A webcam to get the eyeballs rolling
Written: Jul 08 '02 (Updated Jul 11 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Inexpensive yet reliable entry-level webcam that may grow with you.
Cons: Designed to be a webcam - and just that.
The Bottom Line: If you aim to explore what webcams are all about, this camera will give you solid and stable performance at a modest price. Unsuitable for panning outdoors video, though.
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| knilaus's Full Review: Logitech QuickCam (961119-0403) Personal Web Camer... |
Motivation for buying
In the first few days of the life of my new broadband internet connection, I was excited simply by the quick downloading of large files and how being always on-line facilitated information retrieval on demand.
This initial excitement, however, quickly vaned, and I decided to turn my newly acquired connectivity to more sophisticated use: I was in the market for cheap broadband gadgets.
Having been involved in a number of international contexts over the years, I have befriended several individuals, with whom I predominantly interact over the Internet. Of course, chat, e-mail, instant messaging and IP telephony provide a plethora of channels through which this interaction may be facilitated, but I must admit a certain fascination at the thought of sending images and video of myself and my surroundings to a friend located several thousands kilometres away. Somehow, in the visual culture of our times, transmitting images is a much more powerful way of putting the point that you are separated by distance.
Purchasing criteria
Recognising that my desire to acquire a webcam was driven more by a certain playfulness and fascination of technology, I decided not to spend more than €80 (approx. 70$) on this purchase.
Image quality
Furthermore, I had seen enough grainy and claustrophobic webcam images on the web to know, that I wanted a camera with a resolution and colour depth better than 320x200x256, which seemed to be what was on offer at the absolute low end of the market. I also did not want to consider anything less than an update rate of 30 frames per second, since I wanted the possibility to stream real-time video broadcasts from my computer.
Branding
As I was new to this market, I felt that I did not have sufficient experience to judge whether a less well known brand would be installed on my Windows 2000 platform just as easily as the major brands on the market (i. e. Intel, Creative Labs, Logitech). As this was going to be a purchase for fun and recreation, I simply did not want to deal with unexpected installation problems or driver incompatibilities.
Mobility
And finally, I noticed that certain of the available products on the market doubled as handheld, digital cameras, in that they were battery-powered and separable from their base station. I thought that this feature was nice, but I was not willing to pay extra for this or sacrifice other features, as my observation was that the resolution and memory provided by these handheld cameras was probably not going to provide me with very useful opportunities for taking outdoors images anyhow, despite the added advantage of mobility.
Purchasing Alternatives
Using my local comparison shopping website, I found that the alternatives available to me were limited to the following:
Creative Labs Video Blaster WebCam Go Plus @ €80
Logitech Quick Cam Web @ €60
Logitech ClickSmart 310 @ €75
Philips PCVC690K Vesta Pro Scan @ €80
The Creative Labs product and the Logitech ClickSmart are of the variety, that can be detached from their mount and subsequently used as regular, albeit low end, handheld digital cameras. As can be gathered from the above quotes, they were roughly €15 - 20 more expensive than the Quick Cam.
Superficially, the Philips appeared to feature the same specifications as the Logitech Quick Cam, and I was thus disappointed to see it advertised at €80. When I subsequently found product reviews complaining about the inavailability of drivers for use with the Philips on Windows XP, I decided in favour of the Logitech Quick Cam Web. I was later to learn the reason for the difference in price between the Quick Cam Web and the Philips Vesta Pro.
Unpacking and Installing
The webcam came packaged in a nice, big box giving you the feeling that you were getting more, than just a webcam. I carried the box on the back of my bicycle all the way home from the shop, but was never worried that the webcam might break, should it fall off the bike in transit: The box seemed sturdy enough to withstand such impact. Fortunately, I never got around to testing it.
The Quick Cam Web sports the classic eyeball design that most people have come to associate with the original webcam. The design includes a green LED that lights, when the camera is recording; a plastic privacy visor and a recording button on top that may be used to activate the accompanying video capture software. Rest assured that even if the images you intend to publish with this cam do not get your audience's eyeballs rolling, then certainly the webcam design in itself should be cause for admiration.
I was slightly disappointed to learn, that my package apparently did not include the tripod mount that was mentioned in other reviews concerning this webcam. I have yet to clarify whether this is due to a mishap in assembly or if it were because I bought an older or discounted version of the product. In any case, the package still included the solid rubber base depicted on the product photo in the above.
Included in the package was a CD-ROM with drivers for Windows 2000 and the Logitech Imagestudio program, which I will be discussing in detail in the below. Curiously, however, the version on disc was v6, but Logitech's web site contains the v7 upgrade, seemingly suggesting that I was buying an older generation of the product. Anyhow, downloading the new version did not seem to lead to significant improvements in functionality.
Software
The Quick Cam Web comes with the Logitech Imagestudio program included. In it's 7th version already, the program has probably been iteratively improved in terms of functionality and user interface to have mainstream appeal. Certainly, the user interface is very intuitive featuring Office-style cue cards and offering on-line help throughout.
The program supplies the following functionality:
- Basic still image and video recording
- Motion detection, recording and notification
- Real time web broadcasting of image or video recording
- Gallery of recorded images and videos
Motion detection
The motion detection is useful for experimenting with surveillance scenarious. Unfortunately, the notification feature is limited to the simply playing of a .WAV-file: Do not expect notification through e-mail or text message. The program will record for a duration succeeding the triggering event, however I found that the program was so heavy on the resources of my Celeron 450 Mhz / 64 MB laptop, that it did not manage to start recording until several seconds after the fact, by which time the 'perpetrator' might already be gone.
