Kodak EasyShare C340 5MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom
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List Price: $229.95
Features
• TV quality (VGA) video with audio
• 5.0 megapixels for prints up to 20 x 30 inches
• 1.6 inch indoor/outdoor display
• 3x Kodak Retinar all glass asperic optical zoom lens and 5x digital zoom
• On-camera cropping |
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Kodak EasyShare C340 5MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
After a couple of years use...
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Our family bought three Kodak C340 cameras a couple of years ago. This is a summary of our experience with them. Overall rating: 'Wish we'd chosen something else'.
Pros: Picture quality is OK for our uses.
Cons:
* While the camera has a USB interface (with cable supplied) it is NOT recognised as a standard mass storage device, so your options are to either install the horribly bloated, insultingly dumbed down and inflexible 'Easyshare' software (which wouldn't even work on one of our older PCs), or, you can buy a flash card reader. Which is what I did.
I'll never buy another camera that requires any special software on the PCs it's used with. I just want to transfer the image files to where ever I want to put them in my filesystem, on any PC, with minimum fuss.
* Astonishingly, when the camera is plugged into the USB cable, it is still running off batteries. If they go flat during image transfers, file corruption can result. Also, this means you can't use the camera to take photos while 'plugged in' thus saving battery life and allowing lengthy use. Another reason it's best to just use a flash card reader.
* Fragility, poor reliability. Of our three cameras, two are now broken and unusable. The third is still OK, due to hardly ever being used. The broken two had similar histories - minor knocks broke the miniscule plastic retaining tabs on the battery cover (causing endless nuisance improvising ways to hold the cover on), and later both cameras just suddenly stopped working. On power-up, the status LED blinks a few times (presumably some error code, no mention of which in the manual), then goes dead. Screen remains black.
* Battery life (or rather, lack of it.) As many have commented, this camera chews batteries. It takes two AAs, and with even the best non-rechargables you won't be filling up a 256MB flash card on one set of batteries. You'll be lucky to get 30 pictures. If you want to save money and use rechargables, you'll get even less shots per charge, since rechargables batteries are typically 1.2V, compared to alkaline's 1.5V. The camera seems to have a fairly high threshold for 'dead', and so on rechargables this camera conks out well before the battery is actually flat. For this factor alone, I'll never buy another 'cheap' Kodak camera.
* However, of all the camera's 'features', the most infuriating and unacceptable is the selector knob. Some Kodak product designer needs to be fired for this. (Or shot.) The knob has unbelievably weak detents - it rotates between OFF and the various modes at a feather touch. Since the knob sticks up on the top of the camera, this means that no matter how careful you are when it is being carried (even in a camera bag) it will get switched on accidentally. Often. This combined with the extremely short battery life, means that if you want to be sure to get pictures, you have to carry _several_ spare sets of batteries.
Overall, our experience with these was rather disappointing. Sure, they were relatively low cost, but to have two out of three die so quickly, seems very poor. We won't be buying Kodak again.
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Kodak EasyShare C340 5MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom digital cameras, camcorders for sale