Fujifilm FinePix A340

The A340 is a 4 MegaPixel camera from FujiFilm and is the big brother of the A330 (3MP version). The technical specification reads:

The camera also boasts

Ergonomics
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The camera fits nicely into the hands, with the controls well laid out for the right-hand thumb and forefinger. The buttons have solid, tactile feedback so you know you have pressed it. The front cover slides left and right to three distinct positions and acts as the on / off switch, and again has a nice, solid feel to the 'click' as the cover sits at each position.
Zooming is controlled via a 'rocker' type switch, at the top right hand side of the rear of the camera. The camera has 3x optical zoom and 1.7x Digital Zoom (not in 4MP mode) and the lens has a smooth, quiet motion as it travels. The LCD monitor is real-time updating for the zoom function.
To the left of the zoom rocker is the macro button. This is a nice touch - to have one button to enable macro shooting is a welcome change from having to go through several menu layers. Macro mode enables close up shooting of subjects between 0.1m and 0.8 m away.
The right hand side of the zoom is occupied by the flash selector button. You can choose from auto, red-eye reduction, forced, suppressed, slow synchro and red eye + slow synchro. Hopefully, the first two are obvious as to their behaviour. The forced means the flash will always fire, in bright light as well as dark - this is good for colour balancing in bright situations, and the suppressed means that it will not fire at all. Slow synchro utilises a slow shutter speed, when taking pictures at twilight for example, that will help to light the background as well as the foreground subject. The final option, then, combines the red-eye with the slow-synchro, and its usage should be obvious.

Finally, the all important button - the one that takes the picture - is where you would expect. Top of the camera at the right hand side, and as with the others, feels comfortable with its positioning. As with virtually all digital cameras now, a half-way down press causes the camera to focus, which it does quickly.

Startup is not too bad - two seconds and you are ready to go. Saving the images to the xD card is around 4 seconds which I found to be acceptable - there are quicker ones, but there are slower ones as well!

In manual mode, you can modify the white balance and exposure settings to get the image you need, but unless you are in unusual situations, you are unlikely to use these options. Still, it's worth playing with and seeing the results you get - some can be very interesting!
(For those interested, exposure compensation is used to lighten ot darken the shot, while white balance is used under different lighting conditions - fluorescent, incandescent, etc)

[Note, you can change quality as you go, so you could get 33 images at 4MP FINE + 101 at 2MP on a 128MB card]

Deleting images is also easy, either the entire set of images can be deleted, or simply delete one at a time.

Accessing the camera's menu system is done by way of three buttons to the right of the LCD viewer. Scrolling through the options is done via the macro, zoom and flash buttons for left, up/down and right respectively. In the options, you can set date and time, quality, mode, etc. indeed, all of the options you would expect to be able to set.

The FinePix viewer is much the same, I'm afraid. It tries to be an album creator and manager, but I found it a little clunky in its operation and not desperately user friendly.

Connecting to the computer, whilst easy, requires a unique USB cable. The camera end is a different shape to other mini-USB connectors. This is the second point that I would mark as a disadvantage, as you will need to purchase the replacement from Fuji, rather than being able to use a standard cable.

It is difficult to review an output from a printer when reviewing a camera, as the outputs will vary from printer to printer. However, in an effort to be complete, my printer is Hi-Touch 631PL and uses a process called dye sublimation for the printing process. The outputs were excellent - I think better than a shop, and at only 30p……anyway, this printer is reviewed elsewhere!

Accessories
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As with many companies now, there are a whole host of accessories for the A340, but I would highly recommend the following: AC Power Adaptor, PictureCradle, Rechargeable batteries and a bigger xD card. The PictureCradle will recharge the batteries (if using rechargeables), and allow a permanent USB connection as well.