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Hey guys, it's Jordy here for cinecom.net and welcome to a rather different video.
Today we are going to review the cheapest camera that we can find on Amazon
and this is not because we're out of ideas, guys,
I just really want to do this, I just think it's a lot of fun
and I want to prove a point here that you don't need expensive equipment.
So, don't buy a RED camera, that is just money thrown away.
We can make awesome video with any camera, let's check it out.
I’m on Amazon right now: “Make this your year”.
I will definitely do that, let's just type in ‘video camera’ on top,
there we go.
and I'm going to sort it by price, low to high, there we go.
That's 30 bucks I was at least expecting something around 100 bucks, but okay.
Not too good reviews, that is unfortunate.
I mean, what do you expect for a $30.00 camera?
All right.
What do we have right here, it's the Vivitar camera.
Look at that!
For 30 bucks you get yourself a full HD camera,
that just has to be good!
All right, 4x digital zoom, I was not expecting an optical zoom anyways,
but I want to see the reviews, what are people saying,
why are people rating this camera so bad?
It’s good for doing YouTube videos, look at that!
We've got a positive review, if you were doing YouTube videos
then this one is good!
I want to see the bad reviews so let's just filter on that.
Why do people hate this camera, come on, guys, it's the Vivitar camera.
I was given this camera as a Christmas present.
I have played with it and try to get the quality of the video
and the pictures to improve.
Every setting looked the same, grainy and unwatchable.
The person that bought it for me also bought one for themselves,
both of us have been greatly disappointed by this product,
do not waste your money or time on this product.
Well, on the plus side, you guys are camera buddies right now.
Bad camera buddies.
William: change it back to 13 dollars!
Was this once $13?
Am I being ripped off if I buy this for 30 bucks?
Alright guys, let's just buy this camera and see what we end up with!
Fast forward!
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Here we are, a couple of weeks further
and an extra 40 bucks for the import charges here in Belgium.
So, this camera almost cost me 100 bucks,
and I think I could have gotten a better camera with that money.
Anyways, let's open up the box, it's an envelope, a plastic bag
that's what it is, let’s open up the plastic bag
and see what the Vivitar is looking like.
Ta-da!
Vivitar DVR 508 NHD, is that the one that I ordered?
I'm not sure anymore actually, it's been too long.
Alright, we're gonna need a scissor here.
Yep, be careful that I won't cut into the camera.
There we go!
Wow, this one is tiny!
Look at that, how small is that camera!
Well, it does fit perfectly in your pocket, so it’s definitely travel friendly,
that’s for sure.
Damn, this is tiny!
I can't even fit my entire hand through it!
Might better just stick in two fingers.
Sorry!
Alright, let's power it on!
how do I do that, right here?
Nothing happens, and it probably needs some batteries.
Where do we insert the batteries?
Aha!
I'm guessing this thing has an internal battery,
so that means we're going to have to charge it.
Let me just grab a power bank.
Here we go!
Hopefully the camera will boot up once we have it connected to the power bank.
I’m really curious to see what the picture quality shall be.
Yes!
look at that!
It is working, that is nice.
I can't flip the screen, this is the only thing that you can do.
You can't rotate it this way, but okay, it's 30 bucks.
Look at that, look how tiny that screen is, that is super tiny!
Now, I can't really judge the camera off this monitor,
so, I'm just going to take it outside shoot a bunch of clips
and see what we end up with.
[Upbeat music]
All right, 35 bucks, is this camera worth it?
Let's power it on now, let's go quickly through the menus,
‘cause I'm really curious to see if this can actually… card error,
yes, card error.
Okay, take 2.
The camera is booted on and I'm really curious to see
if we can actually shoot in HD, so I’ll just go into the menus.
I see that we have a bunch of picture style settings.
Resolution, 1920 by 1080, we actually have that option, that is pretty cool.
So, I'm just going to select that.
Quality, let's put that on Super Fine.
We even have the quality controls in here.
Anti-shake, so that means that there is this stabilizer inside.
