Vivitar Vivicam V3935 5.25MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom

by Vivitar

Product Details

• Item Weight: 7 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0002UB0FM
• Item model number: VIVICAM-3935
• Batteries: 2 AA batteries required.
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #23,328 in Camera & Photo (See Top 100 in Camera & Photo)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 2, 2001

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

The ViviCam 3935 is a compact, feature-packed digital camera with both digital-still and movie recording capabilities. The ViviCam 3935 is an affordable choice for anyone seeking a versatile, high quality digital camera.

The stylish ViviCam 3935 is equipped with a 5.25-megapixel image sensor and a sensational 3x optical zoom lens. The camera records directly to its internal memory or to a Secure Digital (SD) memory card. Images may be viewed on the 1.6-inch color TFT LCD display.

The ViviCam 3935 offers a maximum resolution of 2560 x 1920 for still-images or 320 x 240 for movie clips with audio. As a digital-still camera, it's ideal for a variety of digital imaging needs ranging from e-mail and web applications to images that are ready for display or print. Quality 11 x 17-inch prints are not a problem with the ViviCam 3935.

The ViviCam 3935 is equipped with 11MB of internal memory. The internal memory may be extended by using Secure Digital (SD) memory cards in sizes up to 512MB.

Other features of the ViviCam 3935 include an integral four-mode flash with red-eye reduction, 4x digital zoom, autofocus operation, macro (for close-ups), automatic white balance, automatic exposure compensation control (with manual compensation, if desired), video output, multilingual operation, and a self-timer. The ViviCam 3935 comes with USB and video output cables to download images for viewing and editing. It uses two AA batteries or a single CR-V3. USB mass-storage operation offers ease of use for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux-based Desktop/LX users.

What's in the box:
V3935 camera, lens cap, USB cable, AV cable, hand strap, carrying pouch, 2 AA batteries, instruction manual, CD ROM

Product Description

VIVICAM-3935, 5.0 MEGAPIXEL DIGITAL CAMERA WITH 1.6 LCD SCREEN

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important for first time digital camera buyers!, September 2, 2005

By 

Matthew J. Trotter "the indie film guy" (Aloha, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vivitar Vivicam V3935 5.25MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom (Electronics)

Do NOT use AA batteries! Even on the reviews where people have given this camera 5 stars, they've commented on battery life. I repeat, do NOT use AA batteries, not even if they're rechargeable. Instead, take $15 and make an investment in a couple of CRV3 batteries (don't quote me... I'm not 100% positive if that's the right collection of letters and numbers for the type of battery I'm referring to, do your research). The CRV3's are like 2 AAs in one and are Li-ion (Lithium Ion) batteries, unlike your typical alkaline AAs. A two pack of CRV3s will cost you around $15, but are well worth it, especially since you've already or are planning to make a several hundred dollar investment in a digital camera. Not to mention the fact that you will quickly go through $15 worth of AAs if you don't take this advice. But do not get the new rechargeable CRV3's... there have been reports of the batteries having power surges that have damaged cameras. The battery life is infinitely longer on these batteries because these are the batteries built for taking the kind of abuse digital camera's (and other high end equipment) put them through. I've been using my Vivicam V3935 constantly for the past month or so with my first CRV3 battery, and the battery indicator on the camera is still full.

On to the acutal camera: I'm very happy with the purchase. Of course, I was lucky to get it for close to $150 before the price went back up. Still, at $300 it's cheaper than many of the other 5MP cameras available. The quality is more than satisfactory. I'm not very camera savvy, but I've found manual settings that work well for what I use my camera for, and keep it on the manual setting for most of my pictures without adjusting any of the settings. The automatic setting isn't bad... I just prefer to tell my camera what to do rather than the other way around.

There is one automatic seting that I can't live without however, and that is the automatic flash. The camera calculates how much light there is and then determines whether or not flash is necessary. This will save anyone that is rather camera illiterate lots of time and energy when trying to get those "perfect shots".

Another setting I constantly find myself using is the "micro" setting. It disables flash and adjusts other camer settings so that you can acheive spectacular extreme close-ups.

