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Consumer Webcams With High-Quality Sensors?
xmas2003 writes "Since 2005, I've had a live webcam watching my grass grow — another is currently watching a bird nest on my front door — five babies! While I appreciate the 802.11g wireless and Pan/Tilt/Zoom (10x optical) of the five-year-old D-Link DCS-6620g, it has issues, especially image quality. I've investigated getting a new webcam, but except for high-end/security-related gear from companies such as Axis, there doesn't seem to be much improvement in the consumer space, as most offerings are just cheaper and USB-connected for tethered video conferencing, etc." So where, the reader wants to know, are the high-quality, reasonably affordable webcams? (Read on below.)
"I have an 18 Megapixel Canon 7D DSLR that shoots gorgeous 1920x1080x30p hi-def video. While I don't expect that in a consumer webcam, their recently released T2i uses the same chip and sells for $800. And heck, point-n-shoots are a couple of hundred bucks, and now many cell phones have cameras built in, so there're plenty of low-power, speedy CPUs in small packages these days to handle the signal processing. So why hasn't someone taken a sensor with good image quality, downsized to around 1024x768, and put it in a PTZ webcam package with 802.11n wireless for around $500?" Even if it's not that exact combination, what are the best options going these days for high-resolution webcams?
As with so many things, it's easier and safer for the companies to keep pumping out the same old products. Any innovations that do come about are pushed straight to the uber-niche end of the market where an extra few hundred dollars doesn't matter.
Luckily (and a little unusually), however, there are two pretty simple DIY option in this case. The first is to get a point-and-shoot for $200, load a custom firmware (I know some Canon models are particularly good for this) and write a quick script to take a shot every 'x' seconds, then throw in an Eye-Fi SD card to grab the pictures wirelessly. I haven't used an Eye-Fi card myself, so I don't know what happens when it gets full - maybe add another script in the camera to wipe the card every day or something.
The second is to get a firewire camera. No wireless on this option, but many consumer camcorders support firewire for control, not just for data transfer - I was using these years ago as extra high quality options for video conferencing, but I see no reason that they couldn't be rigged up for stills too.
Professionals don't use it nearly as much as they used to these days. They use high resolution and wide angle lenses instead, and do PTZ in software. PTZ was important when your video frame was 480x320 or suchlike. Now you shoot 5 megapixels and pan and zoom digitally.