by Abbas Jaffar Ali on September 5, 2003
Design & Features
Creative has been selling digital cameras for quite some time now. The started out with webcams a few years ago and then moved on to webcams that could also act as standalone digital cameras which they called PC-CAMs. Today, we take a look at their latest PC-CAM modeled PC-CAM 880.
Design and Feel
The design of PC-CAM series has remain unchanged ever since it was launched. However, Creative changes that with the PC-CAM 880 which is smaller in size than the previous PC-CAMs and for the first time, features a colored LCD monitor that can be used to view objects you want to photograph along with the standard viewfinder.
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Navigating through the different menu options that PC CAM has to offer has also been changed. Staring off, Creative adds a 4-way button that can be used to navigate thru the menus and pressed for selecting the desired option. Speaking of options- the PC CAM 880 hasconsiderably more than the previous models. Lets take a look at these briefly.
Features
The main menu consists of five options: Operation Mode, Resolution, Flash Setting, LCD Brightness and Advanced Settings. Operation mode lets you switch between video, standard photos and Multisnap mode where the camera takes five consecutive shots. Resolution can be selected between 800x600, 1600x1200 and 2046x1536 (interpolated) for the digital camera, whereas 320x240 and 600x400 for the webcam. Flash settings are pretty basic offering Auto or Disabled while LCD brightness adjusts the LCD monitors brightness between Normal, High and Low.
The meat and potatoes of the options is offered under Advanced settings. You can adjust the White Balance to reflect the light conditions while taking a picture, adjust different levels of sharpness in a picture, set output to PAL or NTSC standard and adjust other settings for customizing your unit like enabling sound.
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Also new to the PC-CAM 880 is the inclusion of an expansion slot that accepts SD/MMC types of media. By default, the Camera features 16MB RAM however the expansion slot opens a lot of storage options for the PC-CAM 880. The unit also has the option of connecting directly to a Television or a source that accepts video input so you can view your pictures on the TV straightaway. Last and certainly not the least is the ability to zoom upto 4x, however, zoom is only digital and not optical.
Usability / Picture Quality
Usability / Picture Quality
Using the camera is quite straight forward- basically just point and click. The front of the unit allows you to select between “macro” and “normal” mode. Macro mode should be used for close-ups- objects under two feet of range. We left the flash mode to auto and it worked pretty well with the camera recognizing low-light conditions and using the flash automatically. We would like to mention one thing- that you need a steady pair of hands to use PC-CAM 880. I’ve been using digital camera for over three years and yet, I found a couple of shots taken from the PC-CAM showing the shakiness of the hand.
As we mentioned earlier, the camera supports resolutions of 800x600, 1600x1200 and 2046x1536 for still pictures. Below are some samples of the images in different light conditions and resolutions. The pictures on the left are 800x600, the ones in center are at 1600x1200 whereas the ones on right are at 2046x1536. Starting off, we have pictures during daytime- first outdoors and then indoors.
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Next we have pictures during night time- again, first outdoors and then indoors.
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We found the picture quality of PC-CAM 800 to be of decent but not necessarily great quality. As you could probably see, some of the pictures appear a bit grainy and not really smooth. Also, worth mentioning is that flash works alright in reasonably low-light conditions but not that great when there’s very little or no light around. Lastly, the camera produces decent results for standard objects, it doesnt fare too well with highly detailed objetcs such as a motherboard- it just cant capture that great of a detail.
Other Things / Conclusion
As mentioned earlier, the Camera supports a "Multisnap" mode where five pictures are taken one after the other. Lets take a look at how these look and how much time it takes between each picture. The following pictures were take with the MultiSnap mode and the resolution set to 1600x1200. Observe the blue car in the right lane in the pictures below:
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The camera isnt THAT fast in the multi-snap mode. At 1600x1200 resolution, each pictures was snapped between one and two seconds. Last and certainly not the least, we thought we'd check out the digital zoom quality. The first picture is at normal setting, the second at 2X zoom and the last one at 4X zoom.
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As you can see, the quality at 4X is a little shaky but the 2X could pass. Basically, we feel that the PC-CAM 880 should be considered a good camera for causual usage- like family picnics or a day out.
The camera can also be used as a Webcam and the quality in webcam mode is pretty much like most other web cameras. Creative bundles a good amount of software with the unit. Starting off, you get the standard Webcam monitor and PC-CAM center. Creative adds a few Arcsoft applications as well namely Photo Impression, Video Impression, Multimedia Email, Fun House and Greeting Card Creator. For more information on these applications, we suggest you visit Arcsoft's website
Conclusion
The PC-CAM 880 is definitley a step in the right direction for Creative as the older look/design and feature set was getting a little, well- old! The new unit adds an LCD monitor along with an SD/MMC expansion slot which we feel are two of the biggest strengths of the new unit. You're also provided with direct TV output. What we weren't too impressed with was the picture quality of the unit- Creative might want to look at a better sensor to improve the quality of pictures in future versions of PC-CAM. Priced at roughly AED 650/- (US$ 175) we feel that PC-CAM 880 is a bit on the pricey side.
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