The Vivitar ViviCam 5100

The ViviCam 5100 is an inexpensive digital camera that really delivers. I bought mine at WalMart for just under $90. It comes nicely packaged and can be used right out of the box. If you have teenagers this camera makes a nice gift. It is a quality camera but not so expensive that you will worry every time they take it out to use it.

The manual that comes with the camera is both complete and easy to read. The instructions are written in English, French, German and Spanish. Along with the users manual and software the camera comes packaged with a nicely made camera pouch for use with a belt loop, a USB cable (we can't have enough of those) and a camera strap. The camera strap is a little too long for my tastes but for those who like to have a hundred dollars worth of camera hanging wildly from their necks I suppose it's OK.

The accessories in my box also included two AA batteries. The reason that I mention this is that in the User's Manual the batteries are listed under "Optional Accessories" so I'm not sure if every package has them. I was glad to see the AA batteries because nobody likes to be overseas watching as their rechargeable camera batteries slowly die about halfway through the trip and wondering if their charger will work in the hotel or not.

The ViviCam 5100 is very easy to use and the manual makes it a snap to set up. Speaking of setting up, do yourself a favor and turn off the date stamp before it is too late. Unfortunately the date stamp feature is part of the factory setting and you may not notice that all of your pictures have the date on them until the first time you download them to your computer. Unless you want the date permanently attached to your pictures then make sure you turn this "feature" off.

When you turn on your camera, which is done from the front with the lens cover slide, your camera will come up in camera mode. By pushing the mode button you can easily switch from camera to video camera and finally to image playback mode. In playback mode you can view the images individually or as a three-by-three thumbnail screen. You can even view the pictures at 1x, 2x, 3x or 4x scale though I'm not really sure why this is useful.

The ViviCam 5100 has all the basic functions of any digital camera with the exception of an optical zoom. It has a decent flash with the normal options - off, fill, auto and red-eye reduction. The self-timer has options for five or ten seconds of delay. The camera has settings for image resolution and quality and different scene modes for special shooting situations like night mode and sports mode.

Connecting the camera to a computer is simple and the CD even comes with the USB drivers for Win98 (for those of you still hanging on). The camera can connect to the computer in either removable disk mode, or web cam mode or can connect directly up to a PictBrigde compatible printer. The CD comes equipped with Ulead's "Photo Explorer" and "Photo Express" programs and really adds to the value of the package. Both programs install easily and are easy to use.

The only thing about the ViviCam 5100 that I was not too fond of is the 4x digital "zoom". The camera itself does not actually "zoom" as one might expect, it just shows you the area in the viewfinder to be zoomed. That is, within the normal sized picture in the viewfinder there will be a red square showing you the area that will be "zoomed" after you take the picture. This makes it hard to frame the picture since you cannot see the area up-close and since there is no optical zoom you will have to rely on the digital zoom

Another problem with the zoom is that it will only function in the 2560 X 1920 resolution setting. This means that either you will have to leave your camera at 2560 x 1920 all of the time (using up valuable storage space) or switching the setting every time you need to zoom. The first option is probably not a problem for those using an SD card 256MB or better (about 195 images) but if you are using the on-board memory you will only be able to take between 15 to 25 pictures depending on the other settings. By comparison, if you had the camera in normal mode at 640 x 480 you would be able to take about 150 pictures.

All in all, the zoom function problem was not enough to make me sad about my purchase. You can always zoom the picture later with any good image-editing program and get the same effect. For the price and quality the ViviCam 5100 is definitely a great bargain and I would give it an A.