Fujifilm FinePix A350 Digital Camera Review

Viewfinder (3.0)
At first, when I put the FinePix A350 to my eye, I wondered if the viewfinder window was dirty or smudged to explain the slightly hazy look. After a thorough cleaning, the Fujifilm FinePix A350’s viewfinder was still foggy.

The viewfinder has the slight look of a camera just brought in from the cold and is just starting to clear up – except that it never clears up. As for the specs on the viewfinder, it is a standard optical viewfinder with only 75 percent coverage. This means if you crop your subject tightly in the center of the viewfinder frame, you will see vast amounts of empty space at the top, bottom and both sides of the printed image. A tight picture in the viewfinder will also show significant space around it in the LCD screen, which is still only 90 percent accurate. Unfortunately, with both the viewfinder and the LCD screen so inaccurate, there really is no good way to frame your shot if your composition is reliant on the edges of the frame. If you want a perfectly composed image, you’ll just have to shoot large and crop later in a software application.

LCD Screen (6.0)
At 1.7 inches, the FinePix A350’s LCD is certainly not gargantuan, but is slightly larger in size and is composed of more resolution than the screen fixed to the A340. The LCD monitor on the FinePix A350 has an aspect ratio of 4:3 at 115,000 pixels and is constructed of amorphous silicon TFT. One drawback to users who’ll be out of doors with the FinePix A350 is the lack of glare reduction technology, an apparent cost cutting measure by Fujifilm. Another issue with the FinePix A350’s screen is its inherent greasiness. For some reason, the LCD screen seemed absorb grease. Another quirk of the LCD is that it cuts a tiny sliver off the four edges of the image; it’s only 90 percent accurate. So this means that the subject being photographed will look fine, but when the images are uploaded and printed they will have an extra border that wasn’t there before. This is unfortunate, as the viewfinder is even less accurate, so there’s no good way of seeing if your pictures are properly framed or not.

Flash (7.0)
The A350's built-in flash covers a wide area, but it is not all that powerful. Its reach is about average for a compact digital camera. In the macro mode, the flash covers from 1-2.6 feet. In normal shooting, the flash reaches from 2-11.5 feet in the wide angle and 2-9.8 feet when the lens is zoomed in to telephoto. The flash is distinctly brighter in the center than on the edges. The following flash modes are available when the button to the right of the zoom toggle is pressed: Auto, Red-Eye Reduction, Forced Flash, Suppressed Flash, Slow Synchro, and Red-Eye Reduction + Slow Synchro.

Zoom Lens (7.0)
The FinePix A350 has a Fujinon 3x optical zoom lens that has been slightly improved from the FinePix A340's. The A350's zoom lens measures 5.8-17.4mm, which is equivalent to a 35-105mm focal range in 35mm format. The lens is constructed from 7 elements in 7 groups; 3 of the elements are aspherical. The Fujinon lens has a built-in lens cover rather than the sliding mechanism found on the A340’s camera body. There is an additional 4.1x digital zoom available on the camera, which users should try to avoid – unless you’re going for a jagged, pixillated aesthetic.