Aiptek - HyperVcam Fun

...from the German manufacturers " AIPTEK ". Not a company I had heard of when I received this as an unwanted gift.

A little history about the company from their site.
http://www.aiptek.com.tw/

1997: AIPTEK were founded in the Hsin-Chu city in Taiwan.
2000: AIPTEK created the World's 1st PenCam
2001: We introduced World's No.1 Point-&-Shot DV.
2002: We were awarded the iF Design Award ...
...announced our first IPO.



So what will it do for me? I hear you ask well, in essence this is a webcam only, and thus you will not be using it as a digital camera, but along with Windows movie maker you can capture videos with it (640 x 480 Pixels, 704 x 576 Pixels). However the supplied CD software will only allow capture of single framed pictures.

PACKAGING / MANUFACTURING :
===========================
more

This is a webcam from the German manufacturers " AIPTEK ". Not a company I had heard of when I received this as an unwanted gift.

A little history about the company from their site.
http://www.aiptek.com.tw/

1997: AIPTEK were founded in the Hsin-Chu city in Taiwan.
2000: AIPTEK created the World's 1st PenCam
2001: We introduced World's No.1 Point-&-Shot DV.
2002: We were awarded the iF Design Award for our Network Camera, ANC6000(W)
2003: We announced our first IPO.

So what will it do for me? I hear you ask well, in essence this is a webcam only, and thus you will not be using it as a digital camera, but along with Windows movie maker you can capture videos with it (640 x 480 Pixels, 704 x 576 Pixels). However the supplied CD software will only allow capture of single framed pictures.

PACKAGING / MANUFACTURING :
===========================
When I was given this it was not in the original packaging so I cannot comment on this, but I have put a small picture that I found at the bottom of this review so you can see what it is. However as this product NO LONGER SEEMS TO BE IN PRODUCTION, I wouldn’t bother looking for it at your local computer/tech stores. More like bargain basement/2nd hand shops.

So the cam it’s self. Well it’s small, i.e. it fits in the palm of your hand, and from the picture below you get the general look of the camera. The dimensions are as follows = Height = (without the base it came with as mine broke and is now stuck with good ole blue tack to the top of one of my speakers :-)) 7.7cm, Width = 5.5cm depth = 4 cm (including protruding lens)

The functions on the cam are a button at the top and a manual focus lens at the front, also a little green LED which tells you when the camera is on...I did leave it on for a LONG time and it started flashing and went a little nuts, so maybe not a good idea to do this! The button on the top, (when all drivers and software is installed ) activates the quick start of the picture taking software so you don’t need to go through stupid start menus etc to get it going.

The manual lens adjustment is for focusing purposes only and it can be annoying at times when you wish it was auto focusing, but this camera is so old now that it’s not even listed on the manufactures website! So if you don’t have the drivers, you will need to look around the web like I did of which the file name was ... " hyper_vcam_mobile-win98-xp-2000_vs325.exe" In case you need them.

CONNECTION:
============

Leading out the back of the cam is a relatively long ( 1.5 Meters I would guess )USB connection but in response to the question from the other review ... "Can you take it into another room without yards of extension cable?" The answer is “THINK AGAIN! " you will need an extension to take this more than 2meteres away.

IN USE : / SOFTARE ACCOMPAINED WITH IT :
=====================================

Well in NON chat situations this camera did surprisingly well in my opinion, and I was most impressed it looking all plastic and a little dated.

The camera relies mainly on the software bundled with it for a lot of the work, and to get taking pictures you need to have the " HYPER V_CAM MANAGER " installed as this is the main software that you'll be using ( Of which all software is supplied on a single CD included with the package)

So the program ( please see the picture labelled VCAM MANAGER at the bottom to get interface layout ) it has the main window for the camera image and then to drop down menus " PHOTO and OPTIONS " under photo is the standard save and delete. Because as you take pictures either by pressing the button on top of the cam, or clicking on " SNAPSHOT" button the pictures come up to the right of the film, and along the strip of camera film next to it, to see what you have taken. This only allows you to take 11 pictures before you have to delete or save some.

They can either be saved in uncompressed BMP format or compressed JPG format.

Under "OPTIONS " you have....

CAPTURE FILTER - Here you can set settings like brightness, hue, contrast, as well as black/white / colour, and a special feature to remove flicker on the camera... why this isn’t manually on all the time ill never know. Also here you can zoom the camera in and out, as well as pan it but this is only so far.

