|
Creative Live! Cam Optia
|
| Price: | £23.49 |
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Dispatched from and sold by mp3parts
6 new or used available from £10.99
Average customer review:
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #28254 in Consumer Electronics
- Brand: Creative Labs
- Model: 73VF027000004
- Released on: 2006-11-20
- Platform: Windows XP
- Dimensions: .39" h x .39" w x .39" l, 1.32 pounds
Editorial Reviews
Manufacturer's Description
| | The Creative Live!® Cam Optia is one of the first webcams with state-of-the-art USB Video Class technology for instant use, requiring no drivers for Windows PCs*. The Plug-n-Play feature offers hassle-free setup, enabling users to plug-in the webcam, launch their favourite messaging software and enjoy video chat over the internet - in seconds. The cool and refreshing design of the Creative Live! Cam Optia makes it a stylish accessory for any desktop PC or notebook. |
With its Creative Live!® View technology, the Creative Live! Cam Optia includes many video and imaging technologies and features that deliver realistic or enhanced viewing experiences. The high-precision glass lens ensures increased video clarity and sharper images, while Creative Smart Face Tracking technology automatically follows the user's face movements to keep the face constantly in the video frame. In addition, Creative Advanced Video FX, a fantastic library comprising eight categories of special visual effects including Backdrops and Distortion, allows users to add fun and thrill in their video chats with friends and families. | |
With its Creative Live!® View technology, the Creative Live! Cam Optia includes many video and imaging technologies and features that deliver realistic or enhanced viewing experiences. The high-precision glass lens ensures increased video clarity and sharper images, while Creative Smart Face Tracking technology automatically follows the user's face movements to keep the face constantly in the video frame. In addition, Creative Advanced Video FX, a fantastic library comprising eight categories of special visual effects including Backdrops and Distortion, allows users to add fun and thrill in their video chats with friends and families.
| | Equipped with a VGA CMOS sensor and high precision glass lens, the Creative Live! Cam Optia offers unbeatable video and photo quality, with true-to-life colours. It captures video at up to 640x480 resolution, and photos at up to 1.3 megapixel resolution (interpolated). With Certified Hi-Speed USB 2.0 connectivity, raw data is transferred from the webcam to the PC without compression, providing superior video quality at up to 30 frames per second. |
The Creative Live! Cam Optia offers a privacy control feature which shows a black screen when the webcam is tilted downwards. The Automatic Image Flip feature ensures that the captured image is always upright even when the viewfinder is rotated to the other side of the PC. The Creative Live! Cam Optia works with all popular instant messaging services including Skype and Windows Live Messenger.
| Fitted with a multi-axis swivel, the Creative Live! Cam Optia allows a forward and backward horizontal tilt of up to 15 degrees and vertical swivel of 270 degrees, giving users the flexibility they need for the best possible angle in videos and photos. Its multi-usage base attaches easily to CRT monitors, LCD panels and notebook LCDs and sits comfortably on tables or other flat surfaces. A hands-free stereo headset (included) gives superb voice quality during communications. | |
| | Live! Cam Optia at a glance |
The Creative Live! Cam Optia also comes bundled with the Creative Live! Cam Suite. Users can install the software and drivers provided and benefit from these additional features:
*requires Windows XP Service Pack 2 and above.
About Creative Labs
Creative is the worldwide leader in digital entertainment products for the personal computer and the Internet. Famous for its Sound Blaster and for launching the multimedia revolution, Creative is now driving digital entertainment on the PC platform with products like the award-winning Zen and MuVo Personal Audio Players. The company's innovative hardware, proprietary technology, applications and services leverage the Internet, enabling consumers to experience high-quality digital entertainment - anytime, anywhere.
Box Contains
- Creative Live! Cam Optia Video IM with USB 2.0 cable
- Creative hands-free stereo headset
- Soft carrying pouch
- Quick Start Guide
- Installation CD ROM
Customer Reviews
Creative Live! Cam Optia 
This webcam is excellent. It worked perfectly and quality is brilliant. However, it took ages setting up with all the bundled programs. Then I made the mistake of doing the online update which took another 20 minutes! I finally got it going after well over an hour.
It also works great with Skype. Smart Face Tracking is good. It follows your face over quite a wide angle. It looks very good & seems of a high quality. Only one problem, it doesn't clip very securely on top of my LCD monitor though!
Decent cheap camera.
This is a decent cheap camera. It supports UVC (USB video class) which is an open standard. This means you don't need to install creative's crap software, and it will work in Vista and Linux without installing any extra drivers.
The sensor is 640x480 at 30 fps (and some imaginary extra pixels for photos). This is very decent for the price and easily good enough for use as a webcam; the network will be the limiting factor for image quality.
The camera doesn't have a great depth of field but the manual focusing ring is easy enough to adjust so it's not much of a problem.
Video is smooth and the delay/latency is actually pretty good. Performance in low light is also pretty good for a camera this cheap, but predictably you still get lots of hue noise. Switching to black and white improves this, at the cost of no colour at all.
The base is ok but not great. It's not a hugely intelligent shape so you might need some blutack.
My biggest problem with this camera is the very high level chromatic aberration. If it is focused then loads of edges have purple and green halos. You can 'fix' it by defocussing the camera a bit but that's just stupid. The automatic colour balance also screws up quite a lot. It seems to want to make every scene the same colour (perhaps skin colour) so if you put a red sheet of paper in front of the camera it makes it appear orange. Might be possible to turn that off but I haven't really experimented.
It would be nice if someone made a good quality webcam with non-scrolling shutter and a fast lens. Until that day a decentish cheap webcam like this is ok.
Main Pros:
UVC - supported by generic drivers
640x480@30fps
Cheap
Main Cons:
Lots of chromatic aberration
Dodgy colour correction
Not for Yahoo
THis is a nice quality camera, but it will not work on yahoo. It can't be recognised by Yahoo messenger.
It does work very well on MSN,or whatever they call it now.
