Vivitar ViviCam 5199 Digital Camera

We purchased one of these elsewhere for our 6 year old daughter's birthday present. We looked at child specific cameras and despite them being questionably ruggedised with big buttons etc. what they offered in terms of camera functionality was, to be honest, pretty diabolical especially as they were considerably more expensive. The Vivitar 5199 appeared to offer a vastly superior spec. for what could be considered almost a throw away price.

The camera is quite smart in appearance with a glossy black body, this shows finger prints as soon as you touch it though. The viewing screen covers most of the back of the camera and is reasonably bright when outdoors. All the controls are quite easy to get to grips with and camera boots up quickly. Image quality isn't great, my wife's 2MP ancient Nikon is far Superior so don't be fooled by the 5MP tag. I think the image sensor is of the mobile phone CMOS variety rather than a CCD. Despite what everyone seems to believe pixel count isn't everything, after a certain limit and for regular family use we've found that higher than 2MP isn't really necessary, there are other aspects that make a good camera.

Another short coming is the performance in low light, the sensitivity in low light is poor and when you use the flash it overpowers in varying degrees at distances of less than 8-10 feet. The flash output seems to be all or nothing with no thyristor control to throttle it back for closer work.

Having taken a photo the taken image is only shown on the screen for a couple of seconds at most and there appears to be no options in the menus to alter this which means, this doesn't allow sufficient time to assess the image before it disappears again let alone show it to others as you quite frequently want to.

The video mode is good under daylight conditions giving a reasonable frame rate and decent image size, ideal for emailing short clips. There is also a sound recording mode as well.

Image transfer to a PC is good, we haven't installed the software yet but the camera is recognised as a removable drive by XP, transfers are a swift drag and drop affair.

I have rated this camera as average as, having read reviews out there on the net we we're expecting some compromise. This is a first camera for a young child and for this purpose it's ideal, she's thrilled with it. We'll see how it holds up to extended use but we could buy two of these against a specialised kids model.