Logitech QuickCam Orbit AF

The good:Lens pans and tilts to automatically track your face; innovative design places lens at eye level; excellent low-light performance; built-in microphone.The bad:Face tracking can be temperamental; noisy mechanical movements.The bottom line:Its innovative design and mechanical face-tracking capabilities make this top-of-the-line Webcam a true conversation piece.This unusual Webcam is sure to turn heads--literally. Logitech's QuickCam Orbit's camera lens internally pans and tilts so that it can automatically follow your face. The design is cool, too: a thin, nine-inch extension rod that resembles a robot arm separates the camera lens from the base--an impression that's heightened by the whirring noise the mechanism makes as the lens trails your moving head. Beneath its HAL 9000 exterior, the QuickCam Orbit is a top-of-the-line Webcam with three video resolutions: 160x120, 320x240, and 640x480. It has a built-in microphone and supports both USB 2.0 and 1.1. The biggest drawback? The face-tracking feature can be temperamental under some lighting conditions.While it's hard to deny the visual appeal of a product that looks like a prop from a science-fiction movie, there's a practical side to this futuristic design: it can raise the camera lens closer to eye level. The height approximates the position where another person's eyes should be, which can make your video-based instant messages more conversation-friendly.There are no buttons or switches on the Webcam itself. The software handles everything, including adjusting the video parameters, setting the audio levels for the built-in microphone, and snapping still photos. Logitech provides a basic complement of video settings, including brightness, contrast, gamma, and color saturation. You can manually adjust the exposure and the white balance or let the software automatically fix the settings for you. There's also a 3X digital zoom that, like the digital zoom on a standard digital camera, simply magnifies the image, which increases pixelization.To fully evaluate this product, you have to separate its innovative face-tracking, pan-and-tilt capabilities from its standard Webcam features. As a static Webcam, the Orbit performs like a champ. As with any Webcam, the quality depends largely on the amount of light that's available. The Orbit does a good job in both well- and poorly lit environments. It accurately reproduces colors in almost all types of light, though the image is a bit noisy, even in moderately bright rooms. It handles 640x480 video captures reasonably well with only a small drop in the frame rate. The audio sounds good and exhibits none of the sync problems experienced by some Webcams that route the microphone through a sound card. You can capture photos as large as 1,280x 960, though any size larger than 640x480 will be interpolated.The Orbit's automatic tracking capabilities are a mixed blessing. In situations where the light shines from directly overhead, the face tracking can become confused. In a room with overhead lighting and a vaulted ceiling, we found the camera angle inching toward the ceiling until the subject's face dropped out of the picture completely. The Orbit showed similarly quirky behavior in some dark environments, when it stopped tracking altogether.When the face tracking did work, it was useful and fun. The internal motor makes a whirring noise when the lens moves, which you may find distracting while conversing with family and friends. It's audible both on live feeds and video captures. It would help if Logitech added a sensitivity control to cut down on the frequency of the lens's automatic adjustments--and, thus, lower the number of times the whirring noise is heard.If you find the face tracking to be too noisy or inaccurate, you can always turn it off. You'll still have a cool-looking Webcam with manual software-based positioning controls and better than average video quality.

The camera was packaged in the usual clear plastic material we see hanging in stores. In unpackaging it, I tried to remove what I thought was part of the packaging covering the camera lens. It turned out to be part of the camera, as Logitech advised me in response to an email question. The response was given rather promptly, and Logitech support deserves praise for response time--and for follow up emails asking whether they resolved the problem satisfactorily.The camera works well. It produces a much better image than the built-in webcam on a laptop my wife recently purchased. But that is to be expected because the Logitech QuickCam AF Auto Focus syatem had verious controls and settings to manipulate the image quality. By trial and error I found what I consider the best settings. I use the QuickCam with the free program Skype, since it is used by some out-of-town family members. I discovered that the camera must be installed before Skype is installed so that Skype will recognize the webcam.I also found that some automatic settings affected the image, causing motion to be a little blurred or slowed down. But this is a personal preference. The optimal settings probably depend on the lighting in the area where the webcam is used.The camera comes with a "pole" that it can sit upon to allow it to be set up at face level if you're at a desk or table. The "pole," maybe about 10 inches or so, fits between the camera base and the camera. I thought the "pole" was stupid--until I sat at the desk and realized that the camera for me was too low sitting on the desk top and looking up at me from below.

I researched several of these before making a purchase and deliberately choose one in about this middle of the road price range.I am mostly pleased. It's not great at face tracking but unless I move around a lot -- it does pretty well. The focus for image clarity has been consistently good, even on autofocus, for the majority of my uses over a range of zoom settings.It was very easily assembled and installed. Basically installation went without a hitch on both my Windows XP desktop and laptop computer. I liked it well enough to purchase a second one and and am contemplating gifting friends with this model.My only disappointment, which I notice has been true of several webcam's (unless they are at the high end of the price range) -- has to do with accuracy of image color. Most of my use has been in an office with white walls and flourescent lighting. This setting makes skin tones profoundly red compared to what a normal camera with optical lens would produce. I have tried daylight photos at home -- still kinda funky coloring.Thus, when I really want to save an image beyond just video calling, I end up needing to export it to a photo processing software package and do a few minutes of editing. This normally results in a reasonably decent picture. Obviously do-able, but I might rather spend my time elsewhere.