A great camera for casual photographers! (Vivitar 5190)

Member Name: leanne8686

Product:	Vivitar 5190
Date:	18/09/08 (277 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good price, 5 mega pixel, decent pics day and night. slim&light

Disadvantages: bit slow to take photo

I bought this camera when I had just started University and we were told we needed a camera for a trip we were going on and the photos we took would be the base of our first design project!
Wanting to impress my tutors with my first project I decided my photographs needed to be good so I wouldn't borrow my mum and dads old camera, I'd buy my own digital one.

I started looking around the shops in town, not having time to buy online as the trip was 3 days away. I checked out Jessops, Boots, Klick; all the usual camera places and was planning on buying this one from Jessops for £45, not bad for a 5 mega pixel camera, when I decided I needed refreshments and went into Superdrug and there by the till was the very same camera for a mere £24.99!! So of course I bought it there and then.


Packaging
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The camera was packaged in a box with a picture of a beautiful pink and purple sunset and the picture of the camera from the front and back. It looked an attractive little camera and the box told me everything I needed to know, the make: Vivitar definitely reliable for cameras, that it was 5 mega pixels with a 1.5" TFT display and compatible with my computer!
On the side of the box it lists the accessories included: the usual carry pouch, USB cable, hand strap and 3 AAA batteries.


The camera
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This camera is silver and measures about 2 inches by 4.5 inches and about ¾ of an inch deep so nice and dinky for a little person like me!
Its neat and compact, which is just what I wanted and needed from my camera, the back of the camera houses the TFT display screen which is only 1.5 inches but big enough for quickly checking out your pictures.

There are also the buttons on the back:
Up and down arrows for zooming in and out,
Left and right for scrolling through your photos when you're viewing them
The centre button in the middle of these 4 arrows switched between viewing and taking modes.
Below these 5 buttons there are 3 more; the button for changing the flash from off to automatic or just on, the button which controls how you view your photos; as little thumbnails or full screen size and the button for formatting or deleting the photos one by one.

The Vivitar 5190 also has an 8 x digital zoom and so can get up close to your subject and still take a great, clear photograph.

The camera takes 3 AA batteries and these are included when you buy it but the camera just sucks the power out of them almost instantly, if you're lucky you'll get about 5 photos before it switched off! No good at all so I now use Rechargeable Hi-Power Energizer batteries and these last much longer, when on holiday I just needed to recharge once in a week of using it a lot, I had 250 photos on it at one point, so definitely recommend rechargeable as high a power as you can afford.


The photos
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I have used this camera countless times since I bought it and it takes photos equally well in daylight and at night with the flash on.
For a camera that cost so little, the photos are of a brilliant quality and clarity even when I blow them up on my computer, I've printed A3 size and still no blurring or pixilation.

Perfect when I was at University and had to fill sketchbooks with preliminary research and wanted big photos and sections of photos blown up for designs.




**Girls: The camera is really slim and light, I took it out with me Saturday night and managed to fit it in a tiny bag so great for those drunken moments you just have to capture on camera to embarrass those in question!!


Do I Recommend?
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Definitely!! For someone like me who just wants a camera to take pictures of fun times on holiday and to help at university/college on fieldtrips!

The one problem I found is it does take a while to take a photo after you've pressed the button, annoying if you're trying to catch something happening that split second, no good for firework photos for example!


Check out www.vivitar.com for any more info you may need, the website is currently being updated so leave it a few days!

Summary: Great for what I needed and the price I paid

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