Real time web broadcasting
The web broadcasting feature of the software is made possible through arrangement with www.spotlife.com, which apparently makes a business out of hosting webcams. Included in the package is a 30 day trial subscription with the Spotlife service, which I never came around to trying: First of all, after registering at the website I had to wait two days before receiving an e-mail confirmation with the password necessary to access the site, and second of all, the Spotlife service predominantly caters to unsophisticated users, who do not possess the technical skills needed to host their own webcam. I guess that for the bulk of Logitech's customers, this is a very appropriate solution.
However, as I have a broadband internet connection and also a 10 MB FTP account with my provider, I decided to pursue a solution not dependent on paying a subscription to Spotlife and using the bulky Imagestudio program. After some surfing and trying out sample programs, I found that the freeware program wCapture best catered to my needs: With a memory footprint as small as 1 MB, this program can be configured to capture images at recurring intervals and publish these on the web either through a built in http-server or via an FTP-account on a remote server. Using the http-facility theoretically also enables you to publish streaming video. The only feature missing in this program is the ability to put a caption displaying the time and date on the recorded image. Besides, you need to be able to integrate the .jpg-picture in your own HTML-code on the FTP/Web-server. This should be fairly trivial for technically savvy users however.
Using the Camera
I found that the camera was able to produce slightly grainy but satisfactory images at the specified resolutions (i.e. up to and including 640x480 under indoors conditions. Although it does take a few mili-seconds for the camera to adjust to altered light settings, I found the sensors to be remarkably receptive to light: I was able to take pictures even in conditions of relative darkness. The videos were equally satisfactory, as long as focus remained the same throughout the recording. The frame rate went as high as 60 fps for the high resolution recording mode, and it never skipped a frame when dealing with a static focus.
However, wanting to test the limits of this camera, I also happened to use it outdoors (connected to my laptop), wanting it to record video panning over the beautiful skyline of Copenhagen when viewed from the lakefront on a summer evening at a distance of perhaps 80 metres. I found that the camera had severe difficulties in catching up with the altered lighting conditions that were introduced whenever the motive was panned slightly to one side or the other. Occasionally, the recorded video would even skip a few frames, but this I put down to the limited memory and processing power of my laptop: Using it in outdoors forced it to operate in battery mode, which somehow causes the operating system to do increased memory paging involving fixed disk read/write accesses, that substantially slowed the operations of the video capture software.
Finally, I have noticed that if using the camera to record a shape standing in the front of a window illuminated by daylight, distortion may sometimes occur around the edges of the shape. This is probably also due to the difficulty for the webcam to handle complex lighting situations such as those introduced by daylight.
Lessons Learned
In concluding, my experience with the Logitech Quick Cam Web has taught me a few lessons:
CMOS vs CCD
After having bought the Quick Cam, I was introduced to the important distinction between cameras based on CMOS sensor and those based on CCD sensors.
To put it briefly, the CMOS technology is a low cost substitute for CCD, which does not handle adjustments to altered lighting conditions very quickly. In most of the situations for which you would use an ordinary webcam (i.e. fixed position recording of indoor or outdoor images with no rapid variation in lighting) this technology is adequate. However, for those situations where you need to shoot images under changing conditions, you really need the CCD technology.
You may remember the Philips Pro Vista Camera mentioned in the above: The reason why this camera, which apparently sported the same specifications as the Quick Cam Web is priced about 33% higher than the Quick Cam Web is of course that the former product utilises CCD sensors. I imagine that CCD sensors would alleviate the problems described in the above when trying to record video outdoors.
As a potential webcam buyer, you need to be aware of the distinction between CMOS (cheap) and CCD (expensive), as this may help you understand the slightly different prices of what would otherwise seem like products with identical features.
The importance of the base mount
When considering a webcam, what may strike you as unimportant can actually have a very tangible impact on the range of possibilities that become available to you in terms of recording in specific settings: I am thinking of the base mount, that the webcam comes equipped with. The base mount determines the freedom of movement and angles from which you may position your camera. If your base is very inflexible, it means that you need to improvise your own base out of books or similar, every time you need to shoot images at unconventional angles or altitudes.
Additionally, if the package does not include a clip-on of sorts, you may have difficulty attaching the camera to the top of the flatscreens that are becoming increasingly popular these days.
Finally, the way that the cord is attached to the webcam can actually also affect the operations of the camera. For example, I found that since the Quick Cam Web is almost like a ball in its bearing (i. e. able to turn very smoothly and without friction if moved to do so), even a slight twist of the cord could turn the camera in a completely wrong angle. Since the cord is attached directly to the eyeball-shaped camera, this unfortunately happens more often than necessary. Had the cord instead been attached to the base mount or through some sort of stabilising clip mechanism, this might have been less of a problem.
Conclusions
The Logitech Quick Cam Web deserves four stars out of a possible five, since it delivers a satisfactory degree of functionality, stability and flexibility at a relatively modest price. It is thus perfectly suitable as an entry-level webcam that may grow with you up to a certain point.
However, if you already know in advance that you may be wanting to experiment with using your camera in more challenging settings, I would urge you to consider the Philips Vista Pro instead.
Correspondingly, if you aim to combine the dual functions of handheld digital camera and webcam, this camera is not for you.
Links
The wCapture program: http://www.webattack.com/get/wcapture.shtml
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
knilaus
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Member: Kristoffer Nilaus Olsen
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Reviews written: 22
Trusted by: 35 members
About Me:
Just out of temporal stasis.
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