Mustek MDC 3000 review

The MDC 3000 is the cheapest camera on test this month and it shows as soon as you take it out of the box. The plastic feels cheap in your hand and the batteries rattle around inside their compartment. The motor driving the focusing system is also noisy, with grinding sounds accompanying each press of the shutter button.

Despite the 3000 in the name, the Mustek is actually a 2-megapixel camera. This gives it a maximum optical resolution of 1,600 x 1,200, although like the BenQ DC2110 it can interpolate this up to 2,048 x 1,536. With this resolution, the Mustek is able to get 24 pictures on the supplied 16MB CompactFlash memory card in its top quality mode.

The two image-adjustment tools - exposure compensation and white balance - are reached though the menu system rather than having their own buttons. This makes it awkward to access these functions quickly to set up the camera for shots.

Controls on the camera are limited. The shutter button is the only control on the top, while the back is shared by the LCD screen, power button, mode switch and four-way direction pad, which also selects options. The LCD is the poorest in the Labs this month. Although the 1.8in diagonal sounds easy to see, it only has 61,600 pixels when most other screens have more than 100,000. This makes it tricky to check the focus of an image.

More worryingly, indoors and with the flash turned on, the Mustek was unable to take a clear picture. It produced a pink and yellow tinge and overexposed the centre while letting the outer edges fade away to grey, thanks to the overbearing flash. Without the flash, the picture was much better balanced. The colours were still nowhere near as accurate as other cameras and looked washed out, but at least there were no white balance problems. While it doesn't have a macro mode, when we performed this test the Mustek captured a smaller area than either the BenQ DC2110 or the Canon A40.

Outside, the MDC 3000 made a poor job of exposing the landscape picture, burning out most of the sky and the left-hand side of our model's face. There was also colour fringing around part of her hair, barrel distortion was present and JPEG artefacts were clearly visible even at the best quality setting. Our portrait photo was much better, with less colour fringing, although artefacts were still apparent.

With all these faults and without an optical zoom, the Mustek is a lacklustre introduction to digital photography. We recommend you either spend more and buy the Canon or choose a decent quality film camera.