Sakar Digital Concepts 5.1 MP - horrible quality - is it me or the camera?

I bought a Digital Concepts 5.1 MP camera a few weeks ago, and the thing absolutely _cannot_ handle even moderately low-light conditions. If it's not a bright, sunny, ten-billion candle-power light, the thing only records blackness & maybe some of the dots of light where light is reflecting extra brightly off of things. I can't get anything better out of it. I can't find any information about this. Is this just a defective camera or is the design, itself, just crappy? I''m really hoping there's just a setting somewhere that I'm missing, but I'm doubting that to be the case. :-\

There is a setting to increase the exposure, which enables me to take still images in low-light settings - that is okay. But I bought it because it's supposed to be a frikkin' video camera - I already had digitial still shot capability. I'm not exactly made of money, but I don't know if this is a defective product or if I just didn't do my homework before buying the thing.

Unfortunately, it is the camera. I bought a few cheap cameras before I smart up and bought one with good reviews. All my cheap cameras are now door stoppers. Some of those camera uses really cheap sensors and lens, in addition to interpolating the image to a higher pixel one. If you can resize the picture to a smaller resolution (3MP or 2MP) and it looks much better, it is probably the image was interpolated after capture in the camera.

Also, make sure you turn digital zoom off as that will worsen the picture quality. For now, I suggest you use this camera for its video capability and get another camera for the picture quality. Like others, I suggest: Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Olympus... Go to newegg.com. They sell refurbished (almost new) 6-7MP cameras around $80-$150 that would be a keeper for many years. You might have to bite the bullet and get a good one. I bought my Fuji 550 6MP for $99 and I'm very happy with it. It is small and takes great pictures.

Its a Sakar what do you expect? Go get a good Camera Like Nikon or Canon!

Most likely its the camera. Use it as a paperweight and buy a Sony or Canon or Nikon or Pentax or Sigma or Olympus.

Really, for the price you paid what did you expect?

it is the camera

Don't blame your self! Blame the camera! Get yourself a good camera! It's better to spend more to get a good quality pictures/videos than to save yourself a few bucks and get nothing but continuous headache! there are lots of inexpensive but good cameras. Get yourself one and you'll know you did the right thing! What's more, you won't need to buy yourself a headache madicine because you'll be happy with the quality of the pictures/videos you took! lol! =)