I am considering the Nikon 990 vs. the Epson PhotoPC3000Z, and have several questions that I would appreciate any input you have....

1. Does Epson make their own cameras? (I notice a little sign on the bottom of the camera that said "Epson Seiko", so I'm curious...)

2. Do you have any experience with Epson technical support? I think of Epson as a printer/scanner company, and Nikon as a camera company... If I spend 900-1000 dollars for a dig cam, it needs to have pretty solid tech support.

3. Any other comments on the PhotoPC3000Z vs the Nikon 990?? (Both have features I want: Fast lenses, good hand "feel", AA batteries, compact flash, USB, etc... Nikon is a little on the big side compared to the Epson.. Comments are very much appreciated!

Thanks! RB

-- Ralph Brown (rbrown1@us.ibm.com), July 14, 2000

Answers

I thought the 990 swivel lens was a little much when I bought the camera but since have found it to be really advantageous when shooting from a tripod. Yes, tripod heads swizel in all directions but on other cameras the monitor screen goes with it making it necessary to orient your head to the direction of the lens. (And if you are a rock star you can take self portraits of yourself for your fans.)

-- bill (this_old_house@pobox.com), July 14, 2000.

Epson owns Seiko, thats why you see it on so many of Epson's products, as far as some of the internal parts of the camera, I assume they outsource stuff like the lenses and CCD(just like other digicam companies do). They probably use the Sony CCD like many companies. Both cameras are very good although the Nikon 950 and Epson 750 were known as rather "buggy" cameras, the newer 990 and Epson 3000 fix most of that. I've printed some Epson 3000 pictures and they look great to me, easily capturing more detail than my Nikon 950. You really can't go wrong either way with these two cameras. The swivel body Nikon gives you impression it's rather fragile, even though I've never had a problem yet.

-- Cris Daniels (danfla@gte.net), July 16, 2000.