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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
You get what you pay for..., 21 Aug 2003
Don't be fooled by the hype. Whilst the build quality is good, the technical specification either as a camera or web cam is what I consider to be below entry level. That said, it did cost me less than buying the cheapest available web cam and digital camera, so I suppose I was the fool for expecting more!
The Creative PC CAM 1.3MP may appear to be a 1.3 mega pixel bargain of a webcam-cum-digital camera. Be warned though. The side panel on the box reveals an asterix - 1.3MP through software interpolation. Further to this it offers another resolution - 640x480, which I was shocked to discover was ALSO achieved through software interpolation. So just what is the number of active pixels in this camera? Who knows. I found the camera to work well in situations that were well lit, or where the subjects were sufficiently close for the flash to work. Too close or glossy a surface, and the flash bleaches out the picture. Too far away, and the flash is useless, so you get a dark and dreary picture. Get it right though, and you get a good result. The PC CAM 1.3MP is not really capable of capturing the right hue for colours. As a result, colours are less vivid - I found yellow becoming magnolia. I bought this camera because I was hoping for ease of use and simplicity as one would expect with a brand such as Creative. I was a little disappointed to find that the install CD crashed my PC both times I tried to install the drivers from it. Windows seems to recognise the camera fine though, so it must have done its job before giving up. I haven't really experimented fully with the webcam operation yet. All I can say so far is that when configuring the software supplied by Creative, it wasn't able to register any discernable sound off the allegedly built-in microphone. I suspect that I will need to buy a dedicated mike to use for video conferencing, which is a shame. If you're looking for a basic web cam, and know that on occasions you may want to take a simple digital photo, then I think the PC CAM 1.3MP will be quite suitable. Particularly given the lack of alternatives in this price range. If you think that you might be using the web cam or the digital camera any more than sparingly, I think it would be prudent to look elsewhere.
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