The DX6340 is an impressive, sturdy camera that gives amateurs and semi-professionals plenty of creative flexibility. Read our Australian review.

The stylish DZ6340 boasts a 4X optical zoom, which is pretty impressive considering its relatively small size. The camera feels sturdy and fairly heavy, weighing 220g without the batteries. It sits nicely in your hands and is comfortable to use with soft grips on the front and back.

The shots we took on the DX6340 turned out very well, especially on the best resolution setting. The DX6340 supports images up to 3.1 megapixel quality (2032 x 1524 pixels), suitable for prints up to 28 x 36 cm. On the lowest setting the camera takes 1.1 megapixel shots that are still suitable for email/internet viewing. The camera has 16MB of internal memory and supports external storage through its MMC/SD card slot.

There are a plethora of picture-taking modes on the DX6340 easily suited for both amateur and semi-professional. You can choose the simple automatic point-and-shoot or from the range of other pre-defined settings. The sport mode gives you a fast shutter speed and produces sharp images of moving objects. Portrait mode produces well-defined head-and-shoulder shots and worked well in our tests. For low lighting conditions there is a night setting that gives a slower shutter speed. Not surprisingly, we found images a little blurry using this setting on moving subjects. There is also a landscape and macro mode for long-distance and close-up shots.

Finally, for the ultimate control of the DX6340, there is the PAS mode (Program, Aperture priority or Shutter priority). Here, the photographer can manually control exposure compensation, the depth of field, and the shutter speed. Additional control can be gained under close-up and PAS mode by setting the focus zone. This can be swapped between multi-zone and centre-zone, to give pictures an even focus across the whole image or to give a specific area in the centre of the shot the focus.

There is a video mode (which supports audio capture), but we only managed to grab about one minute of footage before the internal memory was full. The playback on the camera is great with the speaker adjustable and loud.

The display is a high resolution 1.8 inch LCD that is easily seen in both bright and dark lighting conditions. While taking a picture in all the modes bar landscape, the auto-focus has a nifty way of showing you what it is actually focusing on. A blue frame encompasses the centre of the viewfinder and when you half press the shutter button, the auto-focus kicks in and decides where to centre the focus. It will then display red framing marks around the centre, or to the left/right side depending on where your subject is located.

There is a lot to like in relation to the DX4340's interface. The jog-dial on the back is used to quickly switch between picture modes. In the middle of the dial is a 5-way navigation joystick used to scroll through menus. There is also a button dedicated to deleting pictures allowing you to immediately get rid of unwanted shots. There is an AV output on side of the camera to connect with a television and to easily watch a slideshow of your pictures and movies.

When you are reviewing photos, you can go into the menu and set each photo an album to belong to. When you download these to your PC, the supplied EasyShare software categorises the images into the appropriate album. The share button allows you to quickly mark files to e-mailing, print or with a "favourite" attribute.

The optional EasyShare camera dock gives you a base to transfer images to your PC while recharging the battery. By pressing one button on the dock, you can download images to your PC and the pictures marked for printing will appear on screen. Similarly if you have images marked for e-mailing, the software will check the camera for an associated e-mail address and create a draft email with the picture attached. It is also possible to print directly, bypassing your PC.

Kodak EasyShare DX6340
Company: Kodak
Price: AU$699
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1800 147 701

Copyright © 2009 CBS Interactive, a CBS Company. All Rights Reserved.
ZDNET is a registered service mark of CBS Interactive. ZDNET Logo is a service mark of CBS Interactive.