Digi, Vidi, Webi - I Photographed, I Videoed, I WebConferenced! - ViviCam (Vivitar Vivicam 5355)

Member Name: bigdoug

Product:	Vivitar Vivicam 5355
Date:	09/02/09 (137 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 5MP Digital Camera, VGA Digital Video/Web Camera, and an SD Card Reader

Disadvantages: My Sat Nav has lost its memory card to the camera

The ViviCam 5355 is an inexpensive digital camera, from Vivitar, boasting both a picture resolution up to 2560x1920 pixels and featuring 3x optical zoom. I purchased the camera £29.99 from Amazon.com pretty cheap for a digital camera of this quality. The supplied USB cable allows the camera to be used both as an SD memory card reader, including the 4GB HCSD memory card and VGA webcam.

I specifically chose this model as I required a digital camera that was simple enough to use both for me and my 81-year-old mother. It was bought to be used mainly for holiday snaps. I wanted a camera that both supported SD memory cards and it was possible to be powered with either rechargeable AA batteries that supply only 1.2 Volts as well as than the 1.5 Volts supplied by the non-rechargeable ones.

This allowed me to run the camera with rechargeable AA batteries but in those cases I was away from UK mains power too long to recharge them for my next raft of photographs, featuring sun, sea, and sand, I could simply revert to using non-chargeable batteries to tied me over.

The SD and 4GB HCSD memory card support allowed me to temporarily use my 2GB SD Memory Card from my Satellite Navigation gizmo in the camera. This allowed me to store over 700 full-resolution 5 megapixel photographs in the camera before I needed to download them onto my computer using the supplied USB 1.1 interface cable.

Easy to use - but with flexible and advanced features

The top of the camera has only two controls the smaller power on/off button and the larger shutter button. You can take photographs by simply "aiming" it at the desired subject. Frame the subject using either the viewfinder or the large LCD panel on the back of the camera, then press the larger shutter button halfway-down to auto-focus the picture, indicated by blue square in the centre of the LCD panel and then press the button completely to actually take the focused picture.

The back of the camera features: 2.4" LCD screen, Zoom control, Mode button (Photo, Video), Macro, Exposure compensation, Flash, Self-Timer, Scene, Menu, Play buttons. This can be used to review and manage your photographs, videos and camera settings, including picture resolutions and multi/single point image focusing. Once the desired settings are set for the camera, these settings will be applied to all your subsequent photographs so the process of taking photographs remains unchanged.

I used this on my last holiday and the only problem I found was selecting which photographs to publish to a CD slideshow for viewing on a DVD recorder from the 400+ pictures I took!

Ok now for all you feature-freaks, here comes the facts and figures:

The ViviCam 5355 can be used as a;

* Stills Camera - 5 Mega-pixel (2560x1920, 2048x1536, 1280x960, 640x480)
* Video Camera - VGA (640x480 (24 fps), 320x240 (30 fps) both with sound)
* Web Camera - VGA (640x480)
* SD Card Reader - SD Cards and 4GB SDHC Card

The ViviCam 5355 Features;

* Integral Flash,
* Integral microphone, for audio on video recordings,
* 3x optical zoom lens,
* 2.4" LCD screen,
* 5cm macro mode, for close ups,
* 32mb built in memory,
* SD memory cards, 4GB SDHC memory card support,
* AA battery support, including rechargeable ones.
* USB cable that allows the camera to be used as both a
. * SD card reader and
. * VGA webcam.

Computer System Requirement

In order to use all the features of both the camera and the supplied software on your computer they must have the minimum specifications.

For Windows Computers
* Pentium 166 MHz or higher
* Windows 2000/XP/Vista
* 128MB RAM
* 128MB hard disk space
* CD-ROM drive
* Available USB port

For Macintosh Computers
* PowerPC G3/G4/G5
* OS 9.0 or later
* 128MB RAM
* 128MB hard disk space
* CD-ROM drive
* Available USB port

Summary: Digital Stills Camera, Digital Video Camera, SD card reader and a VGA Webcam

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