Vivitar's ultra-budget 2000s digicam — 3.1MP CMOS, focus-free lens, 1.5in LCD, SD/MMC card, AAA power
The Vivitar ViviCam 3188 was an ultra-budget digital compact from the ViviCam line of the mid-2000s, when the Vivitar name was being applied to low-cost digicams sold through supermarkets, catalogue shops and gift retailers rather than to the company's earlier optics. It sat near the bottom of the ViviCam range and was offered in several body colours, including black and pink.
It used a 3.1-megapixel CMOS sensor, with a 5-megapixel interpolated output option, behind a focus-free lens. Exposure and white balance were fully automatic, framing was via a 1.5-inch LCD, and a 4x digital zoom stood in for optical zoom. It had a small built-in flash, 16MB of internal memory, a slot for SD or MMC cards, USB transfer and a basic video-clip mode, all powered by AAA cells.
This is a point-and-shoot in the most literal sense: no focus, no exposure control and no optical zoom. Its appeal today is almost entirely the lo-fi Y2K-digicam aesthetic, with the small CMOS sensor producing soft, noisy, heavily processed images that some buyers seek out deliberately. It is unsuited to low light or anything beyond casual snapshots.
On the used market these sell cheaply and often untested. AAA power means no charger worries, but check the battery contacts for corrosion, confirm the camera actually writes to an SD card (older units can be fussy with large or SDHC cards, so a small-capacity card is safest), and inspect the LCD for scratches or bleed. Sources conflict on whether it takes two or three AAA cells, so check the battery bay.