Vivitar Vivicam 6200W Review
Snorkeling Camera Reviews

Here is our awaited hands-on review of the Vivitar Vivicam 6200 snorkeling camera.

We bought this as a backup for my camera, but Nicole decided she wanted to start taking pictures with it.

If you recall, the Vivicam 6200 is very similar to the Sealife ECOshot and ReefMaster Mini cameras (all made by Sealife). They share the same body, and they are all rated for different depths. The Sealife ReefMaster Mini is rated for 130ft, the ECOshot is rated at 75 ft, and the Vivitar 6200W is rated for 30ft. I have also read that there are differences in the internal software on each camera. Although I don't know what they are. These cameras are very enticing. They have a very solid feel, are built like a brick, and are small, but not too small to handle. They have the perfect amount of Megapixels, at six. Any more pixels and you just get a lot of noise with a compact camera. And the price is really pretty amazing. We got ours for under a hundred. You can get one new today for about $120, and probably even less on eBay.

This is the point at which this review turns a bit sour. When we got back from Belize and inspected the pictures on a decent screen, we were pretty disappointed.

First, let me say that the picture quality was not bad. In fact it is a very good step up from a disposable camera. Really, the picture quality was probably about right for the price of the camera.

Let me try to be even more positive first. Here are some good points. It stayed water tight. The battery life with our rechargeable AA batteries was very good. It was easy to handle.

Now the bad. The colors where just not very good. For being a dedicated underwater camera, the colors were muddy, lacking any snap, even in shallow, direct sunlight waters.

Keep in mind that I am always comparing the camera to the pictures I get with my inexpensive Fuji Finepix F40FD.

Also, the pictures were not very sharp. Six megapixels is plenty to create a pretty big, fairly high resolution picture. But most of the images where soft. I would guess the quality of the lens is at fault. Pure speculation. Maybe it was just our sample of the camera. This was confirmed by trying to take pictures with the camera out of the water. They were clearly not sharp. In fact the pictures out of the water were pretty terrible.

Another problem was that the auto focus was not very good. There were a number of pictures that were not focused at all.

And finally, the light meter did not do a very good job. It commonly overexposed pictures.

Taking video with it was fun, but the results were not stellar.

Here are some sample pictures. There are also some comparison pictures taken at the same time with the Fuji F40FD.

This picture below probably represents the very best picture that we got from this camera while on a 17 day snorkel trip in Belize. The colors of the Cuddle fish are decent, and sharper then most of the pictures we got.

The next picture is from my cheap little Finepix F40fd point and shoot camera of the same subject at the same time. This is how it came out of the camera. Not photoshop sharpening, or adjustments of any kind.

Here is a 100% blow up of the above Fuji picture.

Below is a more typical example of the shots we got back from the Vivitar Vivicam 6200W snorkel camera. It is not a bad shot, but the colors are horrible. Those fans should have some wonderful purple color to them.

Now we could have made these pictures look better with a lot of photoshop editing. We could have adjusted the white balance and pulled out more color and could have easily have sharpened them.

I also did not play around with adjust the white balance on the camera in the water. And I expect most people who buy this camera will not either. But if you do get this camera, you probably could improve the colors a bit by doing a white balance adjustment for your current underwater conditions.

Conclusion:

We would much rather spend $300 on another Fuji camera and housing than waste our time taking pictures with this camera. But that is us.

But if we were not willing to spend that much (about the minimum for a digital with separate housing), and the choice was that or a disposable camera, we definitely would get the Vivitar Vivicam 6200, particularly if it was just for one trip. The pictures are very good compared to a disposable underwater camera.

Side Note: We met a woman in Belize who had the ECOshot version of this camera. She asked me to take a look at it because it was not working (we were returning on a boat trip). I opened up the battery compartment and found water dripping out. Not good. She said this is the third one of these cameras she has had, all replaced on warranty for water failure. I suspect operator error.

We never had any problem with water leaking in on ours. But it just goes to show, you must very carefully inspect your rubber seals. Any little hair, or piece of dirt, and that could be you.

She also had purchased the optional wide angle lens attachment. She let us borrow it for the next snorkel spot, and we can happily report, don't waste your money. It made almost no difference in perspective when we used in on our camera.