digidealer's Full Review: Vivitar V3800N 50mm Film Camera
This is very basic and cheap SLR camera, but as always, you get what you pay for. It's manual-only, meaning that you have to focus it and select appropriate exposure and aperture manually, based on a simple "+" or "-" sign appearing in your viewfinder. Although this gives you full control, you really have to know what you're doing in order to achieve decent picture quality. Film advance and rewind is manual as well.
Mechanical design leaves much to be desired. It's quite bulky and heavy (particularly the lens), so don't expect to be able to shoot it with one hand. More so, because it shakes quite a bit when you press the release button. You have to hold the camera steady with both hands or use tripod to get sharp pictures.
There's no built-in flash in this camera. So if you intend to shoot in low light conditions, you'll have to buy external flash (they are quite bulky and heavy too.)
The camera comes with a detachable shoulder strap and a carrying pouch. However, you cannot attach the strap to the pouch, so you either have to carry it on the strap without a pouch or put the camera into the pouch and carry it in your hand (not easy to do due to its weight and size). On top of that, the shoulder strap locks have a nasty habit to unlock themselves spontaneously, sending you camera off to the ground.
The camera has wide exposure range (from 1/2000 sec to 1 sec, but the lens is quite mediocre - not very bright and not very sharp either. Overall picture quality is average (provided that you master manual controls well.)
It has multiple exposure capability and comes with a contraption allowing to cover 1/4, 1/2 or 3/4 of the field view, so that you can make "special effects" pictures. 10 years ago this feature would really make it stand out. Today, if you're interested in special effects, you'd better go digital.
One area where this camera really sucks is reliability and customer service. In my case, the zoom lens broke after only 6 weeks of mild use and Vivitar refused to replace or fix it under warranty because they claim it was due to "impact damage." Well, if it can't survive shipping, handling and 6 weeks of normal use then too bad for them.
In conclusion, this camera is not for the beginner. But on the other hand, it will hardly satisfy a semi-professional or even a serious amateur either. You'd only want this camera if you're an amateur who wants to experiment with SLR photography and is prepared to dump this camera in a few month and buy a real one (or at least to buy a decent lens.)
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