Little Webcammies

**Renée** · December 27th, 2001, 01:53 AM

Do all $40 (USD) webcams have crappy resolution? Is it a get-what-you-paid-for kind of thing? I don't know much about them at all. My mom gave me this one. Just curious. This one's an Intel. If you guys tell me this is a crappy cam for the money, I'm taking it back!

**Mayet** · December 27th, 2001, 02:47 AM

If you can't get the focus better than that yeah I'd send it back .......

I have seen much better resolution

thats a pic of Kira and I..( not set up properly either)taken a month or so ago that I have on my website taken with my sony ccd webcam which is brilliant but my other webcam only does crappy images that are worse than the one you showed....no light at all
have you tried turning the front lens for focus...both mine have this option.......

**Renée** · December 27th, 2001, 04:02 AM

Heh heh....uh, so, Mayet, you mean there's a....uhh....focus control there on the front?

Heh heh heh....well, I guess it probably produces image more like this one if you adjust the focus....

Still, is that about the best it gets for $40 ($79 AUD)?

----
P.S. I still cannot get over how much your old avatar really looks like you....!

**Mayet** · December 27th, 2001, 04:26 AM

Damn if I had half of my avatars "assets" Id be happy......

yes thats a better pic more like the quality to expect its about on par with my second one but yours has more light and it doesnt make it all look blue....so your going ok...I still like the more expensive ones
though
and geez renee while I am at it can I borrow your eyes for a while they are the best baby blues i have seen in quite a while......

**confus-ed** · December 27th, 2001, 04:36 AM

Focus helps, as was pointed out

(But all my holiday snaps come back looking like that maybe the Sangria? At least you got what you were aiming at!(Is that you Renee?) )

You need to look at what ccd (Charge Coupled Devices - the chip that does the capture) you get, generally bigger chip - better pics.

There's a lot of cheapie cameras out their offering some pretty dismal resolutions, You want at the very least 640 x480, preferably more than that.

Resolution range

640 x 480 Pixels = Minimum Computer Resolution
1280 x 960 Pixels = Film Resolution of 4"x6" print
1600 x 1200 Pixels = Film Resolution of 8"x10" print
1920 x 1600 Pixels = Very High Resolution

Otherwise you need to use really little pictures(thumbnails) to make the pictures look ok, which is fine for web pages but not much else.

This is the same technology used in scanners, and the early/cheapie cameras are using those chips, trouble is most scanners have at least two sometimes three of those chips(They are looking at part of the page).

I take it that's the best the camera can do? Not good, the subject of course is brilliant!, but the output is not. What's that 320x240?

I wonder what Mayet's resolution was? More, much more I suspect...

And there is software interpolation(where it guesses the missing bits) some cameras(the software really) do it well, others not.

Webcams should deliver more performance for the money as you don't need to store the stuff in the camera, so no smart media, compact flash, microdisks whatever in the cost.

$40 isn't much at all for anything computer related, if you want decent pics then get a better camera, try looking here <a href="http://imaging-resource.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php?page_id=48&ut=3efcc004ee858819" target="_blank">imaging-resource</a>. There is a search with price limiters that could help.

$75 should buy you an 'allright' 640x480 camera and no wires!

I see while I was writing you worked out what the turney bit on the front was for!(AND I think you've pulled....)

**Mayet** · December 27th, 2001, 06:49 AM

my husbands friends agreed with you there
...they found the subject of Renee's picture much more fascinating than the resolution,

mines only a 640 x 480 but its the sony ccd inside that makes the difference, it really seems to output a better quality than the other cams of the same res that I have sold or serviced.
It cost 104 wholesale AUS and sells for around 138

its a totally round ball on a stand it looks like an eyeball and uses a cu98a driver

**confus-ed** · December 27th, 2001, 07:04 AM

Ooops..... Mayet=girl...no offence?(though in todays PC world I shouldn't take that for granted either..)

If I'd read the post I'd have worked out you were the big one! Cute little girl

**Wayward Clam** · December 27th, 2001, 10:16 AM

Love this thread for some strange reason...

**LagMonster** · December 27th, 2001, 11:21 AM

[quote]Originally posted by Wayward Clam:
Love this thread for some strange reason...

<hr></blockquote>

I love it to.

**Scuba** · December 27th, 2001, 11:30 AM

Well,
Kodak have a new CCD chip with 16Mpix. Yes this is 16,000,000 pixels.
You need a fire wire to move it into the computer and T1 to make it into a web cam but yes, Crappy is what you will get from all web cams.

**Renée** · December 28th, 2001, 12:24 AM

[quote]Originally posted by Mayet:
Damn if I had half of my avatars "assets" Id be happy......<hr></blockquote>

Well...I mean, wouldn't we all??

Of course, I do have a gut feeling your avatar might possibly have paid good money for hers. You know, that's always our comeback for situations like this, right? "At least when WE die, our breasts will decompose along with the rest of us!"

Heh heh. You're right, I guess my eyes really are blue in that shot. Usually they're just a plain shade of grey, though, so I really don't think you want to trade those big brown eyes of yours. My eyes are usually only that blue if I'm madly in love or really ticked off about something. Must've been taking the webcam quality issue a little too seriously.

Thanks for all the info, folks. If, for some reason, I'm ever in the market for a DECENT cam, I'll come back to this post. For now, though, the one I have is just a crappy little fun thing that was free, so I'm not complaining anymore...at least now that I've learned to use the little twisty part on the front.

Somebody beat THAT bubble!!!!!

**Wayward Clam** · December 28th, 2001, 12:39 AM

Sorry... too busy drooling to

**Platypus** · December 28th, 2001, 12:58 AM

[quote]Originally posted by Wayward Clam:
Love this thread for some strange reason... <hr></blockquote>

And you only read the thread because you thought it said "Little Webclammies"...