This camera is an experiment that failed.
Written: Apr 21 '08 (Updated Jun 28 '08)
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Pros: This camera is small enough to LOSE easily.
Cons: No Vivitar support or drivers: no further comment required.
The Bottom Line: Vivitar has broken the First Digital Commandment: they do not provide support or drivers for the Vivicam55. Keep your money, Vivitar obviously doesn't need it anywhere near badly enough.
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| veryatlantic's Full Review: Vivitar ViviCam 55 Digital Camera |
Failure alone was not enough to stop Vivitar from selling this horrid contraption. I originally bought the camera because of the Vivitar name, but I won't be making that mistake again. This camera makes me wonder what they were even thinking.
The Vivicam55 suffers from every imaginable evil ever associated with a cheap digital camera. This is unacceptable because other manufacturers seem to be able to do a truly decent job of it within the same price range. May I point out Argus as an excellent example. The Vivicam55 has poor controls, poor picture quality, poor design and even seems to eat batteries when not being used.
The manual is in pidgin English. However, the worst thing about this camera is that Vivitar does not support the driver. This camera is not even listed in the drop list on their support page. This is totally unforgiveable behavior. Vivitar, when you build a camera, you have a moral contract to support that camera for eternity. Instead, Vivitar begrudges you the few extra kilobytes needed to offer the driver. Are they trying to force you to upgrade?
Also, be careful. Various pay-for-driver sites wrongfully tell you the driver for the Vivicam55 is named [Setup55V.exe]. This is wrong, that code does not contain the driver and you just wasted your money. If I can locate the proper file name of the real driver, I will publish it here. WARNING: The only free version of [Setup55V.exe] available on line attempted to write some mysteriously named gibberish to my registry which was fortunately blocked by my anti-virus program. Either way, by the time such problems are experienced, Vivitar has totally let you down.
Other poor features on the camera include a beeping sound that cannot be turned off, a tiny confusing menu with non-standard icons and a cranky flash setting. This next might sound like an odd complaint, but the camera is a little smaller than it really needs to be. This makes it far too easy to accidentally cover the lens or flash when holding the unit naturally, and the control buttons are the tiniest possible. The only smaller buttons I've ever seen are on wristwatches, and hey, I get around.
The flash drains the batteries something fierce, and appears to do so even when the flash is disabled. (You will disable it the first time you see how it washes out any pictures.) When batteries out of the same bulk package are placed in the Vivicam55 and my old Argus, in two weeks, the Vivitar is dead, while I get an average of three months on my Argus. I don't know why, I just know it is a fact.
If you can eventually get the pictures to download, they are acceptable. I bought the camera to keep in my glove box for emergencies, and it might suffice for that if the camera had a decent battery life. The unit holds the 26 pictures in HQ mode, the only mode worth using.
The camera also has that annoying separate "on" button that makes the unit slow to bring into action. Why can't these manufacturers attach it to the shutter release? Or is that too simplistic for our modern age? The camera has no shutter lag time, but you'll waste precious seconds fumbling for that button anyway, so no net gain. This camera is not worth even considering, you will be sorry if you buy it, even as a toy.
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Update April 22, 2008:
Driver – not found, but it is NOT [SetupV55.exe].
When I tell you the details, you will understand why even Vivitar is trying to pretend this camera does not exist. The Vivitar installation disk creates a subfolder buried deep inside your Windows directory. The full path is [C:\WINDOWS\Twain_32\MyDSC2\MyDsc2.exe], which itself contains another two sub-subfolders and twenty-two more files, with unappetizing names like [ClearRegistry.exe] and [Dr.SQ.exe].
Oddly, the Windows path is, I think, created when you use the self-running program on the installation disk called [ViviCam.exe], which brings up a menu from which you choose [Driver My DSC]. How do you like it so far? I could not get around this by opening the disk folder called MyDSC and running the setup.exe, although that should work. This process creates the paths and directories mentioned above.
If you install MyDsc2.exe by yourself, plug and play cannot find the path. Even though the MyDsc2.exe folder contains the only .inf file I can locate associated with this product, it is apparently not the correct driver. Even manually directing the install to that file does not work. Therefore, I cannot tell you the correct name of the Vivicam55 driver file. Good luck, those of you with lesser programming degrees.
Running the MyDsc2.exe application by itself only puts a weird looking interface on your monitor. It will not cannot find the driver. This interface looks like calculator which displays up to twelve thumbnails at a time. It is a pity Vivitar didn’t put the effort of this artwork into creating a user-friendly system. If you can get the install to work, I suggest you get your pictures off the camera quickly and into a new folder while you can. Then toss the Vivicam55 and read my review on the Argus DC1600.
Update June 28, 2008:
I repeat, "The Vivicam55 suffers from every imaginable evil ever associated with a cheap digital camera."
This camera is so idiotically designed that anything that goes wrong deletes the pictures in memory. Dropping it, a low battery or simply pressing the wrong combination of buttons--Bam! Your photos are gone. The flash unit is so complicated to turn on and off that is almost impossible to use without leaving it on all the time, which gobbles your batteries. This camera is designed so the flash unit has battery priority. When the current is low, the electricity goes to charging the flash capacitor, not keeping your photos until you can get to a computer and plug the camera in. This is a ridiculous error from Vivitar, as I have seen ten dollar cameras that do a better job by saving your pictures first. Also, there is no way to change batteries without wiping out your pictures, even if you have the USB cable plugged in. Vivitar, you are put on notice: quit marketing junk!
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 18.88
This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Easy Enough for Anyone to Use
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Epinions.com ID:
veryatlantic
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Member: Da BassGuy
Reviews written: 23
Trusted by: 2 members
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