Good web camera once you figure it out - YOURSELF! :)
Written: Jul 14 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Inexpensive, Good Value for Money, Multi-functional
Cons: User Manual
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| aqc0643's Full Review: Logitech Camera Family |
LOGITECH QUICKCAM EXPRESS
Okay, for $25 I really wasn't expecting much. Just a little gadget that would hold me over until the next big electronics toy came along. But was I surprised when I figured out all that this puppy could do! I got the camera for $25 from Staples (after a nice rebate). Even without the rebate, it was most attractively priced.
Set-up was a no-brainer. The set-up guide did a good job with this and that's about all it was good for. The camera hooks up via the USB port on the back of your computer. Win98 had no problem recognizing it - drivers loaded up with no problems at all.
Okay so you ask what exactly a webcam is good for? Well, its good for sending video email, taking quick still pictures of yourself (or of others), to take quick pics of items you're selling on auction sites, and for videoconferencing. Its also good for just playing around on the net and see how much cool stuff you can do these days.
The instruction manual that came with this camera is quite lacking - there are no tech-support phone numbers and I think they just want you to play around with it until you get it working to your liking. For me, that meant playing around with it until I got the colors and lighting just right. The software that comes with the camera is pretty good. Not lacking in any aspects. You can record videos, take still pictures, or stream live to the web. I didn't find it adequate for the last one. If you'd like to see what kind of output you can get from the Logitech QuickCam Express, head over to
http://www.geocities.com/aqc0643/webcam/ and see my results for yourself. Oh, FYI, all the HTML on that page is generated by the software that Logitech sends! You can choose to have pictures taken every so often (you set the interval) and it automatically posts them to a designated website.
Now, for the fun part. Since I was very interested in finding out if regular home users like myself can stream LIVE CONTINUOUS video the web or not (ala "American Pie") , I went to my favorite search engine (google.com) and searched for Webcam communities. After about an hour of diligent searching, I came up with the perfect solution. The software is called "WebCam Personal Edition" and can be downloaded for free from http://www.truetech.com/webcam/ - its really an amazing service! You sign up for free and they host live streaming video from your personal webcam to the internet. Now I don't know how this can be useful to me, but its a cool thing to play around with. That software is pretty darn good - you can check out my live feed from http://www.camarades.com/userpage.php3?resource=963620983/
As I was writing this and playing around with the camera, I just found one very cool thing that's not even mentioned in the user's manual. You can save your video clips as "Real Media" files - this is considerably better than saving your images (and the additional player) using Logitech's software. Real Media files are very popular these days and all you need to play them is a simple program that can be obtained for free from real.com - Logitech's compression software saves the video clips as ".exe" files and includes the player in the clip - this severely reduces image quality and balloons the size of the file too. From now on, I will be saving and exporting clips as Real Media clips - quality is much better and file sizes are about 75% smaller. Go figure! Why didn't the "manual" have that? Don't ask me!
Okay, so all in all, I'm very happy with the purchase. I don't own a digital camera yet (don't see any need to splurge so heavily on something that's not priced right just yet) and this was my first attempt at playing around with a webcam. As you can see, the quality of images are quite good. Of course, you have to play around with the settings until you get it just right. But for this price, you can hardly go wrong!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
aqc0643
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Member: Amit Chaturvedi
Location: Washington, DC
Reviews written: 25
Trusted by: 5 members
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