Easyshare? I probably won't be sharing this one! (Kodak Easyshare C340)

Member Name: Peter_Ahern78

Product:	Kodak Easyshare C340
Date:	25/02/06 (268 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy To Use, Small, Stylish, Versatile

Disadvantages: Uses batteries for fun!

I decided last year that it was about I time I jumped on the digital band wagon and bought a camera that you don't have to wind on when you've taken a shot.

I did a lot of research and entered into it knowing that if I could I would get a Sony as I've always considered Sony to be the best and most reliable make. I'm not going to go against that now either. However I wasn't willing to spend Sony prices and quickly ruled them out as an option.

Instead I took a lot of interest in Kodak. It's true to say that most of the Kodak camera's that fell into my price range were ugly and brick- like. I wanted a camera that was a relatively high spec and a good price, but not at the expense of style. I found the Kodak Easyshare C340 met all my requirements and a few months on I'm still delighted with it.

It's a 5.0 megapixel camera which for those of you yet to enter the digital revoltuion means that each picture that you take is made up of 5 million different dots. Obviously the more dots, the more detailed (better resolution) the picture will be. To put this into context, you can get camera's with 7 and 8 megapixels, but the best phone cameras might give you 2 megapixels. For the photography that I was interested in and the pictures that I would be producing I decided 5.0 megapixel was more than enough as this gives you pictures of upto 50cm x 75cm without losing detail.

The camera contains all the things we have come to expect of a digital camera. It has optional and automatic flash, red eye reducer, multi zone automatic focus and a 4cm x 3cm screen for reviewing your shots. It also contains a 3 x optical zoom which allows you to adjust the lens to shoot things quite a distance away. On top of this there is a 5 x digital zoom which enhances the optical zoom further (however image quality may be reduced depending on the shot).

You have an option of 13 scene modes to choose which basically give you diffeent pre set light and motion setting to get the most out of the shot. These scene modes include automatic, portrait, sports, landscapes, claose ups, night portrait, beach, snow, fireworks (which produces some spectacular shots), self portrait, back lihgt children and party. Then there are 3 colour modes - colour, sepia and black and white. You can even take TV quality video with it for as long as your memory card permits.

The camera doesn't come with a lot of memory (64mb internal memory) which will only allow about 10 shots. However you can buy memory cards separately (I got a 512mb SSD card from EBay for around £30) to hold more photo's and video's on.

Below is a more comprehansive list of spec details for all you techno-geeks:

Aperture f/2.7–5.2 (wide), f/4.6–8.7 (tele)
Shutter speed 4–1/1400 sec.
LCD 1.6 in. (4 cm) high resolution (72 K pixel indoor/outdoor color display
Burst mode 3 fps, up to 3 pictures
Video mode continuous motion JPEG video with audio capture/playback
Video resolution VGA (640 × 480 pixels) at 13 fps; QVGA (320 × 240 pixels) at 20 fps
Video length continuous up to 80 min. limited by capacity of external memory card; or 5-, 15-, 30-sec. clips
Video format QUICKTIME MOV (motion JPEG compression)
Auto focus TTL-AF
Auto focus selection multi-zone, center-zone
Focus range Standard—23.6 in. (60 cm) to infinity
Landscape—32.8 ft (10 m) to infinity
Close-up wide—5–28 in. (13–70 cm)
Close up tele—9–28 in. (22–70 cm)

Sensitivity ISO equivalent 80–160 (automatic, still), 80–200 (sports) and 80,100, 200, 400 (manual)
White balance auto, daylight, tungsten, fluorescent
Exposure metering center-weighted
Long time exposure 0.7–4 sec.
Exposure compensation +/-2.0 EV in 0.5 EV step increments
Ease of use features
Built-in flash auto, red-eye, fill, off
Flash range wide—2–11.8 ft (0.6–3.6 m); tele—2–6.9 ft (0.6–2.1 m)
Review options 1X–8X magnify with pan, slide show, multi-up, fast scroll, protect, album
Favorites on-camera picture storage
Auto picture rotation Auto picture rotation with EASYSHARE Software
Software KODAK EASYSHARE Software
PICTBRIDGE compatible print directly from camera
Storage 16 MB internal memory*, SD/MMC card expansion slot
Self-timer 10 seconds

If you're starting out in digital photography then good luck in finding out what all that means. If you know a thing or two about digital photography then you'll see that this is not a bad camera.

I've recently enjoyed playing with the long time exposure setting to experiment with different shots (like those night time ones of traffic that shows a stream of light as cars have travelled through the shot) You see, you can experiment like that with digital because you can instantly see the result and if you don't like it then you can get rid of it without the costly expense of more film.

I can honestly say that I've really got into photography since I bought this camera. Mainly because it gives you he flexibility to experiment, but also because it has so many added features that beyond the expectations that people have of every day digital cameras.

I love this thing, and would definately recommend it, especially if you are starting out, but also if you were one of the first on the digital band wagon - then maybe this would be a useful, but affordable upgrade.

Please note though that if you dont't buy rchargeable batteries, it wont be long before you have spent the cost of the camera on Duracells!

Summary: A inspirational camera that will get you hooked on photography

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