In a rather poor day spent collecting—a couple of disposable cameras at one place, hours later an unrelated to photography item—I was poking through the electronics area of yet another thrift store. Much to my surprise tucked next to a curling iron I spotted edge-on a familiar “CANON” lettering on a box.
Reading sideways the “EOS” meant I had struck gold where I least expected it.
I picked the box up fearing the typical thrift store bug-a-boo of a completely ridiculous price. I was thrilled to see the camera was priced at $20. It was a Wednesday so I get 15% off, bringing the price to $17 with no tax. I was quite prepared to pay that.
I later found the 3000n was the middle of three similarly named EOS cameras from the end of film camera production. The straight 3000 was introduced in 1999. It was followed by this slightly lighter camera—the 3000N—in 2002. The final camera—the 3000V—was again even lighter when it came out in 2003.
“How light?”, you ask. A Canon FTb with 50 mm f/1.4 lens weighs 1037 g (with no PX625 battery) while the 3000N (with two lithium batteries) weighs 594 g. No film loaded in either camera.
The 3000N camera has all the bells and whistles.
The 3000N features—
Selectable wide-area 3-point autofocus
11-shooting modes, including five programmed Image Control Modes
automatic exposure bracketing
three exposure metering modes
an easy to use command dial
The 28-80 mm f/3.5-5.6 II lens covers most needs. The 3000N requires two CR123A lithium batteries, which falls midway between the cheaper 4-AA battery base accessory and some other manufacturer’s use of CR2 batteries (smaller but more costly).
To be light the 3000N is largely built of plastic. Rather than being a problem it actually feels very comfortable as plastic-to-plastic seems very smooth.
Your only lens control is AF (autofocus) or MF (manual focus). The manual focus ring is at the front of the lens with the wider zoom control being that knurled area.
Film loading is straight forward. Of course there is DX coding and the common rolling the film all the way out and rewinding it back as you shoot.
The control dial starts with—
the white rewind/ISO setting
and goes through—
the useful Automatic Depth-Of-field that allows you to measure closest and furthest sharp limits so the camera can set an appropriate f/stop to get everything in focus
M for manual setting of bot aperture and shutter speed
Av for manual setting of aperture
Tv for manual setting of shutter speed
P for program mode
OFF
Green square for the camera making the choices of everything
Portrait
Infinity focus
Close-up
Sports
Night (background) with flash (foreground)
On the other end of the camera’s top there is a LCD screen with three buttons to the left, two buttons to the back edge and a control dial above to the right. The shutter button is just above that.
The front has an autofocus assist white light that can be a little distracting to the subject. Still, if it means a successfully sharp image it can be quite helpful.
One easy to overlook—but quite clever feature—is a built into the neckstrap shoulder strap patch you can pry out to block the viewfinder window during selftimer shooting. (Just a small caution—it is a lot easier to get it out than put it away!)
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