Digital Cameras

Reviews

Not worth owning, my 7meg digital camera is 3 years old and takes better video then the vivitar 870. Don't know what genius came up with this camera but would suggest a career change. Have owned other Vivitar products in the past and they worked very well this one is a total flop, the pictures are out of focus with no way to adjust, bad resolution very pixelated, any movement of the camera even a slow pan results in very jerky and blurred pictures. was looking for an inexpensive camera to use while camping and hiking this isn't it. Thought about giving it to the Grand kids to play with but too many breakable parts.

Pros: small and easy to handle .. ("woooo", good for the kiddies to handle..) Cons: MANY ! No mic input, AAA battery size (wish it was AA for more life and easier usage for rechargeables), software was my biggest issue: Got the "Blue Screen of Death" after installing the software - totally crashed my system! If more time was spent on this camera from Vivitar, it would have been a lot better camera .. oh, the slot underneath to put the SD chip is a total joke!

Run, do not walk, AWAY from this camcorder. Cons- packaging - no where does it tell you what type of batteries, if any it needs. It does tell you that it is HD video 720, it fails to mention that it only gets this "quality" at 20 FPS. REALLY?? 20 FPS for HD?? HAHAHA, you are joking right? Nope, unfortunately I am not. Battery cover - Cannot be removed while this was attached to my tripod. Fortunately I figured this out before I needed the information, I had to take the cover off completely before securing it to my tripod mount in case I needed to change the batteries. Power - does not have a port for an external power source. Zoom - Why do manufacturers even put digital zoom on any cameras? Worthless. Also, my zoom button will zoom in, but not back out. Likely a defect and not representitave of this product. The only way I was able to get the zoom back out to fully wide, was to turn the power off then back on. (I am sooo glad that I monkey around with things before I actually need them)... Focus - it is fixed and it is off with no way to resolve it. Build - No bones about it - it is flimsy! And the flip out screen only flips out, does not swivel. For $100 I guess that is what I should expect though. Pros - um....can use AAA batteries and not a propriatary battery. Has a slot for a SD card - only up to 8GB... Overall I am extreemely dissappointed with this camera. I went to the store for a Kodak Zi6, and if they were not out of them *and* if i didn't need to capture my childrens play today, I would not be writing this review. I will be returning this camera and looking for the Kodak.

Pros: Uses 4 AAA penlight batteries. Uses an 8 GB HDSD card. Cons: Many - See text. I bought this camera because past Vivitar 35mm film cameras I have owned have been very good. I wanted a small light weight rugged video camera to keep on my motorcycle to video weekend excursions in the mountains. This camcorder seemed ideal until I got it home and started working with it. This camera is supposed to have 720P HD quality. It does not. It does have the correct picture size but the picture quality is very poor and when panning it is jerky. The lens is fixed focus and the image on this camera is always slightly out of focus both in video and picture mode. The camera will adjust to light variations but the adjustments are very jerky and pronounced. The color is washed out. The video is pixilated on a computer monitor screen even in the highest resolution settings when viewing the movies at full screen. The file format is AVI which is not the best in the world. The camera will record about 1.5 hours on an 8 GB HDSD card in the "720P" mode and a little over 2 hours in the 640X480 mode. There is a joy stick sticking out of the back of the camera that is used to change various settings and features. This Joy stick is very flimsy and will probably break fairly soon. There is no built in protection (guards) to keep from hitting it against anything. The record button is beside it and it creates a very loud CLICK on the movie when you hit STOP. The Zoom feature is also a very flimsy control on top of the camera. The Zoom feature is a digital CROP only and at 25% zoom the image is very out of focus. Much above 25% and the image is so pixilated that it is barely recognizable. There is a low light setting but most of the indoor video I shot in normal room light was fairly poor. This camera has unacceptable low light capability. The viewing screen will only move horizontally. You can not pivot the screen up or down. I found that to be annoying. Also, the speaker is inside the camera covered by the viewing screen when the screen is folded against the camera. I was not able to find a volume control. My suggestion is to consider buying a little more expensive camera. The reason you are buying a camcorder is to save memories. Keep your memories with the best quality you can afford. Please note, this review is only based on this one camera. I was not able to find any reviews on this model before I bought it. I wish I could have. I am going to return this one with no intentions of swapping for another one like it. Good Luck. I hope this helps you on your quest.

Reviews

This is a nice product for the money. You really get a lot in this package.

It came on time as promised and exactly how it was decribed this is a great accessories pack.

LOVE THE BAG, THE TRI-POD AND EVERYTHING ELSE THAT IS INCLUDED IN THIS KIT. THANKS FOR A GREAT BUY!

Decent value. Large tripod quite flimsy. Charger has no auto off feature. If you forget and charge > 24 hours you can fry your batteries

I ordered the accessory kit for my kid who is becoming the camera buff. She is only 14, but can take really nice photos. She is still learning her way around, but is having a blast experimenting. The kit arrived before expected (thank you) and everything works as expected. Thanks!

