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Chinon ES-3000
Rating: good
WIN/MAC
Dycam 10-C
Rating between good and excellent
WIN/MAC
These mechanically identical twins are most notable for their motorized 3X zoom lenses and infrared autofocus ability. Taken together, these features make framing your shots fast and precise. Getting in tight on your subject is always an important photographic consideration, of course, but it's even more vital when using digital cameras. Cropping out unwanted backgrounds and blowing up the main image is easy enough when working with conventional film, but the comparatively low resolutions of digital photography cause unacceptable image deterioration with even modest enlargements.
Say you run a Web site that's devoted to publicizing your business selling comics and animation collectibles. The U.S. Postal Service comes out with a beautiful set of commemorative stamps devoted to classic comic strips. Your Web site devotees would certainly be interested in seeing them, so we tested the Chinon's ability to capture the image.
The Chinon has a built-in macro capability. We just set the mode to Macro and the lens zoomed down to a tight 19-inch focal distance. There was still a problem, though: Holding the camera perfectly steady when focusing in that tight was very difficult. So we mounted the camera on a tripod. But we still had to trip the shutter without jiggling...