What an utter POS

Author's Rating:

Pros: Excellent resolution and color, very user friendly, very little shutter lag.

Cons: No included AC adapter, the whole "doesn't freakin' work" thing is a big con too.

The Bottom Line: 
If you can get one that works, I have nothing but kudos for you. I, however, have better things to do with my time than run around exchanging broken cameras.

Author's Review
If there's one thing I dislike more than a bad piece of electronics, it's a piece of hardware that works beautifully for a little while, then breaks in a way that makes it less than usable.

Case in point would be my Vivitar 3315.

I bought it yesterday, the day before Easter, because I'd been looking for a digital camera for a while, and I saw this gem for sale for 98 bucks. Compared to what other megapixel cameras cost, that was a steal. I decided to buy one and give it a whirl. It came with 8 megs of onboard memory - not bad, plus a card slot for memory upgrades.

I promptly took it home, put it together, and was a little put off by the fact that it didn't come with an AC adapter. Since the camera took two AA batteries, and I had a universal adapter, I plugged it in on 3 Volts output and fired it up.

The camera turned on, then promptly turned off.

After some searching at the Vivitar site, I discovered that the AC adapter gave a 5 Volt output. Checking my adapter, I found that it had no 5 Volt output. None. 4.5 and 6, yes, but no 5.

"Ah well," I thought, "At least I can use batteries for now and go take some pics of my child." I did so without delay, and the results can be seen at
www.flemcomics.com/trin2.htm

If you go to the address, you will see that the pictures came out beautifully. The resolution was tremendous, and I was allowed to resize the pictures to a smaller degree with no problems. It should be noted that this camera EATS batteries at a pretty rapid pace - after shooting the memory full of pics, the batteries were already halfway gone. The shutter lag during the shoot was minimal - in most of the pictures, I can only detect a tiny 1/10th of a second between where I pressed the button and when the picture happened.

The pictures came off the camera via a USB interface that night, and as soon as I'd installed the driver and plugged in the cord, the camera appeared in my system as a Removable Drive. All I did was cut and paste the photo files to another folder, and I was in business. "Mein gott!" I cried in another language, "This is an amazing camera!" (which I exclaimed in English just to show how bilingual I am.)

I woke up this morning, Easter 2003, and grabbed the camera to capture the joyous expressions of my child celebrating her second batch of Easter goodies. The pictures showed a bit bright in the tiny screen housed on the back of the camera, but I found that stepping away from her and using the 2X zoom worked wonders. I got about 20 pictures, and then decided to dump the pics and go for more. While my kid chowed down on chocolate, I plugged the camera into my computer.

"Unknown USB Device", my faithful computer stated.

"Hurr?" I cried in no actual language used by man, and plugged it in again.

"Unknown USB Device", my computer reiterated, and I cursed it quietly and swore. Perhaps the batteries were low? Quick as a wink I replaced the batteries and tried again.

"Unknown USB Device."

ARGH.

My roommate and I are, it should be noted, a couple of tech geeks. Truly, our household would hold a trove of treasure for any burglar who knew his way around electronics, so we also keep our house burglar alarm system in tip-top shape.

My roommate is more tech-knowledgable than I, and stuck his head into my room upon hearing my snarls and growls of increasing frustration. I explained that I'd just reinstalled all the INF files and ripped out the registry keys, and that I was running out of ideas. He grinned his wicked I-get-to-*%$#-with-something grin, and asked if he could have a whack at it.

We tried everything.

One Windows XP Fresh Install computer, one Windows 2000 Professional computer, one Windows 98SE computer, fifteen USB configurations ranging from directly plugged to hubbed to singular, several logfile scrutinizations and three sets of batteries later, I saw something I've only witnessed once before: My uber-tech roommate threw in the towel.

[WARNING - GEEK SPEAK AHEAD]
It seems that when a USB device normally gets connected to the computer, the OS sends a string of data at it that basically says "identify yourself". Then the device sends its own data back saying "I'm a ______". He tested the data strings, and found that the USB on the camera was sending back a "I don't know what I am." We got this several times in a row on two different OSes. Something in the camera's programming had blanked out, making it effectively unworkable with a direct USB connection.
[/GEEK SPEAK]

So I took it back today, and got a different brand. Lost some really good Easter pics too, but that's my own fault. The one I replaced it with seems to have a broken shutter button, so I get to return THAT one tomorrow as well. *beats head on desk*

Anyway, do I think that all Vivitars are horrible now? No. But I was given the option of exchanging the one I had for another of the exact same model, and I decided not to for several reasons:
- If one of them can break that easily, I have no doubt that another MIGHT.
- No AC adapter included? How cheap can a company get?

Aside from those two black marks, this camera was really good. Too bad that the two marks against it were enough to put me completely off of the Vivitar 3315.