electronics Finepix A340 Zoom opinions and reviews

Finepix A340 Zoom

Fuji’s Finepix’s A340 zoom is a 4-megapixel point-and-shoot camera which comes equipped with the superior Fujinon 3x optical zoom lens and delivers good images making use of the features encompassed.

Styling of the camera is compact with rectangular designing and a silver shade. One of the edges is finely curved for ease of gripping. Dimensions of 104.1 x 61.5 x 31.3 mm make it very portable while the weight of 145g (without battery and media) is more than acceptable.

A340 holds the sliding lens cover mechanism. When not being used, the lens remains sheltered under the cover. The camera primarily has a plastic framework. Even so, the build quality is pretty solid.

The camera’s 3x optical zoom lens has a range of 38 mm to 114 mm (35 mm equivalent).

Being an entry-level camera, you won’t locate too many controls externally. Among the few present, there is a zoom rocker, macro and flash controls apart from three buttons for Review, Menu, and Display.

A 1.5-inch LCD is present for framing shots but it is a bit too small for being of efficient use. Also it is not very perceptible in bright sunshine.

Menu system of A340 is highly intuitive and simple to navigate.

Shooting modes incorporated include Auto, pre-programmed scene position, manual, macro and movie mode.

You won’t find the advanced features like aperture or shutter priority.

For shooting in different kinds of environments there are four scene modes Portrait, Sports, Landscapes, and Night.

White balance settings feature Auto, Fine, Shade, Fluorescent and Incandescent.

Flash features comprise Auto, Red-eye Reduction, Forced Flash, Suppressed Flash, Slow Synchro etc.

Movie mode isn’t all that impressive. Using A340, it is possible to capture a maximum of 320 x 240 pixel videos (minus audio) at a slow rate of 10 fps. A positive feature of video shooting is the facility to use the zooming option while recording.

Accessories shipped with A340 consist of 2 x AA type batteries and a 16MB xD card (you can purchase a maximum of 512 MB card).

Pictures captured in bright conditions have decent exposure with proper colour representation. Indoor shots look a big ragged at times. Noise disturbance too comes to light in the flash shots. Pictures taken with the A340 Zoom look comprehensive up to the size of 8 x 10.

Performance wise, this click-and-shoot camera is reasonable starting up in 3.2 seconds and reprocessing doesn’t take more than 4 seconds.

Featuring all the requisite digital camera functions and producing good quality pictures, A340 is another impressive point-and-shoot offering from Fujifilm.