Will people never understand? Putting a "zoom" on a camera lens seriously degrades the images quality and/or the maximum aperture of the lens. Only through the use of large, heavy, and very expensive aspherical lenses can the quality loss be compensated. No professional quality zoom lens can be bought for less than a grand...and even then prime lenses are superior.
Zoom lenses have two functions:
-journalism and nature photography where cost is no object.
-hawking cheap crap to the aesthetically illiterate.
I'll take that f.2.8 aperture over a zoom any day. Would you really rather have a zoom lens with a dinky aperture that takes really tight shots of your face that only look good with the aid of a 1000 watt tungsten lamp?
That said, the iSight has an excellent lens. And the construction is so superior to other webcams, that you'll thank yourself.
It's worth getting if you have people you can hook up with. The only con I can see is that you need a high speed internet connection for it to work - otherwise you are stuck with audio only.
Cons: Limited people you can connect to and you can only connect to one person at a time (conflicting "cons"). When Tiger comes out you will be able to have a chat with 3 other people - a significant and desirable improvement.
The main Pro is that you can have a video chat with someone. As an example, when I travel overseas on business I can have video chats with my wife as well as my 3 year old granddaughter. I've got one iSight now and will have another for the wife before the next trip.
question for folks about isight: how does it react with firewalls? i can chat with friends via ichat from work, but file transfer fails every time. not sure if it's their end or mine, but does a specific port need to be opened for isight video chats?
Comments
the only cons I see are:
- no zoom
- no PC drivers
other than that... its awesome... really
Originally posted by ZO
great piece of hardware:
the only cons I see are:
- no zoom
- no PC drivers
other than that... its awesome... really
And to add to that, during video chat expect a huge increase in CPU cycles. At least on my friend's Quicksilver 867 MHz.
Zoom lenses have two functions:
-journalism and nature photography where cost is no object.
-hawking cheap crap to the aesthetically illiterate.
I'll take that f.2.8 aperture over a zoom any day. Would you really rather have a zoom lens with a dinky aperture that takes really tight shots of your face that only look good with the aid of a 1000 watt tungsten lamp?
That said, the iSight has an excellent lens. And the construction is so superior to other webcams, that you'll thank yourself.
Cons: Limited people you can connect to and you can only connect to one person at a time (conflicting "cons"). When Tiger comes out you will be able to have a chat with 3 other people - a significant and desirable improvement.
The main Pro is that you can have a video chat with someone. As an example, when I travel overseas on business I can have video chats with my wife as well as my 3 year old granddaughter. I've got one iSight now and will have another for the wife before the next trip.