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 Logitech Quickcam Pro 3000
Originally posted on July
19th, 2001
Lights, Camera, Action!!... not yet
 I picked up this camera at MicroCenter
located in Santa Clara CA for 99$. Looked cool and my Intel PC
Camera Pro was getting a little dated so I thought I'd try this
out. My friend Phillip needed a camera too to share pictures/pic/videos
with his mother in South Carolina.
The package comes with the camera,
a ' U ' shaped mount, a LCD flat screen monitor mount, the Logitech
drivers/software CD, MGI's VideoWave III SE and PhotoSuite III
SE, and the manual.
The manual is skimpy, the bundled
software is pretty good, and the drivers on the Logitech CD are
not the latest. I had to download the latest driver from the
Logitech support website. One neat thing I notied was on the
bottom of the eyeball they incorporated the standard camera mount
screw hole that most cameras and tripods use to mount things
with. That was a nice touch. Talking to my colleages, I found
that this is not common on most webcams.
Somebody hit the lights!!
 When I got everything
loaded and plugged in, I found that the image that the QuickCam
Pro produces is kind'a dark. I messed around with the settings
in Windows ME and I couldn't get it to look any better. I have
2 halogen lights 4 feet above me, one over my phone on my desk
and my tech bench lights behind me. I also hooked it up to a
laptop and got the same results. The next morning I called Logitech's
tech support at (702) 269-3457. The tech was on the phone in
a couple of minutes. He was very helpful, not one of the those
snooty know-it-all's that other sites like Intel have.
Though he was very helpful, we
didn't get the picture any better. Here are some of things he
asked me to try... Unplug the camera from the hub (I have a Belkin
powered hub), and plug it into the computer directly. He told
me that they [Logitech] have had problems with some hubs. I did
that and it didn't help. He then asked me if I had any other
programs loaded like Norton Utilities. I said I have SystemWorks
2001. He told me to remove it completely. I thought this was
kind'a odd, but I unloaded it anyway per his instructions. That
didn't help either. I then suggested that I load a virgin copy
of Windows ME using Ghost and load the Logitech drivers from
the CD and not upgrade to the latest drivers from their site.
That didn't do anything either. Still the same picture. I even
re-downloaded the update from Logitech and applied that to the
install from the CD that came in the box... still the same picture.
 Wondering if I have a too-dark environment in tech room,
I decided to take a picture of my desk with my Olympus Camedia
2040 and a picture with the QuickCam and see if there is any
difference. Check out the pictures at the right>>
There isn't much difference between
the two cameras results, so I guess the lighting in my shop is
not up to par... Just when I thought I knew everything. In fact,
it looks like the QuickCam did a better job of balancing the
color if you ask me.
What's my overall rating for
this, including the tech support, documentation and everything
considered?
Four stars 
They still could have did a better
job on the light balancing. Maybe there will be a patch or a
update soon.
--- Michael
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