Looking for a Skype camera for use with a computer monitor

  • Thread starter Thread starter Loony
  • Start date Start date
L

Loony

Hello Experts :-)

I have become a Skype, believe it or not :-) I am looking to switch
from a plain phone to one that can show the person in a small screen
while chatting.


These cameras may work fine with a TV screen but are there any that can
work with a computer screen or just with a computer and the screen.

Regards to all :-)
 
Loony said:
Hello Experts :-)

I have become a Skype, believe it or not :-) I am looking to switch
from a plain phone to one that can show the person in a small screen
while chatting.


These cameras may work fine with a TV screen but are there any that can
work with a computer screen or just with a computer and the screen.

Regards to all :-)
Click to expand...

You want a webcam with good "low light" performance.
Not because your computer room has poor light, but because
camera sensors are "noisy" and have speckles on the pictures.
If people claim they got good results in low light, it
improves the chances of seeing a good picture in normal
light levels.

In the advertising material here, they mention Skype.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826104368

And before you get excited and start salivating, have a close
look at your Internet connection quality first.

If I upload a file to the site virustotal.com, the transfer
happens at about the same rate as if I was writing to a floppy
diskette. That's not a good enough transfer rate, to operate
a HD Skype call. If I was expecting to blast high definition
webcam video to a family member in another country, forget it.
Even if I wanted to send 640x480, that probably wouldn't
work either. Perhaps all I could manage is 320x240 or the like.

So while the camera may boast "1280x720", that might only make
it possible to shoot video for storage on your hard drive. And
when you do that, webcams can't record at 30FPS, as they're usually
light-limited. For example, I have a web cam that shoots at
1280x960 or so, and it captures at 5 frames per second. Which
makes for jerky video. If I drop the resolution setting to
640x480, I get 30 frames per second (closer to usable video).
They do not mention this in the advertising material. The
advertising material may say "1280x960" and "30FPS", but those
are mutually exclusive operating conditions, and you never
get both of them at the same time. Ain't gonna happen.

You have to pay a lot of money, before you can get digital camera
gear with a decent lens and light gathering power. Webcams use
puny lenses with an aperture of only a few millimeters, and
are poorer at collecting light than your eyeball is.

Consequently, always expect bad video capture... and then you
won't be surprised when it happens.

Did I mention webcams suck ? :-)

If you want to use Skype video, in all its glory,
the ISP internet service must be very very good.
Not like my ISP at least, with my pathetic upload speed.

Paul
 
You want a webcam with good "low light" performance.
Not because your computer room has poor light, but because
camera sensors are "noisy" and have speckles on the pictures.
If people claim they got good results in low light, it
improves the chances of seeing a good picture in normal
light levels.

In the advertising material here, they mention Skype.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826104368

And before you get excited and start salivating, have a close
look at your Internet connection quality first.

If I upload a file to the site virustotal.com, the transfer
happens at about the same rate as if I was writing to a floppy
diskette. That's not a good enough transfer rate, to operate
a HD Skype call. If I was expecting to blast high definition
webcam video to a family member in another country, forget it.
Even if I wanted to send 640x480, that probably wouldn't
work either. Perhaps all I could manage is 320x240 or the like.

So while the camera may boast "1280x720", that might only make
it possible to shoot video for storage on your hard drive. And
when you do that, webcams can't record at 30FPS, as they're usually
light-limited. For example, I have a web cam that shoots at
1280x960 or so, and it captures at 5 frames per second. Which
makes for jerky video. If I drop the resolution setting to
640x480, I get 30 frames per second (closer to usable video).
They do not mention this in the advertising material. The
advertising material may say "1280x960" and "30FPS", but those
are mutually exclusive operating conditions, and you never
get both of them at the same time. Ain't gonna happen.

You have to pay a lot of money, before you can get digital camera
gear with a decent lens and light gathering power. Webcams use
puny lenses with an aperture of only a few millimeters, and
are poorer at collecting light than your eyeball is.

Consequently, always expect bad video capture... and then you
won't be surprised when it happens.

Did I mention webcams suck ? :-)

If you want to use Skype video, in all its glory,
the ISP internet service must be very very good.
Not like my ISP at least, with my pathetic upload speed.

Paul
Click to expand...


Many thanks again Paul. You have a great sense of humor. :-)
I am bogged down at present but I will get back to this task
in a few weeks.
 
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