| Product: |
Olympus FE-340 |
| Date: |
05/09/08 (135 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: easy to use, great pictures, different modes
Disadvantages: none
Now this is my first technical type review, so please bear with me...!
For my birthday a few days ago, my mum gave me a digital camera, which I have wanted one of for aaaaages. Mine is the pink model which I would have chosen anyway.
It's a tiny camera, or using the shop talk, it's "ultra slim". There are 8 mega pixels, which I found is great compared to others. It also has 5 x optical zoom. There are several modes for taking pictures in, some of which are self explanatory, some sent me scurrying for the instruction book:
Auto: is where the camera finds the optimum settings for shooting the picture.
P: the camera sets the shutter speed
Anti shake: reduces the blur on a moving object
There are then settings for taking pictures of people, a separate setting for taking pictures on landscapes. Then are the next two, which confused me most!
Scene: gives you several situations for taking pictures in the most appropriate way:
1. Night and portrait shoots the main subject and illuminated
background at night where the shutter speed is slowed.
2. Night scene shoots illuminated scenes in the evening or at night.
3. The sport mode shoots fast moving subjects without blurring the image.
4. The indoor mode is for shooting the main subject and background indoors, where the background is pictured clearly. 5. 5. The candle mode is for shooting under candlelight where warm colours are reproduced. I haven't tested out this mode, but it seems like quite an odd mode to have!
6. Self portrait mode is self explanatory! Where you can take a picture of yourself while holding the camera.
7. There is a separate sunset mode for taking pictures of the setting and rising sun, which inlcudes "vivid reproduction of reds and yellows". The fireworks mode is clearly for shooting fireworks at night, using a lower shutter speed.
8. "Behind glass" is a separate function which is obviously self explanatory for shooting a subject through glass. This is a good function for me as I once couldn't decide between two dresses so I sent pictures to my mum, only on my phone they didn't come out too well!
9. The next mode is "cuisine" for still life photography of food, flowers etc Well that's not something I was expecting!
10. Document mode: for shooting documents, increasing the contrast between letters and background. Hmm, not heard of that before, but I'm sure it could be very useful!
11. Auction mode: "captures 3 pictures sequentially at different exposures in the appropriate size for e-auction." So I'm thinking this technical sounding sentence is ebay mode!
12. Smile shot: the camera automatically takes a picture when your subject smiles. I tried to test this mode out, but my sister was in a non smiling mood full stop. Pah. I'll try and test it out on my mum at some point.
When you first unpack it, it comes with a battery, a battery charger and installation disks. You charge the battery out of the camera, and slide it into the charger and plug it into the wall, with a red light on the charger that goes off when the battery is charged.
When I first turned it on, I had to set the date and time which was easy to do, but I did have to check the intruction book to work out how to set it to dd/mm/yyyy rather than the US format. You can also change the language, however the automatic setting is English, so I didn't change it! To take a picture, you press the shutter button half way and the target mark flashes green it is in focus, if it flashes red, the camera can't focus. It is easy to review the pictures, as there are buttons at the top of the camera for taking pictures or playing back the pictures.
Summary: Recommended
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