Reviews

It seams good. However I got mine opened it up got it all set up and then it would not put ink on the paper. Cannon phone support was really bad waited about an hour on hold before I could talk to someone. Ended up having to take it to a repair place here in town. Found out it had a bad print head. They told me that they have scene this before with this model. Wish I would have known. It is under warranty so it will not cost me to get it fixed however I ordered this printer a month ago and still have not got to use it. Should be early next week I can get it back. Otherwise it looks like a great printer.

This is a good printer, fits my small space, and has some nice touches like the drawer opening automatically and closing nicely -- almost assisted, like a car door. Having said that I can't get duplex to work well with my Mac on a consistent basis. I think it's a setting, but the network scan feature works with the Mac and it's a good printer overall for the price. Can't judge on the ink usage yet. I'll just accept it. I'm not photo printing or anything. I looked a while and if you can get this on a deal or discount, get it.

This is by far the best printer I have ever owned. Super easy to set up, easy to use, GREAT intuitive web printing. This is a great all around printer and the wi-fi feature simplifies life. The only gripes I have are: *the photo print quality is good, but not great. *the ink is outrageously priced (although most printer inks are) other than that, it's great. My whole house (7 computers) can all share the same printer, which makes life easier and definitely cheaper than having to maintain the ink for 7 different printers. I do look forward to the day that printer ink becomes more competitive price wise, there is just no way that the materials and labor add up to even a third of the cartridge cost.

There was no hesitation in my mind when I bought this printer since I already own quite a few Canon products. As expected, it is fantastic. The setup is really easy and less time consuming. Even a non tech savvy guy can set it up along with wireless etc. I kind of like the functionality they have put into the small LCD screen on the printer. Quick and easy selections, and equally quick and good quality printouts/copies. Pretty good value for money. Just love the photographs it prints on photo-paper! Superb image processing techniques for getting the best out of your picture. And all this for a really cheap price. I would surely recommend this product to anyone who cares for the quality of prints and wants a wire free environment. Good going Canon.

Easy to set up and use. Print quality is really good. Wireless set up is a breeze.

Reviews

This replaced an HP Officejet; we also have a HP Deskjet. Never could get Officejet documentation. Deskjet has "installed" itself 32 times in 12 months and, being online, HP is monitoring our printing. So far very happy with Canon; only question is how much ink will cost.

great printer although it can be a little loud. You will need to have a router to use the wireless capability. Otherwise it is about all I expected it to be and then some. Prints Perfect Picturs. Scans great. Easy to fax.

Cannon must make adjustments to its technonogy to insure modest cost for use of their printers. If they plan to stay in the market they will make changes soon.

I mean this post in the nicest, polite way...intended to help only...the math below (as of now) is incorrect...he took 500/$300 to get $1.67..this calculation is not set up right..also, $14*5=$70, not $75...so it would be 500/$280 in his example....which equals $1.79 a page...even though the ink is NOT this expensive (I just bought all 5 a few days ago - total was $53.48 on Amazon...free shipping too)....so even if this only does 125 pages like the guy says...the correct math would be ($53.48*4)/500 -- total expense / total pages, not the other way around...which equals about 43 cents a page for ink.....I still doubt VERY much that it is anywhere near this high....to look at this another way...$1.67*500 pages = $835! Impossible... So far everything is great with this Canon...I would definitely recommend it to someone I know. I also received this from Amazon much faster than expected..which was awesome!

Pros: Like my prior Canon AIO, this unit is feature rich. It's a great multi-purpose unit for a SOHO. And yes, as others have said, the setup can be improved but the wireless access works great. Cons: One (very big) complaint - it GUZZLES ink!! 4 sets of ink in less than 1 ream (500 pages) of paper. 90% printing is text with color, 4% mid-quality graphics and 1% photos. Tech Support says duplex uses more, but I've disabled this - see no change! Summary: Honestly, it's a wonderful printer but there's no way to justify given the ink consumption. Canon charges ~$15 per cartridge (w/S&T) x 5 colors, so a full replace set costs $75. Based on 4 sets per ream of paper, the average per page cost is a whopping $0.67! REALLY!?!?! BTW, Canon really doesn't want you to know the cost per page, as they don't provide a page counter in the printer. In short, be very leary of these $.05-.10 per page claims [...]. Your mileage will vary (significantly!). Until Canon can fix this - DON"T BUY THIS PRINTER - your wallet will be emptied. P.S. Profs to "STLtechFAN "STL" for showing me that someone does actually read these posts!!

Reviews

As others have noted, this printer goes through some noisy agitations before and after printing, but then does a reasonable job. However, with documents containing pictures, the pictures come out really lousy, even printing with "high" quality, unless the entire page is printed as a photo (slow and costly on ink). That means printing each page containing photos separately, a real pain. My old HP did much better. Given that most printers today produce quite sharp printouts, I would not rate this one high on print quality. Copying is easy and does quite well. Another minor irritation is the location of the cable and cord hookups. They stick out on both sides of the printer, which can be bothersome if you have it on a roll-out tray or shelf. The dimensions stated don't indicate its real size with the paper feeder open, loaded with paper, and the output tray open (about 19"W, with cords, x 11 1/2"H, with paper, x 21 1/2"D). That can be a problem with a roll-out printer shelf in a desk.

