Nice camera for the money

Author's Rating:

Pros: Takes awesome outdoor pictures Ease of use Some manual settings Does video

Cons: Battery consumption! LCD display is anemic! Flash strength Customer support

The Bottom Line: 
On a budget...get a 128MB card, rechargable batteries and this camera...you will likely be pretty happy!

Author's Review
Picked this up for less than $100. I then added a 128MB card and recently began using rechargeble and am very impressed with this camera for the amount I spent on it.

I have the benefit of being able to truely compare a few cameras as I have another digital camera (an RCA 2.3 MP). I also use an older JVC unit (unsure of the model number, but it's not a cheapo) and a newly purchased Nikon Coolpix 3100 at work.

The Vivitar ViviCam 3705 is a nice unit for the price. It performs very well for outdoor pictures and provides top quality pictures that have needed minimal improvements. (Of all the cameras mentioned above, this camera blows them away when taking pictures outdoors!) Pretty impressive considering it's 1/3 the price of the Nikon.

As for indoor pictures...it has its place. Let me explain a little more...if your planning on using this for around the house holiday snapshots - your in luck. If you plan on taking pictures of the dance floor at a wedding - leave it home cause it's useless. It basically boils down to a poor strength flash. For across the table shots at a party it's decent; but go any further than 10-12 feet it simply sucks!
I haven't ventured using it much more indoors as I'm aware of it's limitations.

The construction and design are OK, the sliding door over the lens is a nice touch. The only complaint here is that you get the "open lens cover" message if the door is not open 100% (not even 99.9% will work) (Once the warranty ends I'll be taking care of that little microswitch - if I can't remember to open the lens cover on my own, than I'm too old to take pictures!) The viewfinder is very accurate (ecspecially when compared to the RCA) - I don't see to many people mention this; however after taking pictures that looked good in the viewfinder all day long - it can be very disappointing when you see everyones head sliced off etc...

In summary I think it offers a good buy for the money. It's not a $300 camera, but yields a hell of a picture outdoors.
The construction is decent and for someone looking for a reasonable price for a digital camera it's certainly worth a look at!

I highly reccomend two things: 1) Buy an SD/Multimedia card - the built in 8MB just doesn't cut it, ecspecially if you decide to use the highest quality setting and size.

The second item is rechargable batteries - there is simply no way around this. If you buy this camera and don't buy high quality rechargable batteries you will hate this camera - period! I ran mine on regulat batteries for a while and honestly thought either the batteries I got were old or the camera was defective. I read about this from others, but I have never seen a camera eat batteries like this one! With regular alkaline AA's you'll maybe pull off 12 shots with a flash, before the 1/2 battery indicator comes on. Another 8 to 10 shots and it's all over. Wow! Get some rechargable batteries with a rating of 1850Ma or higher and you'll turn that hate into love!

On a scale of 1-10. For the market it serves and the price I must give it a 7.5. If the flash was better for indoor pics I'd certainly go higher.

One other thing worth mentioning...Vivitar technical support...it's automated e-mail response system. Phone calls are useless since the people fielding your phone call are clueless and read either from an operating guide or computer script that must be written by the same folks who write those "dummies" books. If they can't find the solution in the info. they have - you will get nothing further. I wanted to know about the current draw; considering the battery usage I was having! Still don't have the information even after several e-mails.