Kodak EasyShare C340 5MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom

This is an awesome camera!!! That pretty much sums everything up. Great picture quality with different settings for wherever you might be taking pictures. I would definitly recommend this camera to all.

I am sooo disappointed. I loved this camera and the docking station when I first got it and actually up until recently. This camera did well for me for about two years with intermittant use. I cannott take pics with it anymore however. Unfortunately I discovered that it quit working on my daughter's fourth birthday. The pictures ALL come out dark no matter what I do. The batteries do not last more than a day or two. This goes for regular AA's and rechargeable. I could go on and on. I hope the newer models of this camera are better and last longer. I am going with an entirely different camera altogether.

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.

Purchased this camera for a grandchild (12 yrs old) and its perfect for him. It makes great pictures and is easy to use . However, video quality is standard and ,didnt come with a charger.. but, I would recommend this for a beginner its perfect and price is reasonable...

I purchased this camera a year ago. I have found more and more things wrong with the camera and am so disgusted with it that I am buying a different one. My brother and I both have the same cameras (Christmas gift from our parents) and he is experiencing the same problems. It is not just my camera that seems to have these problems!

First, the flash is VERY bright. I am constantly having to turn off the flash and turn on a room light just to get a decent picture. If I leave the flash on, his eyes are half-closed and he looks drunk. If I do not have the flash on, then the pictures are too dark. I've tried ALL the 4 or 5 setting for the flash and none of them correct this problem! I also frequently get red-eyes in my pictures even when I'm using the red eye flash!

Second, the batteries! I have the WORST time with the batteries for this camera! They die within ONE day for me! I don't even have to have the camera turned on and it is dead the next time I try to use it! I switched from using the rechargeable batteries to the regular AA batteries just so I can depend on my camera to turn on when I want a quick picture of my son. The AA's drain SO fast that I go through (literally) 3-4 sets of batteries in a given month and I do NOT take that many pictures. My brother has the same camera and he has experienced the same problems!

Third, the dock! Most of the time I have to fiddle with the dock and have the camera tilted in just the right position to get the dock to recognize that the camera is attached to it. It often turns off, even in the middle of transferring pictures. I have tried 4-5 different power outlets, and the dock acts the same way in each of them.

Fourth, the picture quality only deteriorates! When I first received the camera the pictures were of adequate/good quality. However, now ALL of them are blurry! Every single one that I take is blurry whether I'm moving or not, whether the target of the picture is moving or not, and even when using the camera function (sports, I believe) that is supposed to account for movement. None of it works now and every picture is very blurry.

Today was the last straw with this camera. I put new batteries in it just yesterday since I knew that I would be taking pictures of my son today. I went to turn it on, and it did NOTHING! I tried 5 or 6 times to turn it on and it did nothing. I eventually changed the batteries, and tried to turn it on on a different setting, and it still did nothing. I finally brought the camera in to show it to my husband and it finally turned on after he tried a couple of times to turn it on.

In sum, this camera has many problems and it only gets worse as the camera gets older. I would have expected much better quality on a camera that is about $100. My camera is approximately one year old and has been performing very, very, very poorly for at least the last 6 months, starting to have problems for at least 9 months, and only worked well for about 2-3 weeks after I got it. Save yourself the time and money and don't buy this camera. I am buying a more expensive one and hoping for better luck!