Gadgets and technology

Web camera

Web camera or pc camera are one of the most popular gadget used in telecomunication or surveillance. Most of the instant messenger this day has the webcam feature which allows you to start a teleconferencing. There are many webcam manufacturers in the martket. So what can we do to choose the right webcam?

Depending on the type of webcam you buy the quality of the captured video and photo differs. Most of the webcam in the market has a video capture resolution up to 640x480 pixels which is adequate for teleconferencing. Webcam usually uses a VGA CMOS sensor. Some manufactures use high quality VGA sensor which provides clearer, brighter and more vivid video or photo. There are some webcam which is able to capture still photo of resolution up to 6 megapixels by or without interpolation. If you want a webcam which able to record smooth and fast video the minimum frames per second of the webcam must at least 30fps. For typical use 15fps is good for teleconferencing while the 30fps is the best but it depend very much on your internet connection speed. If your internet connection is slow you must set the frames per second to the minimum. The frames per second mean how many frames of photo is captured in a second to form a video. The higher the frames per second the faster and smoother the video. The typical format of video used in webcam is avi which is uncompressed type of video format. Some webcam uses mpeg4 format which makes video recording on webcam has a smaller size and higher quality. While photo capture uses jpeg or bmp format. Webcam works pretty similar to digital camera which you can set the quality of video, the sensitivity, the brightness, and so on.

The extra features offered in some webcam are light, microphone, and auto-swing. Lights is not necessary but if the light condition in the room is too dim you might consider to have a webcam with l.e.d light. Webcam with in-built microphone is a good choice as you do not need external microphone which you need to clip it on your ears or place your mouse to the microphone to talk. The auto-swing feature is for those who uses webcam as a surveillance camera at house or office. It is ideal for watching kids and culprits.

Recommended brands

1. Creative

2. Logitech

3. Microsoft

4. Apple

(photo are samples only)