, there was some smoothing of the surface when using the normal compression setting, giving the image a slightly unnatural, wiped-clean feel.

Our tests showed the L-300 could squeeze 13 high-resolution images onto the bundled memory card at the finest compression setting, while the L-400's bulkier shots had it squealing after just 11.

Making movies

Both models will capture AVI video at a maximum of 320 x 240 pixels, complete with audio. At this resolution they do so in bursts of up to 60 seconds, filling the bundled SD card in one minute 51 seconds. Dropping the resolution to 160 x 120 pixels filled the card in three minutes 26 seconds, without the 60-second limit kicking in. The quality of both the moving images and the sound is excellent at the higher of the two resolutions, but there's clear banding when set to 160 x 120 pixels.

The Epson PhotoPC L-300 and L-400 aren't expensive and, as you can buy the Stylus Photo 830U printer at the same time for just £20 more than the cost of the camera itself, they should appeal to snappers on a budget. However, image quality leaves something to be desired, and even a palatable price tag can do little to counter that.