|
if you don't take this advice. But do
not get the new rechargeable CRV3's... there have been reports of the
batteries having power surges that have damaged cameras. The battery life
is infinitely longer on these batteries because these are the batteries
built for taking the kind of abuse digital camera's (and other high end
equipment) put them through. I've been using my Vivicam V3935 constantly
for the past month or so with my first CRV3 battery, and the battery
indicator on the camera is still full.
On to the acutal camera: I'm very happy with the purchase. Of course, I
was lucky to get it for close to $150 before the price went back up.
Still, at $300 it's cheaper than many of the other 5MP cameras available.
The quality is more than satisfactory. I'm not very camera savvy, but I've
found manual settings that work well for what I use my camera for, and
keep it on the manual setting for most of my pictures without adjusting
any of the settings. The automatic setting isn't bad... I just prefer to
tell my camera what to do rather than the other way around.
There is one automatic seting that I can't live without however, and that
is the automatic flash. The camera calculates how much light there is and
then determines whether or not flash is necessary. This will save anyone
that is rather camera illiterate lots of time and energy when trying to
get those "perfect shots".
Another setting I constantly find myself using is the "micro" setting. It
disables flash and adjusts other camer settings so that you can acheive
spectacular extreme close-ups.
The camera includes your three basic color modes (color, black and white,
and sepia), and a host of other customizable settings: Image size and
quality (of course), white balance, exposure compensation, ISO speed,
saturation and sharpness, f-stop, and I believe one other option (shutter
speed seems to come to mind, but I don't have the manual on hand). I
haven't done so personally (though I plan to), but at least look up f-stop
and the option that I think is shutter speed... I can't really give you
any advice, but I can say that if you want to take action photos (sports?)
you will need to master the use of these settings... otherwise you'll end
up with the dreaded "out of focus" photo. So, if you've ever tried to
blame your camera for taking poor actions shots when you know other people
can... now you know why they can.
The Vivicam V3935 is slightly larger than most cameras on the market
today. In my opinion, that's a good thing... I'm very good at losing
things, and the smaller they are the easier they are to lose. Not to
mention the fact that I always feel that I'm going to break smaller
electronic gadgets because of their size and weight. If you haven't made
the switch to a digital camera yet, then this is probably still slightly
smaller than what you're using now... and if not, it at least shouldn't be
any larger. Another plus is that anything that opens or comes off the
camera does so easily... there's never any doubt about whether or not a
certain part of the camera is supposed to open or not.
I'm in love with the zoom feature. I've handled cameras before where I
could not tell when the the camera had switched between optical and
digital zoom. I avoid digital zoom at all costs because of the loss in
quality (minor though it may be), and this camera makes it obvious when
it's switched to digital zoom. It even "protects" you from digital zoom.
You can hold the zoom button while you're doing an optical zoom and it
will stop and require you to push the button again before it will do any
zooming digitally.
The only thing I can really say bad about this camera is that there IS a
certain amount of uncertainty about how your pictures turn out. Once you
get them on the computer, you can see that they've turned out excellent...
but sometimes it's hard to tell one the LCD whether or not your photos are
in focus and a handful of other things. If you aren't in the general
vicinity of a computer... I suggest taking too many rather than too few
pictures.
In closing... it takes excellent quality photos, almost too good. On the
highest settings pictures can easily end up being between 6 and 10MB,
depending on color complexity and a whole bunch of other things. I do use
this camera to take pictures for online classified ads, and for the sake
of people still using dial up (and the bandwith usage on the sites hosting
the pictures) I use FastStone Image Viewer (a free program not included
with the camera) to easily reduce the size of the photos from the massive
2560x1920 to a much smaller size and reduce the quality slightly... often
reducing my pictures from a whopping 6MB to only 20KB. Also useful if you
want to send pictures through e-mail or instant messangers. It's a
powerful program for doing simple editing and photo managing, but if you
plan on using the extra features go with an editing program like photoshop
or GIMP (also free and very well made).
________________________________________________________________
vivitar 3935, August 30, 2005
Reviewer: H. BROWN
This is a great little 5mp camera . Will fit in your pocket or on your
belt with supplyed carring case. super pics. the zoom is great. would by
again.I have a d70 but some time's I don't like to take it to some events
at night.
Back to Vivitar Vivicam V3935 5.25MP
|