I’m pretty sure it's going to be a digital stabilizer, though.
White balance, we can set that to Auto, Daylight, Cloudy.
Look at that, you just got a bunch of color effects!
Sepia, Monochrome, Vivid, Sharpness, Exposure, ISO.
This is a manual control camera,
we are looking here at a professional camera, guys.
With full manual controls, how cool is that!
-And Lorenzo, can we do a comparison video?
[Music]
I'm not sure this is the display,
but I just found out that when I change the resolution back to 1280 by 720, or 720p,
that my frame rate seems to be a lot better than if it would take Full HD.
So, my guess here is that when you select Full HD
that your frame rate is dropped significantly.
So, I'm just going to set it back to 720p,
hopefully that is going to give me some better results.
[Music]
Dammit, the battery just died!
And now the camera died.
We’ve been filming like half an hour and the battery already died.
I’m gonna try to get a final juice out of this battery
and see of this camera is actually waterproof.
The final test, let's see, is the Vivitar camera waterproof?
Let’s find out now!
Damn, oh no!
And there it goes.
I thought it was waterproof for a second but it's not.
Vivitar, you really let me down.
After we stopped filming, the camera actually felt out of my pocket as well
into the water, so it was going pretty deep
and now it is absolutely soaked, it’s not looking good.
Anyways, I'm going to try to add new batteries,
this thing actually works on AAA batteries.
We just have to take a couple more with us, we didn't do that, unfortunately.
And I'm just really curious now if we can boot up the camera still.
But I'm a little bit afraid because it went pretty deep.
Alright, let's try this.
Ah, damnit!
The Vivitar has died!
So, that means it is not waterproof.
Don’t buy the Vivitar if you’re planning to shoot underwater.
So, as far as image quality goes I'm actually pretty surprised,
for 35 bucks it has some decent quality.
It is actually true Full HD that you get out of this camera,
but, as I thought, it is at half the frame rate.
So, if you are shooting at 30 fps, you get 15 fps in Full HD.
Luckily, we switched to 720p which is like not really true HD
but half HD.
We did get 30 frames per second, so that is great.
I do actually like that you get a ton of manual controls with this camera,
unfortunately we don't get any manual controls whatsoever with the lens.
That means it has one fixed focus distance.
If I want to film something up close I’m just unable to get that into focus
because it is just one fixed focus.
It is a pretty wide angle, so you get pretty much a lot in focus,
and it's probably a super tiny sensor,
so I’m not worrying too much about it having a shallow depth of field,
but that's about it for the Vivitar camera.
Unfortunately, we can't do any more tests because, well, it kind of died.
I can try to fix, it open it up, dry it, who knows?
Maybe it will work back in the future.
But I'm not really planning to shoot anything more with this camera.
Since we all have a smartphone I think that is the better way to go.
This is 35 bucks thrown away,
or actually 100 bucks, if you count in the import fees that I had to pay.
So, final conclusion: should you buy the Vivitar camera?
It is pretty small so it fits in any pocket, but is it worth it?
No, don't buy it!
Seriously, it's really bad, it's not even worth 5 bucks.
All right, now let's do a drop test.
All right, let's do that drop test, we are at about 6 meters high right now,
no idea what that is in feet, but we'll put it somewhere around here,
and before I'm going to drop the Vivitar I'm going to try to power it on
one more time. It's powering on!
It's working again!
All right, this gives us a great advantage for this drop test
because if it will still turn on after the drop test,
I might be able to recommend this camera, not sure.
All right, let's do it, guys!
6 meters, everyone ready?
Yannick, is the camera rolling?
Okay, here we go, 6-meter Vivitar drop test, go!
Drop test failed.
Thanks a lot for watching, guys,
thank you Storyblocks for the support, thank you Yannick for that slow-mo image,
but most importantly,
Stay Creative!
Now let's go down here, pretty high.
So, the entire screen just broke off, I just put the batteries back in,
let’s see if it works.
It's working!
Nice!
Okay, now I can recommend this camera.