Vivitar ViviCam 6200w

So there's a conundrum.
I got a nice new shiny underwater camera for Christmas, and I have been itching to try it out and post a review of it.

There's a snag: I could take a picture of myself in the bath, which would lead to all kinds of problems with nubile women beating down my door, it isn't very strong and I would not like the expense of replacing it.

I could post pictures I have taken with it but they don't ...
...it into the sea with me and thereby hangs the nub of the matter. I strolled down to the beach with the other morning, slipped off my Crocs and dabbled a toe in the briny.

A split second was enough to convince me that a Ciao review did not warrant the loss of a toe to frostbite, so here is the review, with a couple of pictures I have taken with it. Suffice it to say it is a reasonable point and shoot camera with a flash and a 4X digital ... more

So there's a conundrum.
I got a nice new shiny underwater camera for Christmas, and I have been itching to try it out and post a review of it.

There's a snag: I could take a picture of myself in the bath, which would lead to all kinds of problems with nubile women beating down my door, it isn't very strong and I would not like the expense of replacing it.

I could post pictures I have taken with it but they don't really show the key feature, namely that I can take it into the sea with me and thereby hangs the nub of the matter. I strolled down to the beach with the other morning, slipped off my Crocs and dabbled a toe in the briny.

A split second was enough to convince me that a Ciao review did not warrant the loss of a toe to frostbite, so here is the review, with a couple of pictures I have taken with it. Suffice it to say it is a reasonable point and shoot camera with a flash and a 4X digital zoom that takes 2 AA batteries and standard SD media cards. One of the photos attached was actually taken in a small rock pool at high tide, the water was cloudy but you can see some pebbles, it's a crap picture but having been dunked in seawater the camera went on to take the next picture of Weymouth beach

"So what are the technical details, Jeff?" I hear you ask.

Well, it is a point and shoot camera, with a 6 mega pixel CCD, a 4X digital Zoom, a 2 inch LCD monitor and is waterproof to 10 meters. - That's deep enough for me and my snorkel. There is a tripod mount on the bottom, just in case I want to do portraits of halibut or lobsters.

It comes bundled with Ulead Photo Express imaging software which seems to do little more than upload the images from the camera to folders on your PC. I usually do this by taking out the CD card and slipping it into the built in card reader on my computer, then using Adobe Photoshop to make any minor corrections to the image.

I found the menu system a little hard to use for two reasons:

1. Being a professional techy it is, in fact, illegal for me to read an owner's manual.
2. It is all controlled by the group of four waterproof buttons on the top of the camera, which are fairly heavy and stiff to operate.

Once you get the hang of these it is fairly easy to operate.

The battery life is very respectable: I have taken two full card's worth on the pair of Duracell AAs that came with it. Normally I would use rechargeable AAs but I can't find mine at the moment. When spring comes I must dig them out.
The other shot included with this review is one I took on a cold January day on Weymouth beach when we were on our way to the pound shop, where we like to go to ask the staff how much everything is. If you look at my previous review of the dual headed graphics card you can see how it handles indoor shots with flash.

The more advanced techie details can be left to the eager enquirer to glean from Vivatar's website, I write the reviews as I see them and mention the points that I would find useful.

My recommendation to buy is based on someone wanting to take pictures on the beach or in the sea. 

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