The camera includes your three basic color modes (color, black and white, and sepia), and a host of other customizable settings: Image size and quality (of course), white balance, exposure compensation, ISO speed, saturation and sharpness, f-stop, and I believe one other option (shutter speed seems to come to mind, but I don't have the manual on hand). I haven't done so personally (though I plan to), but at least look up f-stop and the option that I think is shutter speed... I can't really give you any advice, but I can say that if you want to take action photos (sports?) you will need to master the use of these settings... otherwise you'll end up with the dreaded "out of focus" photo. So, if you've ever tried to blame your camera for taking poor actions shots when you know other people can... now you know why they can.

The Vivicam V3935 is slightly larger than most cameras on the market today. In my opinion, that's a good thing... I'm very good at losing things, and the smaller they are the easier they are to lose. Not to mention the fact that I always feel that I'm going to break smaller electronic gadgets because of their size and weight. If you haven't made the switch to a digital camera yet, then this is probably still slightly smaller than what you're using now... and if not, it at least shouldn't be any larger. Another plus is that anything that opens or comes off the camera does so easily... there's never any doubt about whether or not a certain part of the camera is supposed to open or not.

I'm in love with the zoom feature. I've handled cameras before where I could not tell when the the camera had switched between optical and digital zoom. I avoid digital zoom at all costs because of the loss in quality (minor though it may be), and this camera makes it obvious when it's switched to digital zoom. It even "protects" you from digital zoom. You can hold the zoom button while you're doing an optical zoom and it will stop and require you to push the button again before it will do any zooming digitally.

The only thing I can really say bad about this camera is that there IS a certain amount of uncertainty about how your pictures turn out. Once you get them on the computer, you can see that they've turned out excellent... but sometimes it's hard to tell one the LCD whether or not your photos are in focus and a handful of other things. If you aren't in the general vicinity of a computer... I suggest taking too many rather than too few pictures.

In closing... it takes excellent quality photos, almost too good. On the highest settings pictures can easily end up being between 6 and 10MB, depending on color complexity and a whole bunch of other things. I do use this camera to take pictures for online classified ads, and for the sake of people still using dial up (and the bandwith usage on the sites hosting the pictures) I use FastStone Image Viewer (a free program not included with the camera) to easily reduce the size of the photos from the massive 2560x1920 to a much smaller size and reduce the quality slightly... often reducing my pictures from a whopping 6MB to only 20KB. Also useful if you want to send pictures through e-mail or instant messangers. It's a powerful program for doing simple editing and photo managing, but if you plan on using the extra features go with an editing program like photoshop or GIMP (also free and very well made).

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Decent camera for beginners, December 24, 2004

By 

Ryan Ledendecker (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vivitar Vivicam V3935 5.25MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom (Electronics)

So far, so good with the Vivicam 3935. I actually bought it for my girlfriend, but have found myself toying around with it more than her!

First of all, the Vivcam 3935 is extremely easy to operate. It's one of those cameras that you can pretty much pull out of the box, and effectively take photos right off the bat. A few pages of reading in the manual will turn you on to its other features, such as video recording, voice recording, and so on....

This little beauty looks very nice, takes very high quality pictures, and it's very simple to upload the pictures to your PC. The only thing that I would consider complaining about would be the battery life. It seems to suck the batteries down but like most of you I am use to that by now from other devices. On the other hand, with quality like this, it's worth the trade-off.

Overall I would highly recommend this camera to anyone who needs a high quality, yet affordable digital camera from a trusted name brand. Happy picture taking!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GREAT DEAL!, January 17, 2005

By 

Amber L. Dudczak - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vivitar Vivicam V3935 5.25MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom (Electronics)

LOVE this camera. Got it for christmas 2004 and have had great success with it.. It is better than some of the cameras my friends paid over $400 for. Great quality pictures everytime, very easy to use and has many awesome features like video recording with sound. Have had no problems at all since purchasing it. Yes batteries do drain super fast unless you use rechargable! Only other downside is that you are paying less because it is slightly bigger than some of the newest cameras...if you want a teeny tiny camera this is not for you, but it is still a reasonable size as i can still fit it in my purse when i go out! GREAT BUY!