VIDEO FORMAT - Here you set resolution Pixel depth and you are told the " size " in bytes.

The resolutions are : 160x120, 176x144, 320x240, 352x240 and 640 x 480. 320x240 seems to yield the best results.

Pixel depth can be set to either " RGB 24 " ( Red green blue 24bit, best quality for those that didn’t know. like me ... ) " RGB 555 ( 16 bit ) " and I420 ( another colour setting I am told ) So I dint know more about this. But for best results set it to RGB 24 bit :-)

TRANSFER TO - This is used to transfer the taken shots into image manipulation software such as PHOTO EXPRESS which was the supplied software, but I didn’t like it so I didn’t even bother keeping it on there. And when you save the picture you can specify where you want to save it to anyhow, so I wasn’t too bothered not using this software.

Also on this interface you can take pictures by clicking on the " SNAPSHOT " button instead of trying to hold the cam still whilst you press the button on the top ( therefore avoid blurring during camera exposure ) also " TRANSFER TO " FORMAT ( of the pictures. BMP / JPG ) and EXIT from the program.

Over all this interface is simple yet very good, nice and easy to use, but the limited snap shots is annoying.

When using this camera the pictures can suffer from the refresh rate which can leave " streak " like patterns on the pictures, but generally the picture quality is best at RGB 24, and 320x240 resolution, this is small which isn’t as good as the modern 4mega pixel cameras, but what you expect ??????

The camera can have some problems adjusting to light levels, especially late at night when I am using desk lamps, and then it can often make the picture too dark, this is on AUTO brightness. This however can be changed to manual settings but this is too much bother each time for a pic when you are lazy like me.

Check the sample pictures at the bottom ( jpg format saved at 90% ) this is the kind of thing it yields, which makes do.

For still pictures this is a pretty good cam, but you might as well get a proper digital camera if that’s your thing as this won’t give you the results you want.

VIDEO / VIDEO CHAT :
--------------------------------

The refresh rate is pretty good on this as I have recorded several videos of me playing guitar, which incorporates very fast finger movement, just to see how the camera coped, but I must say I was pretty impressed with the capture rate that it did, accurately picking up movements of my fingers.

When I have this on in chat, its kind of odd watching yourself, and the only place this falls down is most probably due to band width problems not the cameras performance. As for normal latency of the device, you can watch your self blink back on the camera, which is odd. But with keeping up with ones movement its latency is no more than a split second, most impressive compared to the earlier cameras. But then again it’s not going to be as good as some of the new ones that are coming out.

This is hard to describe without seeing it for yourself, but summed up the cameras performance is satisfactory in both still and video modes. The only thing I would say is there are some down points to this budget camera...

PROBLEMS:
==========
The pictures can be grainy at times, and when compressed down can look just awful with high compression fake JPG artefacts seem to show up much more than compared to other cameras, If you are looking into a digital camera on a bit of a budget check this out !!!

:www.ciao.co.uk/Canon_PowerShot_A300__Review_5425951

The part at which the camera fits onto the base is a little weak, and the plastic can easily break as I found out sniff sniff.

EXTRA:
======

As I said before it came with a little base which the camera was inserted onto, sorry couldn’t find a clear pic, but you can see the basics of it in the pics below. Anyhow, this did come with a sticky pad on the bottom to attach it to what ever you hearts desire.

There is no internal memory or expansion slots, this simply isn’t its task, it ALWAYS has to be connected to the computer / laptop etc to work to store images on the hard drive.

CONCLUSION:
=============

For price I do not know, as it was a gift, but it was probably around the £20 mark. I don’t think that these are that common place anymore, as they are pretty good cameras I expect most people have held onto them for a while.

This is SO simple to use the installation instructions for ALL the software is 4 A5 pages long with lovely large font and pretty pictures, the same is true for the instructions on use, it’s very much a play about with it and learn to use it in under 5 mins.

I wouldn’t buy this now as there are bound to be better products, but then again I am pretty happy with it for the time being.

So I can not find anymore technical detail, the manual contains nothing either !

Thanks for reading! James.

ps. the manufacturers support is rated "satisfactory " as I have never had to deal with them, and their web site was a little confusing trying to hunt for the drivers that I did not have, but luckily the have made it English now, and you wont have to use your German like I did to translate it !
 

...less