Customer Reviews

Vivitar Vivicam 3825 4MP Digital Camera w/ 3x Optical Zoom

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I looked around a bit before I made my choice with the 3825. One of the places I looked was vivitar.com where I inspected the sample pictures taken with this camera. I was impressed with their results and a little confused with the one review that complained about "grainy" pictures.
There's a bit of a learning curve involved with this unit regarding making changes for indoor shooting and also being able to view the LCD when outdoors, but both can be accomplished with mastery of the manual.
I guess what hooked me on the 3825 was the discounted price of $198.00. The camera originally listed for $367.00.
The specs on this page are (or were) incorrect about the power requirements. It takes 2 AA cells.

I did encounter grainy output when using the digital zoom outdoors, although the output through the optical zoom is excellent.
I didn't realise that the pictures in digital cameras default to JPEG files. This results in colors derived from a somewhat limited spectrum. Not that this will make a difference for the average "point and shoot" enthuasist. But for closeup work where one requires an _exact_ match (like a glass lampshade) one will experience a subtle difference. I supppose all cameras in this price range save their output in this format and if one needs _exact_ color replication one must either use film or a higher end digital camera.
Notwithstanding my last comment I enjoy using the 3825 and look forward to many years of faithful service from it.

REVISION!!!! I have received the camera and it is very nice. Do NOT believe the advertising - it DOES include a 16mB memory card and it only needs 2 AA batteries, NOT 4! It is a nice camera and well worth the new price!

I bought this camera on-line during January 2006 and discovered it to be slightly bulkier than I expected. It's definitely not something you could carry around with you in your trouser pocket. On initial inspection everything seems in a reasonably intuitive position. The menus are on a simple up down left right curser and once set most options that you might want to change depending on your environment are on marked buttons on the outside. Mine came with a 64meg SD card which I quickly swapped for a 256 meg card which should enable me to store hundreds of photos at a reasonable resolution.
One thing the shocked me was the apparent power consumption. However after a little investigation I discovered that standard alkaline AA batteries cannot hold a high enough voltage for long enough and therefore the camera dies while there is still a good charge in the batteries. Therefore you must purchase rechargeable NiMh batteries with the camera. These are designed to hold a high voltage for far longer than standard batteries and I have not had to change mine yet after about 4 hours of use. Otherwise you will be replacing standard batteries every 20 mins or so.
Otherwise picture quality is good, there is no noticeable delay between pressing the button and the camera taking a picture. Downloading to a pc is akin to taking data off a usb memory card and requires no driver so long as you use Windows 2000 or XP.
All things considered it's a good buy for the £75 I paid.

Bought this for my son. Most common functions were intuitive but we still needed to read the manual a lot. However, the pics were very grainy. My old 2MP Fuji Finepix had better resolution. We returned the Vivitar for a Samsung Digimax 360 (3.2 MP) which we like much better.

I have just bought this camera for my daughter at a Super Walmart on sale for $160.00. Brand new & still wrapped in box.
Have yet to try it but it makes me feel better that I saved almost $90.00. Will let you know how it works.
Alicia