I got this printer at American TV two christmas's ago for $30! I figured at that price why not? It really is a great printer! Photo's could be sharper. Right away I printed an 8x10 of my lil guys headshot, and you could see his baby fine hair pretty crisp. Since then it seems as if it's gone downhill a little. 4x6's are great but you can tell they are 'at home' quality. I have a 8MP Canon camera. Pros -Good pictures -Scanner is easy and it will even repair older 'fuzzy' pictures. -Copier is as easy as putting it on the glass and pressing Start. - Print directly from a SD card and/or a USB flash drive also. Cons -If you misplace the drivers and 'wipe' your computer good luck getting the drivers from online for all the functions -Ink is kinda expensive $50 for the 2pak of color and black, you can get a 3 pack at Sam's club for $60 which contains the 2 of the great XL black cartridges. -It uses quite a bit of ink, black especially which suprised me. When trying to decide on this printer i found several people that had a ink error code and the whole thing would quit working. I have had this printer for a year and a half with heavy use and I have changed ink more times then I can count and it's just fine. I bought one at the same time for my brother for the $30 as well and his is working great too!

I recieved this printer from Walmart as a gift. I set it up and followed the step-by-step instructions with ease. I printed a few docments and I was satisfied. Later I left for a few hours and returned to use it for a scrap booking project. I opened the thing to see the LCD screen black and the light was flashing. I attempted to turn it on but it would not start. I unplugged it with no luck. I put it somewhere and fogot about it for a week and plugged it back in and it started with no problem. I scanned a few pictures and left the room for 10 minutes. I came back and the light was blinking again. I tried to turn it on again and it wouldn't start the same as usual. I got tired of the thing and bought a Kodak Printer which works a lot better. Overall when it did work it scanned and printed well. I had problems with getting it to turn back on and it would start to do some crazy stuff and would never turn back on. When it would work it worked good but it didn't work 90% of the time. I will never use a Canon printer again

Decent at the price for regular home-use. easy to setup and use but no wireless support

Well I'm in college and I have this printer. I wish I didn't. First of all, it takes forever to start up (I don't leave it on so I have to turn it on for every print.. I can't leave it on because theres a shortage of power slots). While its whizzing and whirring doing the startup stuff I have time to surf the web a while or maybe make a meal before class. After a few minutes it finally stops so I then click "print". A good 20-30 seconds more of click-clacking, then it starts printing at a semi-sluggish pace. After the print is done, I press the power button and it does its final act of loud, unnecessary noises before dying with a loud POP! I hate using this thing but it is faster than walking to the library and printing from there so... if I hadn't received this as a gift I would have returned it already due to the cost of ink alone. Ugh.

Reviews

Very good Camera.. Very user friendly.. But I don't like: - There is no charger. You can charge the battery using the camera. - The Camera is NTSC there is no PAL if you are planing to use it on Europe or Middle east ..

The Canon Vixia HFS10 is by far the best camcorder that I have used, but it sits unused after I ran into one essential problem. You cannot extract the videos off the camcorder with standard and professional software - such as Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 or Adobe Elements. You can try iMovie but I spent 5 hours extracting a 3 minute clip. So, once you use the internal flash memory - you're stuck. In order to record more, you must delete everything and cannot preserve anything. Is it fair to blame Canon? Yes. Or is this Adobe's problem? Yes. I blame both. I blame Canon because the software that they provide with your purchase does not extract videos (only the pictures). I blame Adobe (and others) because they are supposed to be the best. I blame both because after one year - neither has fixed the problem so don't count on quick resolutions. Every company blames the other. My point: Stay away from this Camcorder unless you are were lucky enough to do video editing with Final Cut Pro (which works). However, I find it ridiculous that I would have to spend an additional $1000 to get video off a $800 camcorder.

I bought this camera about 5 months ago because I heard the picture quality was great, which it is, but I also was intending on taking advantage of the 1/8th inch mic input in order to use a shotgun mic. Every time I use this feature an extremely loud beeping noise goes off when the access light blinks. Really really apparent and impossible to get any good audio. Other people seem to have the same problem: [...] . The audio attenuator helps a little but doesn't eliminate the problem. I called Canon and they basically said "that's how the camera is supposed to work." What?! Thanks Canon. Go with the Sony consumer HDs. I've never had any problems with them.

I use this camera to produce YouTube videos. I use them to promote books that I have written. This camera does a very good job. It allows you to attach an external mic, which is very important for the lav mic that I use. You can also buy cannon attachments that fit to the top of the camera and allow them more direct access to the camera than other third party add-ons. It is also a very advanced digital camera. I am quite happy using it in place of my digital camera when I take it outside.

When the camera's arrived I was very excited to finally get to use them. So far the picture quality is excellent and pretty consistent... Great for Gorilla style shooting and the low light is decent as well. The manual focus takes getting use to but I expected it too be worse but it's not bad...the only downside is you have to connect to a power source when putting video clips on a computer. Not really a big problem considering that I put my video clips on a beefy powermac...but I can see how it could be an issue for some people with different equipment.