Note: this camera is a USB 1 device, not USB 2. Read more
Surprise, surprise, a new, really good camera. I'm very pleased with the image quality. The drivers work well and the picture is really great. Superb performance under general room lighting both with back lighting and without. Logitech has included a white balance slider in the controls, as well as a hue slider which makes all the difference in color balance, especially with my unusual colored walls. The low light sensitivity is excellent and even better than the Webcam Pro 4000. With a full 640x480 image sensor. (Please note that in my test images I didn't get the camera properly focused, which is why the images are not quite as sharp as they could be. Late night sessions tend to get pushed a bit. I will try to rectify this the next time I set up for a camera test run.)
I brought the camera with me for the 4th of July weekend and pointed it out my trailer window. I find that the auto mode has alot of trouble dealing with full sunlight. And when I try to go with manual exposure, I get either total darkness or total white-out. It would apear that the camera can't deal with full sunlight very well. You can see this effect on the bright side of my face in the daylight test images. As long as you are delaing with normal indoor lighting the camera performs very well.
I am surprised at the fact it is only a USB 1 camera. Very unexpected for a brand new version. However, they apparently have done a good job of making the data stream very efficient. The camera appears to keep up with 15 frames a second at 640x480 resolution.
My only complaint on this camera is the mounting bracket. It won't fit on my notebook. For some reason all the current models of notebook cameras, (except for the earlier Logitech notebook camera) seem to think all notebook screens are under 1/2 inch thick and square. The amount of vertical space for grabbing the top of the screen is only 3/8 of an inch on this camera. I can force these cameras onto the screen, but after a few minutes they lean over toward the front and fall off. I guess I will have to come up with some type of adaptor to use them.
Screen shots of camera configuration settings
Advanced
Source Settings
Sample images showing how this camera performs under different lighting conditions |