Update Jan 2002: Windows 2000/XP versions of the Intel applications are now available as a 300-400 megabyte download from Intel.
I guess since Intel makes camera sensor chips and flash memory chips, it figures it can make a good camera. Well, the Intel Pocket Cam isn't bad. I needed a webcam and a digital camera, but I didn't have alot of cash, so I opted to get a "dualcam". I know that 640x480 resolution isn't that great these days, but I just wanted to get snapshots into the computer, and didn't care about equalling 35mm photos, etc. I had originally bought a Logitech Quickcam Traveller, but problems with the microphone forced me to return it, and instead of getting another one, I opted to try the Intel Pocket Cam. Intel's 8 megs of memory is a bonus compared to other dualcams out there which have only 4 or 2 megs. And a US$30(=C$45) rebate from Intel is available until June 2002.
Installation was bumpy. I have Windows 2000, and I found out when I got the cam home that the software disc wasn't compatible with Win 2000. However, now you can download Win 2000/XP compatible Intel Apps from their website in a huge 425 megabyte download. Also, the Windows Update web site has drivers for it, so that users with those 2K or XP can get started with the camera out of the box.
The snapshot feature is pretty good. The red channel was a bit saturated. The vaunted low-light sensitivity of this camera is true, but only because a long exposure time is used. You may want a tripod for low or medium light shots for maximum sharpness. There is also a noticeable speckling in the darkest shots, but it wasn't as bad as some other cams I've seen, especially in the blue channel. Although I wasn't expecting miracles at 640x480, it wouldn't be so bad except the images you do get are "ruined" somewhat by an overly aggressive compression technique. While cramming 120 photos into its 8 megs is impressive, it'd be nice if a higher-quality compression could be selected even if you only got, say, 30 pics. As it there is noticeable artifacting in the pics. Also, if there is a bright light bulb or the sun or even a glint in the field of view, it can "overload" the sensor and there'll be a bright vertical band in the image at that point. Although, this problem affects other cams as well.
The live webcam video is pretty good. However, the maximum frame rate available depends on the ambient light. The guy at the store said that this cam would have better low light sensitivity than the Logitech Traveller. However it comes at the cost of frame rate, and I found it no faster than the Logitech with low light boost enabled. However, there is very little noise at low light levels with this cam, whereas with some cams the speckling can be bad.
To get a full 30 frames per second out of this cam, I put a desk lamp with a 40 watt bulb shining in my face on top of the monitor. If you want full motion in a whole room view, you will need sunlight or perhaps a halogen work lamp, etc. This is probably true of any webcam anyway. They all seem to have a small quasi-pinhole lens which makes focusing easy but cuts down on the light input, and the Intel Pocket Cam is no exception. However, if using video conferencing over a 56K modem link, a full 30 fps isn't needed, so a slower rate with ambient lighting can be used. The cam can do 30 fps at 160x120 and 320x240, but maxes out at 26 fps at 640x480 (according to the spec sheet), which is pretty good for the USB bus. Besides plenty of light, another way to speed up the video is to check the exposure lock option and uncheck the auto color and flicker fixing options in the driver dialog window.
Another thing that threw me off was that the video preview window in many apps seems to have a slower update than the camera is actually cranking out. When you actually play back the recorded video, it is at full frame rate. Also, when recording a video, be sure to just dump the raw cam data (which is in a format known as I420) to an AVI file, and then worry about recompressing the AVI with MPEG4 or whatever afterward. Compression is CPU intensive and shouldn't be done "on the fly" when recording videos. I don't know what sort of video record features the Intel Create and Share software has, because I couldn't install it under Windows 2000. So I have been using trial versions of Ulead Video Studio, Adobe Premiere, etc. to create videos for now.
Also, there is no contrast control in the driver dialog. There is brightness... but no contrast. At times the contrast can be a bit strong and being able to turn it down would be nice.
Takes both photo and video images 640 x 480 maximum resolution 16.8 million colors 8 MB flash memory Up to 30 frames per second in full-motion video, ...More at Amazon Marketplace
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