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Strengths: Value
Price
Functionality
Quality of Camera
Quality of Images (better than digital point and shooters that cost 5X as much as this camera)
Very fast, high quality, prime lens
Durability
Weaknesses: The "Vivitar" name is not a prestige label, so you might get sneers from the silly camera snobs. Laugh right back. Your camera is better than theirs, probably, and you paid a fraction of the price.
Summary: The Vivitar all manual SLRs are fine cameras. Had mine - a "K-Mart Special" purchased for $100 nearly 15 years ago. They're basically the same camera, manufactured by Cosina, a behind-the-scenes Japanese camera company that makes high-quality cameras and lenses branded under many names, including the new Voigtlander Bessa rangefinder line.
This camera has about everything you want in an all-manual camera including a very good, fast (f1.7) 50mm prime. It is a manual camera, the only battery worries are for the meter, which lasts for years.
To me there's just something about clicking off a frame of film that's more satisfying that digital photography. No Photoshop, no expensive inks that constantly run out, no computer required. Drop off your film, let the lab worry about it. They aren't "obsolete" in a year, no worries about batteries. You can shoot at 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, and 3200 (black and white) speeds, unlike digicams (not DSLRs) which realistically limit you to iso 200 before noise gets too ugly. No keeping an eye on that battery meter, or worries that you'll have enough juice to get through the day, no crappy little EVF that cuts out in low light, no LCD that washes out in sun light, no annoying drop down menus for settings, just a simple easy to access dial to set shutter speed, no waiting for your camera to "boot-up" - it's always ready do shoot, no futzing with soft images for hourse in Photoshop, less than 10 bucks gets you double sets ready in an hour in most major metros, no blown out highlights like digital...
In fact, I just added some /great/ K-mount lenses I got for a song on eBay because of all the suckers "going digital". It's fun to hunt down used lenses, and play around with them. Oh, yes, did you know that while you get lots of zoom from digital, it's hard to "go wide" because of the size of the sensor? If you want that you'll pay dearly OR you'll have some giant, ridiculous teleconverter hanging off your camera.
Film costs? Please. Betchya $30 gets most shooters more film than they'll use in a year. Stock up and keep in in the fridge (not the freezer). Yes, it costs money to process but no more, and probably less, than it costs you to print from a photoprinter.
A manual SLR blows away and digiCAM on the market from an image quality standpoint. 35mm film is something like 20 megapixels. And despite what you've read, digital noise does NOT equal grain. Graininess is unobtrusive and does not ruin a photo. Digital Noise? Forget it. There are filters in Photoshop that /add/ noise for a film look. To me graininess is only an issue with higher speed films anyway, 800 and up, say.
Oh yes, this costs. Conservatively, this camera is 1/7th the price of and entry-level DSLR or mid-range digicam. I had mine since around 1990. Will that $700 digital point and shoot or that $1500 DSLR be around in 2020? More likely it will be in a landfill. This is progress?
Sure you still want that digital camera?
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