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Purchased October 9, 2007, $69.99
Check the about my lighting page to understand the tests.
After completing my review for this camera yesterday, I was excited to go out and pick up one of the HP 2 mega pixel cameras, hoping that would be even better. As it turns out I was in for a major disappointment. I bought the 2 mega pixel camera at a Best Buy, the notebook camra on this page came from Circuit City.
I installed the software for the 2mp camera on my main computer, rebooted, and started up my webcam software. The first image I got was very dark, grainy and greenish. I preceded to try adjusting the various controls of the camera's software with very little improvement. I then tired changing the resolution to the highest value (2pm) and lost all picture from the camera. Black image only. Changing the resolution back to a smaller size gave the same result, no picture.
So I took the camera downstairs and tried installing it on one of the computers I use for my live caemras. I totally reloaded Windows XP Pro SP2 on this machine last night, so this was with a fresh full install, clean machine. Inserted the camera CD and ran through the install. Plugged in the camera when instructed, new hardware wizard ran, searched for software, computer found hardware but couldn't find the software. Exactly the problem I had with my other computer and the HP notebook camera yesterday. I even tryed downloading the latest software from HP's website with the same result.
I'm taking this camera back, something I don't normally do but I don't want to waist $89.99 on a camera I can't get to work, even on a computer with a fresh install of the operating system.
At this point, I am withdrawing my approval on either of these cameras. You purchase them at your own risk. I'm sure many people will be able to use them with no problem, but considering I saw 4 returned cameras on the shelf at Best Buy today, I am inclined to think you are more than likely to have problems than a good experience. If HP would like to contact me with any product comments or questions, I will be happy to answer them. My e-mail address is availab on my home page.
This camera showed up at my local store just about 6 months ago. So I was surprised when looking at the single setup sheet that comes with the camera to find it was released mid 2006, over a year earlier.
The camera has a good image, but the frame rate quite slow.
There's a blue indicator LED on the front which can be turned off through the software, but it only indicates the camera is plugged in, not whether it is capturing or not.
(next day) Well this isn't good. I noticed the frame rate was running extremely slow, not just this camera but for all my other cameras too, so I decided to do a system restore back 4 days to before I began installing all these latest camera drivers. Now, when trying to install the HP software, the computer sees and identifies the HP camera, but doesn't recognize the software as to belonging to this device. Mutable reboots, removals and reinstalls has not helped. I can't get the camera to work. In the past I was a big fan of HP hardware, but while they made good hardware, their software frequently had major problems, especially during instillation. I quit buying HP scanners when Windows XP came out because, at that time, HP wasn't going to update older scanner software to run on XP, a corporate mistake they later corrected. Seems their software is still a problem. I will have to continue on a different computer to finish this review.
I pulled out the test machine this camera had been plugged into for the last month and used that to do the demo shots with. Take note that some of the colors of my test shots are a bit off. I was having to use a portable monitor which has not been color balanced, the monitor was sitting on the floor so I had to look down to see it, and it was difficult to make the fine adjustments I would normally have made if I were doing the test shots on my big computer.
This camera is excellent! While it doesn't come up to the sharpness of the new Logitech cameras with their Zeise lenses, it is sharp enough for just about anyone just getting started. I was most impressed with it's very low light response and it handled bright light well. It did have some difficulty when thrown a very wide light range such as in my daylight only tests. With the very bright light on one side of my face and no lighting on the other it did tend to over expose the bright side some.
It has a wide array of manual adjustments which came in handy in trying to improve my unusual lighting tests. And all the controls worked and did what they were supposed to do.
I was seriously concentering putting this camera in my truck to use as the driver camera, but it will only mount on a notebook screen. The cord comes up through the bottom of the mount so the camera head can't be separated from the mount, and there is no way to lay the camera on a flat surface without it pointing straight up or down. So I can't use it in my truck where the camera has to sit on the flat dashboard.
I was going to try and get screen captures of the control screens but with the problems I have had with the software, I'm not able to.
All in all I am impressed with the image but not the software. This a definite one to avoid.
