Vivitar Vivicam 3000

Vivitar's ViviCam 3000 is a rather unassuming digital camera when compared with others. The repressed lines and chunky feel are explained by Vivitar's decision to aim the 3000 at the budget end of the digital camera market.

Budget products usually don't sport many frills, and the ViviCam is no exception. Taking a picture is simple - you just slide back the cover over the lens, point and click. The simple seven-segment LCD on top of the camera offers a rudimentary interface which controls functions and gives a storage readout. There's also a built-in microphone and a timed exposure button which, Vivitar claims, can be used for video capture.

The ViviCam 3000 utilises CMOS image sensor technology as opposed to the more commonly found CCD (charge-coupled display). Vivitar claims that opting for CMOS offers the best resolution at an affordable price and consumes about a third of the power required by a CCD imager. So in theory, the ViviCam 3000 offers excellent picture quality, boasting a Best resolution mode of 960 x 800 and a Standard setting of 460 x 400, both in 30-bit colour depth.

I tested the ViviCam in a number of different conditions, ranging from portrait shots to some expansive landscapes, with deep focal lengths and a wide variety of colours. Close portraiture was at best adequate, even in the camera's Best setting, with pixelated results and slightly yellow skin tones. Full landscape shots were grainy, with colours poorly defined and detail edges blurred.

Even removing picture compression does little to cure these ills. When in its highest setting, I found the 500Kb of internal memory could only store a rather frustrating ten images and just 15 in its less demanding mode. Opening a slide flap reveals a port for a Type I PC Card, which offers an upgrade path to 2Mb or even 4Mb of storage. The amount of time the ViviCam 3000 takes to store an image was also frustrating - about ten seconds, with the camera counting down on its digital display.

The ViviCam is connected to a PC via a PS/2 port on the camera, which is then converted to a serial connector for your PC. If you've only one serial port with a mouse in it, this does cause problems. I was left to control the ViviCam 3000 desktop software with keyboard shortcuts.

However, the software is simplicity itself, providing a thumbnail image of the captured images and options to save in TIF or BMP formats. It's also possible to adjust the camera's exposure timings, view a very jerky live capture feed, and even glean details of battery power levels. Interesting, too, is the capability to update the camera firmware with patches available on Vivitar's Web site. However, the process carries a rather alarming warning from the company about the possibility of damaging your camera.

Ultimately, we can't recommend the ViviCam 3000. The picture quality is nothing to write home about and the on-board storage is limited. If you're in the market for a cheap but functional digital camera, it's worth taking a look at the Fuji DX-5 (reviewed issue 38, p124), which won the Value award in our Labs and is some £100 cheaper. If you're on a real shoestring budget, think about the Kodak DC20 at £149 (reviewed issue 38, p133).

Author: Martin Cooper