Kodak do it again! (Kodak Easyshare DX6340)

Member Name: Kepler

Product:	Kodak Easyshare DX6340
Date:	28/02/04 (445 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Crisp pictures, Easy to use, Durable

Disadvantages: LCD screen drains the batteries quickly

I have had this Camera for about a year now and it is the first digital camera that I have owned. The decision to go digital was purely a financial one. I was planning a trip around Europe and I didn't want the expense of having to develop all the rolls of film I was planning to use. The camera cost me £199.99 from Amazon but is now available for just £149.99.

First I will start with the camera's specifications; it is not a particularly small camera but not a large one either. In my opinion this camera is around about the perfect size. Not too small that you are fumbling to use it properly nor too big that you can't carry it around with you comfortably. It has dimensions (width/depth/height) of 10.9 cm x 3.9cm x 6.5cm and weighs in at 260g. I have carried this camera around Europe for 4 months and found that I barely noticed its weight. It is also very durable and even survived being dropped a couple of times (once from quite a height).

The camera has an internal memory of 16MB, which is ok initially, but if you plan to take a lot of pictures then a memory card is a must. The camera can take both Multimedia (MMC) and Secure Digital (SD) memory cards, which are readily available. The memory cards come in a variety of sizes ranging from 32MB up to a whopping 256MB. I took a 256MB around Europe with me and found it to be more than ample. I took over four hundred photos and it still had room to spare.

The camera has an optical zoom of 4x and a digital zoom of 3.5x which amounts to a total zoom of 14x. I found this to be perfectly adequate and even at the maximum zoom the pictures are still relatively crisp. The camera also has three quality level settings, which can be used to determine the clarity and sharpness of the photos. The higher the quality though, the more space the photos take up on the memory card. I experimented with the three settings before setting off on my trip and found that there was little difference between th
e highest and medium settings so I have my camera set to medium. The camera can produce photo's with a maximum size of 11 x 14 inches and has a maximum resolution of 2032 x 15024.

The camera has five different settings that can be used to take still photos - Close-up, landscape, sports, night and standard. I usually keep my camera set to standard but I have used the night setting to good effect. I found little difference when using the landscape setting comapred to standard and unless I am taking photos at night I keep it on the standard setting.

From the moment I started using this camera I found it very easy to use. I didn't even bother with the manual, which is supplied on CD because the camera has a very logical set-up and is practically just point and click. When the photo has been taken the LCD screen on the back of the camera displays the picture which you can then either opt to keep or discard. I found this function to be particularly useful and eliminates the need to take 2 or 3 pictures of the same scene. You can simply keep deleting the picture until you have one that you like. As a default the LCD screen is permanently on and can be used to line up photos. However, I found this to be an incredible drain on the batteries and it can be easily turned off via the easily navigated menu. The menu is navigated using arrows on the back of the camera and is very logical allowing you to change various options. From the menu you can turn off the flash or turn on red eye flash to eliminate those annoying red eyes in photos. You can also utilise more advanced options such as the setting of exposure times.

The quality of the photos is excellent and using my friend's photo quality printer and some good quality photo paper the photos were really crisp. The colours are also vivid and lifelike and the pictures that I took of the French Alps were particularly stunning.

The camera comes with a USB cable to enable you to downlo
ad the pictures to your computer and a basic but adequate photo editing program. The software makes it easy to print your photos and gives you the option to organise them into albums. If you want to do serious editing however, the software is quite limited and you are better off with Photoshop. For power you are provided with a CR-V3 lithium battery but I recommend that you buy some rechargeable NiMH batteries and a charger. This is because the DX 6340 uses a lot of battery power and if you don't buy rechargeables it is going to cost you a lot of money.

As well as still photos the camera can also captures continuous video and audio. The quality of the video is not brilliant but is perfect for making short movies that you intend to email or upload to a website. The audio on the videos is also quite good and the microphone seems to pickup sound fairly well.

All in all this a very good camera for the everyday user and is good value for money. It produces high quality photos and with the easy to use software you can be printing photos in a matter of minutes. The only minor gripe I have with this camera is the fact that Kodak did not bother to print the manual. It is supplied on CD but is pretty hefty and I certainly wouldn't bother to print it out. Having said this I have only skimmed though the manual and have found that I can still operate the camera perfectly.

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