Vivitar ViviCam 3725

Review Date
November 24, 2002

Overall Rating
 4 of 5

Value Rating
 4 of 5

Used product for
0-1 years

Visitors rate this review
3.67 of 5, 3 votes

Reviewed by
C Gaul , Beginner , from San Diego, CA

Price Paid
$315.00 at Fry's

Summary
A very good camera for the price. Ideal for the casual user. Those used to high end 35mm camera's will be dissapointed but for the average person who wants to capture pictures of friends, family, pets, perfect!!

Strengths
Easy to use. Takes high quality pictures. Can easily adjust picture quality. Movie Mode is fun!

Weaknesses
Camera takes a long time after turning on to get ready to take a picture. Camera also goes into power save too quickly. So you may miss that spontaneous shot. Sound in movie mode is poor. Overcame battery problems with high quality rechargeables. I keep two sets with one always charged.

Similar Products Used
Video Camera's with capture devices

Customer Service
N/A

Review Date
November 4, 2002

Overall Rating
 1 of 5

Value Rating
 1 of 5

Used product for
0-1 years

Visitors rate this review
1.00 of 5, 1 votes

Reviewed by
FredM , Beginner

Price Paid
$299.00 at HSN

Summary
Since I got it I noticed a problem with battery usage. I would take a few pictures put the camera away for a few days and the battery was dead.

The picture quality was very good. The ease of use was good.

Transferring from the Compac Disk was very easy.
I liked the feature of being able to transfer pictures to a VHS film.

Strengths
Picture quality.
Ease of use.

Weaknesses
Batteries drained in camera seems like overnight. Will not last with special alkaline batteries. I went thru 12 batteries in the 3 times I tried the camera.

Similar Products Used
None

Customer Service
Not good. Did not return email.

Review Date
October 7, 2002

Overall Rating
 4 of 5

Value Rating
 4 of 5

Used product for
0-1 years

Reviewed by
Fred , Intermediate

Price Paid
$0.00 at fry's

Summary
Very good camera for the price (don't remember, but value was good).

Strengths
Excellent picture quality.
Good useful options.
Price.

Weaknesses
Battery usage is out of control, less than an hour and they're gone.
If you plug a charger in the camera and you have rechargable batteries, it should charge them, that would be nice.
Manual focus could be a little more accurate, using prizms for example, or some indication of what's in focus (like on SLR cams).
Auto focus is often wrong with mid distance.
USB transfers locks the camera very often when finished.
USB transfers are slow.

Customer Service
N/A

Review Date
July 2, 2002

Overall Rating
 4 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
0-1 years

Visitors rate this review
5.00 of 5, 2 votes

Reviewed by
Sandeep , Intermediate

Price Paid
$0.00

Summary
Its a good 3.3mp camera for 249$ with 4x optical zoom.It has a cheap plastic body compared to Minolta S304

Strengths
3.3mp,4x+2x zoom with movie recording feature with sound at $249.

Weaknesses
Battery consumption, with alkalyne batteries drained out in 8 shots , I'm getting better performance with rechargeable Nimh 1800 maha lenmar batteries .

USB connection to PC : Wont terminate even after switching off the camera. most of the time I have to remove batteries to switch off camera and save battery charge

Review Date
June 15, 2002

Overall Rating
 4 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
0-1 years

Visitors rate this review
3.67 of 5, 3 votes

Reviewed by
dc9mm , Casual , from Buffalo

Price Paid
$250.00 at Ebay

Summary
Well i have been playing with this camera for a couple of weeks now. Takes very nice shots but i have found the auto focus sometimes making mistakes leaving me with a blurry picture.Typicly when trying to shoot objects from far distances were just locking the focus on infinity works better. Up close auto focus works great. I have found i get much better shots in manual mode as apposed to auto mode. Picture quality is very good, took a shot of me and my motorcycle today with tripod and in timer mode. Came out great, Printed a 8.5 by 11 inch picture on my Epson 780 photo printer. Looks absolutley GREAT!!

Strengths
Things i really like are when reveiwing the pictures on the LCD its instantly switches from one picture to the next. Many cameras i have seen have a quite a bit of lag but this camera is very quick. Also the LCD is very good, much better than old Fuji 2400. I can actually use it in bright sunlight.Having a 4 power zooms is also very nice. I recomend a 128 meg compact flash card as that will hold 74 pictures at the highest resolution highest quality Jpeg setting. I only take pictures at full resolution as it doesnt make sense to do otherwise as i can just compress the Jpeg more in Photo Shop 6.0 .Plus if you want to crop the picture later the high the res the better.I have posted pictures in the gallery i have taken with this camera, take a look.

Weaknesses
Weakness is the autofocus as described above. Uses batteries quite quickly. I use 1600 milla/amp metal hydrides. I can get all 74 pictures in high resolution highest Jpeg setting with one set of batteries. Not sure if this is normal or not but it takes the usb setup with the camera to transfer 128 meg worth of pictures to computer about 14 minutes, i thought that was rather slow. I bought a card reader for 24 bucks and it does 128 meg in about 4 minutes.

Similar Products Used
Fuji 2400, canon A40

Customer Service
I have only contaced tech support through email to ask about a AC adapter and they responded the same day.