Epson PhotoPC L-410

At 5.4 ounces, the 4-megapixel Epson PhotoPC L-410 feels bulky compared to other point-and-shoots in its class, and you may have to squint to preview pictures and navigate the menus displayed in the postage stamp 1.5-inch LCD. Still, at half the price of some of the other cameras in its class, the L-410 is a bargain camera that takes very good pictures.

Designed for pointing and shooting, you’ll find few scene modes in the L-410—just Normal, Landscape, and Portrait—and manual mode is limited to exposure compensation (which you set from a menu), ISO (sensitivity is 80 to 200 ISO in automatic mode and from 100 to 400 in manual mode), and white balance (there’s no custom white balance). Menus are easy to navigate, but the thumbpad has a squishy feel. You can focus to 4.33 inches in Macro mode, a bit distant if you plan to take many extreme close-ups. A fast continuous mode lets you take up to three pictures per second until your memory is full, but you’ll need an optional high-speed memory card.

Movie mode resolution is 640-by-480 pixels at 30fps at the best quality, and you can capture video continuously until your memory is full, but the quality is mediocre, with grainy video and weak audio. You can record audio annotations to photos that are as long as 30 seconds.

We rated the color Very Good and pictures were sharp, with crisp edges, no fringing, and very little noise. We noticed slight barrel distortion.

There is no storage card included, but there’s 16MB of internal memory built-in, which allows you to capture a few more shots even after your memory card is full. A CR-V3 battery is included and the camera accepts two AA sized batteries.

Macworld’s Buying Advice

This camera is really designed to be a point-and-shoot still camera, but its photos are surprisingly clear and sharp. In some ways, it’s more impressive than some of the other cameras in its class—especially for its price.