Fujifilm FinePix A350 Digital Camera Review

Cosmetically, the FinePix is a pretty bland-looking camera. It is dressed in a faux satin silver body, composed primarily of plastic and strips of metal, and is held together by tiny screws. Fuji should have bitten the design bullet and gone with something a little nicer in appearance or embraced a really sleek, strictly minimalist look. I wouldn’t say the camera’s ugly, but it’s definitely not going to attract consumers with its appearance.

The controls on the A350, from the top power and shutter buttons to the zoom and mode switches on the back, feel cheap – like they could break off in your hands at any moment. This is primarily because of the very plastic feel and look of the body and camera control elements.

Size / Portability (7.5)
The FinePix A350’s body itself is not too thick, allowing for some "pocketability" and at 6.3 ounces (including the batteries and card) it’s not too heavy. But keeping it in a pants pocket during a long day out might prove more annoying than anything else. It is a touch too chubby to really fit comfortably, but then again those of us still wearing skin tight, acid washed jeans from the 1980s are doing it to ourselves. In other words, the 3.5 x 2.4 x 1.2-inch FinePix A350 would fit much better in a coat/jacket pocket or tucked inside a Kate Spade bag.

Handling Ability (7.0)
The buttons and switches on the FinePix A350 are recessed or smooth enough such that they shouldn’t catch on clothing or accidentally activate the camera. Yet for all the pluses of low, snag-free buttons, you have some slight problems with ease of use and feedback.

The smooth feel of the camera also works against its gripping comfort and control. There are no rubber surfaces, gnarled patches, or cross-hatching that would make this camera easier to hold. This camera’s smooth surface can even feel kind of greasy, making it at times difficult to handle and operate, particularly when shooting with just one hand.

Once in the user’s hand, the camera is nestled so that the right-hand thumb falls into a small divot on the back and the right middle finger can rest along a small, curved sliver protrusion on the FinePix A350’s front (very similar in design to Sony’s W-series). And your index finger naturally falls onto the power and shutter buttons. However, as I shall explain in the section that follows, those two buttons are a bit too smooth and close together for my personal shooting comfort.

Control Button / Dial Positioning / Size (6.5)
First off, the smooth power button (in a slight top-mounted divot) on the FinePix A350 does tend to get slick and greasy with repeated use. The larger shutter button has just enough height above the rest of the body, enabling the control to be easily depressed.

Problem is, the power and shutter buttons are simply too close together and with your eye on the viewfinder, you will find yourself pushing the power button instead of the shutter. So instead of catching little Billy’s first steps, you’ll hear the camera whir and turn off. If one button was slightly offset or angled, and both were given a little more grip, the tightness of the two-button cluster might have worked and the confusion would be avoided.

Of the switches and buttons on the back of the camera, only the top right Macro-Zoom-Flash buttons are one-hand accessible. Just off-center and to the left, the mode switch is far enough away that you need to hold the FinePix A350 with two hands to operate it. The same can be said for the smooth Menu/OK and Display/Back buttons beneath the thumb depression on the back. Most people’s thumb can reach the buttons, but the camera’s smooth feel makes you worry about dropping it.

A problem for larger-thumbed folks is the positioning of the Menu/OK button; it’s awkward when you try to get a more natural grip on the FinePix A350. In my time with the camera, my thumb easy slipped off the rear divot several times and found its way onto the Menu/OK button and activated it by mistake.

Menu (6.0)
The menus on the Fujifilm A350 have a look that's similar to an Atari video game. A gray bar runs across the bottom with five colored circles above it; each circle has an icon on it. To help with visibility and add to the camera's aesthetic appeal, an oval below each circle is shaded darker on the gray bar - so it looks like the circles are bubbles of camera functions floating above a gray mass. Users can scroll right and left through the menu functions, then up and down through the individual options. Most of the individual options are in text, but the white balance menu is composed completely of icons. The menu takes up much of the view, but leaves some area around the edges of the LCD screen for a few live views of the options in action.

The menus are easily found with the Menu button, but the menus that actually appear are different depending on which mode is being used. The mode switch has three options on it: Playback, Movie, and Still. Users will spend most of their time in the Still image recording mode, where the following options are available: Quality, Self-Timer, Shooting Mode, Continuous, Option, EV (exposure compensation), and White Balance. The current selection in the Shooting Mode menu also determines some of the menu options. The Exposure Compensation and White Balance options are only available in the Manual mode; however, all of the other options are available in the automatic and scene modes.

The white balance and exposure compensation menus have live views, so the background of the menu changes as the user scrolls through different white balance modes or exposure compensation values, helping users make the correct decision for the shot. While most setting options are intuitively named, there are three fluorescent lighting settings labeled simply 1, 2, and 3. And users are supposed to know that 1 is for shooting under 'daylight fluorescent lamps'?

The Movie mode menu is quite limited, with only Quality and Option menus available; the Option menu consists of LCD brightness and volume adjustments as well as a jump to the Setup menu. The Setup menu appears on a solid gray background and is composed of five menus with the following options.

1: Image Display, Power Save, Format
2: Digital Zoom, Beep, Shutter
3: LCD, Date/Time, Time Difference
4: Frame Number, USB Mode, Language
5: Video System, Discharge, Reset

The Playback menu includes all the basics of deleting and printing. Erase, DPOF, Protect, Playback (slide show), Trimming, and Option selections are available.

Overall, the menus are simple to navigate through as long as users know that the zoom toggle and two buttons next to it act like a four-way navigational dial that is used on most digital cameras. Although, this seems to be an unnecessary complication since there is plenty of barren space on the back of the A350 in which a four-way navigational dial could reside.

Ease of Use (7.0)
The Fujifilm FinePix A350 aims to be an intuitive digital camera with a simple interface, but less buttons does not always mean the camera is easier to use. In fact, a Delete button on the camera body would have been a nice touch so users don't have to enter the playback menu to delete pictures. Navigation is fairly simple on this camera, as long as you know that the zoom toggle works in place of the traditional four-way navigational dial.