Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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).

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!

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!

What a nice surprise, with the ViviCam 3935. At the price I paid for this neat little number I couldn't be happier. The pictures that I downloaded were sharp and colorful, even with a lower pix setting. Downloading was a breeze, just a couple of clicks and that was it. The multiple features are quite extensive. Red eye reduction, multiple picture settings, and 3X optical-4X digital zoom are just the beginning. Try zooming in,up to 6X times, with a captured pic., what fun! The downside is that the camera eats alkaline batteries like a shark. Best if you use rechargable 2300 NI-MHs, and you will be much happier.

I bought this camera as a gift for myself on christmas of 2004. This far, I'm very pleased with the quality, color, features and performance of the camera. The only problem I found (the reason for a 4 star instead of a 5 star rating) is that pictures doesn't come always properly focused and usually you'll need to ask the camera to re-focus

This camera is very easy to operate. Just point and click, or turn the dial to the desired type of picture you wish to take. It is also easy to transfer the pictures to your computer. I know next to nothing about computers, and was able to transfer my pictures. I would recommend this camera to anyone. I bought this camera to sell stuff on e-bay. It took good pictures for that purpose.

I'm new to digital and wanted an easy camera for quick shots. So far the vivitar 3935 has done well. It takes much better outdoor photos, it appears to need lots of good lighting. The software sent with the camera is very basic but alows you to make some minor editing, resize images, etc. I've been using a 128mb sd card for memory and it has worked very well with no problems. I stored aproximatley 50 pictures on it from one day and had space left for more. In the "fine" quality setting, pictures were about 10mb a picture, so if you want a lot of large photo's you may need a bigger memory card.
My only concern so far is the poor battery life. It lasted me aprox 45 minutes taking 15 photos-After that it was spent. I purchased a pack of 4 w/charger. They seem to work well for swapping.
I purchased the camera for $149 and belive that the battery hassle is worth the $1-200 saved compaired to other models.

This little camera does fine in warm/hot temperatures and has great picture quality, but runs through batteries at an unbelievable pace. Also, you're lucky if you can get 3 or more pictures if the ambient temperature is below 40 degrees. Another annoying feature that I wish I had known about is that there is no memory battery, meaning that everytime you change the main batteries (which is quite frequently) the camera totally resets and you have to set the date all over again. This is a pain. All that being said, I took this camera on a trip to Taiwan recently and I was very pleased with the pictures it produced. It's not the best, and could be improved in several ways, but it's not the worst 5MP camera out there either, especially for the price.

This is a great little 5mp camera . Will fit in your pocket or on your belt with supplyed carring case. super pics. the zoom is great. would by again.I have a d70 but some time's I don't like to take it to some events at night.

The V3935 is my first digital camera ever, and I just got it in the mail today. After maybe 15-20 minutes of reading the manual, I knew basically all of the camera's features inside and out. The images are sharp, and the camera itself comes with tons of stuff (like free photo software!). The only thing is, it really does eat up AA's; the batteries that came with it are already dead! Guess I'll just have to buy rechargeables...