Hi All, I've had this new webcam for a week now and only got a chance to try it last night. I was interested to see of I could squeeze better performance out of this compared to my Neximage. Same chip, but the 900nc has a better codec YUY2 and I was hoping might be able to be used more effectively at 10fps without info loss or even 15fps - though it's NOT a USB2 device.
The camera controls allow control of both exposure and gain and contrast. The only downside is that in changing the exposure it doesn't tell you what it's changing to - bit of experimentation required or use WCCTRL which I haven't tried yet. Got it with the 1.25in adaptor which seems to block out the stupid light you can't turn off on the front.
I should state that so far the conditions I've used this under have been woeful - both in seeing and transparency, so I can't draw too many conclusions. I've posted a couple of jupiters in another thread showing the result under very poor seeing.
I had been hopeful that perhaps the way the chip was configured or installed it might prove a little more sensitive than the neximage. It's not. That said, it DOES appear to have better signal to noise. I had long suspected this must be the case when others with Toucams were talking about running them at 50-80% gain. When I do this with the neximage it is VERY grainy. WIth the 900nc it's noisy, but much "finer" noise or grain.
I'm hopeful that with good conditions it might therefore pip the neximage in terms of image quality... might have a better chance of using my 4x powermate as well... watch this space
cheers,
) prying up the lens cover before fitting.
