Digital Data

The year was 2002; my sister and I were looking into buying a digital camera, and we didn't want to spend too much money. We had a friend who had a neat looking camera that she appeared to be thoroughly content with. After briefly looking into it we decided the ViviCam 3625 would be the most economical purchase. At the time the camera was approximately 150-190 dollars. This was a reasonable price for the features included. My sister went ahead and bought it. I was thrilled when it arrived. This was the first digital camera we could call our own. The directions were hard to understand, but I wanted to skip reading the handbook anyway. We put in the two AA batteries it required for use and tried to figure the thing out. Only 6 pictures later the memory card and the 8MG built in storage became too full to store anymore. Once we did it a few times, uploading the pictures was not so much a big deal. It was, on the other hand, more time consuming than was convenient. At first we thought we had put in old, used batteries because that same night they ran out. After playing with the camera for a few days we figured out that it used so much energy the batteries would have to be replaced after almost every use. It only took us a split second to determine the long term cost of this: too much. The, fast becoming infamous, Vivitar camera took a DC 3.3V charger. This description, however, did not match any of the, 20-some odd, chargers that we owned. The pictures came out much less than stunning. Roughly 6 out of 8 pictures were too blurry to consider keeping. Maybe this was because of the constant low batteries, or perhaps it was the never-worked-right flash that threw off the focus. There was no optical zoom, so of course it could have been the focus and its limited range in and of itself. The 1.6 inch TFT LCD monitor was a pleasant tool that I especially enjoyed. I appreciated not having to look through the small view finder, but the short lived batteries made this close to impossible. Another helpful feature was the 10 second self timer. It would have been easy to take a picture of yourself with this camera, but somehow something always went wrong. Whether the angle of the lens would be pointed at your feet, or the malfunction of the flash, red eye, or focus would kick in, something seemed to always happen. The last, and by far my favorite, feature was the video recorder. Because of the extremely small memory, the video was limited to only a few seconds. There was neither a built in microphone, nor an input for one, therefore, no sound could accompany any part of the video. There is one good thing about the camera. The ViviCam 3625 has a standard tripod mount for those serious about getting a steady shot. It would be in their best interest, however, if they would steer clear away from this trivial piece of technology. - Michelle Rooks - 238