Outdoor use only!! (Vivitar 5190)

Member Name: thebigc1690

Product:	Vivitar 5190
Date:	25/08/09 (102 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Sorry, there is none.

Disadvantages: Overpriced, slow, poor build quality and virtually useless.

As I am sure most of the Dooyoo members will now know, I am a professional photographer but as well as taking pictures I also hold photography seminars at my local camera club and over the last few years I have become somewhat of a target for sales persons asking me to try out their latest digital cameras and give talks and written reviews on them.


I figured a couple of years back if I was going to be testing out all these cameras and doing reviews anyway then I may as well be posting them on Ciao and Dooyoo and making some money for charity which a lot of dooyoo members know is what I do now.


Most of the cameras I am asked to test tend to be either high end compacts or DSLR`s but occasionally a budget camera is thrust into my hands and I set about making it look like exactly what it is, a budget camera, trouble is these days even the budgets have something that impresses so I rarely get a chance to really slate a camera, so I thank Vivitar for this opportunity.


The Vivitar Vivicam 5190 is the camera that found its way into my hands around ten days ago and I gave it two days of testing even though I knew after less than half an hour that it was simply not a good camera.

The first point of note for me was the slow start up and the inability to focus quickly, pair these two problems and I found that if you saw something you wanted to photograph it would take roughly 3 to 4 seconds before you could have the unit started and focused on the job.


Compare that to even a standard Sony or Canon compact, costing only a few pounds more and you will see what I mean. The most basic of Sony unit will start and focus on a subject in under 1 second and the basic Canon will do the same job in just over one second so the three or four second wait is poor.


The clarity of the image through the LCD screen on the rear was my next worry, the image looked very rough and pixelated and I wondered if this was going to be the outcome you got on your printed image and the answer to my question was yes.


Unless you are shooting in perfect daylight then the images taken with this little camera will be of little use to you at all, even with the built in anti-shake switched on I really struggled to get a clear image in indoor light or using the flash.


The shutter speed is very slow and this allows for the slightest movement to be picked up and the image to be blurred, my mobile phone takes much better images than this camera does and that is the honest truth, and the problems do not end there.


The unit is powered by three AAA batteries and although the unit I had was fitted by me with three brand new Duracell M3`s, I still managed to flatten them inside taking 100 pictures which is not good.


Many an amateur will put the poor image quality down to the camera having only 5 megapixels but this is not the issue, some DSLR`s have only 6 megapixels but they take beautiful images. The trouble with this unit is the slow shutter speed combined with the small lens, means that the camera is always struggling to get the amount of light it needs and therefore simply cannot produce clear images.


Now of course this little camera does have a fair few settings and functions that I would normally go into detail about but I can see no point talking about the functions and features of a camera that cannot take pictures. I will however say that the menu is complicated and the settings are very basic and even if the images produced were better the settings would need little said about them.


The build quality of a unit can often save it from complete ruination but this little camera doesn't even have that in its favour. The build quality is poor and the camera feels flimsy and very worryingly fragile in your hand, I have also heard of the rear screens cracking without explanation which to me would simply suggest that they are too thin for the job.


Using, or should I say trying to use this camera was a very frustrating experience and as a professional I can usually get very good images even with the poorest of equipment but I was left without hope whilst using this, as I say if I were outside in bright light then some of the images were actually nice but as soon as you step indoors or need to use flash outdoors then the images blur and they blur badly.


Now you may be thinking this is a very, very cheap camera but actually it can cost as much as £50 in some places and at that price it is terrible value for money, with some very decent Kodaks available at the same cost, I really could not find anything good to say about this little camera sadly and I therefore of course would not recommend it to anyone even at the less expensive cost of £39 pounds which I have recently seen it priced at.


MY SCORES

LOOKS - 4/10

BUILD QUALITY - 2/10

EASE OF USE - 3/10

IMAGE QUALITY - 1/10

FUNCTIONS AND FATURES - 3/10

VALUE FOR MONEY - 1/10

OVERALL - 2/10


Thanks for reading.

© thebigc1690

Summary: If you can spend more then spend more, if not then buy a Kodak!!

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