Epson PhotoPC 3100Z

Epson PhotoPC 3100Z images by Uwe Kulick (Image rights)

The Epson PhotoPC 3100Z was introduced in 2001 as an advanced digital viewfinder zoom camera. It has a fast zoom lens, a zoom viewfinder with diopter correction, and a hot shoe to attach a common electronic flashgun. Despite of the latter feature it has also a built-in electronic flash. The thumb-wheel around its power switch is the mode dial. Six operation modes are selectable: Setup, Pronterconnection, images review, viewfinder mode, color screen mode, and image series mode. 7 settings control buttons are below and beside the color screen. They also serve for menu navigation in the Setup mode. On the top is a conventional LCD display which shows the main settings. Beside that display are three buttons for setting flash mode, self-timer, and image quality. Image pixel-size choices are 640×480 (VGA), 1600×1200, 2048×1536 and 2544×1904 (HyPict). Storage format can be switched from JPEG to TIFF.