Logitech QuickCam Sphere/Orbit MP Review - Useful Features
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One of the camera's main features is the motorized face tracking. You get a 189 degree range of pan and 102 degrees of tilt, which can be either controlled manually through the software or done automatically with the face tracking switched on. It has no physical zoom facility but can increase or decrease the size of the pixels it captures in a software zoom. This isn't as good as a proper physical zoom but it works reasonably well. As with software controlled face tracking, it does have a tendency to zoom in and out a few times before settling for no apparent reason.
A handy little feature of the device is that it contains an 'on air' light, so you know exactly when you're being captured. As with the audio mute, there is also a visual mute in the QuickCam software that instantly stops the camera recording. Face tracking can be set to follow one or more people and it does quite a good job of following you or keeping several people in shot, although it can be a little slow to react sometimes, so it is by no means perfect. A lot of cameras feature software controlled face tracking but this is nowhere near as good as the motorized tracking seen on the Sphere. Logitech are not the only company making motorized web cams, but there aren't many more that are, so if this is a feature you're looking for in a web cam, your choices are a little limited at this point in time.
One item that I haven't mentioned so far is the stand. The camera can be detached from the base, separated with a mini-USB connector. The stand can then be connected to give the camera an extra nine inches of height. I guess this could improve lighting conditions perhaps with the camera at eye-level, rather than just using the tilt facility to look up at you from your desktop.
Personally, I have the device perched on a shelf so haven't really made use of the stand. Using the stand does mean that the device needs to be handled a lot more carefully. The stand instructions state that the camera should always be carried by the base and stand rather than just the stand and snapping the stand by knocking it over could easily damage the USB connections at either end.
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