The iSight is actually pretty darned good when it comes to taking photos and video. My Twitter avatar? That’s totally done with just the iSight. When I was asked to check out WebCamera, I had my doubts about how well it would function as a disembodied iSight. Turns out it works pretty decently, though I can’t see myself deploying WebCamera full-time. It’s handy when you need to show off pics of your family in real time - you’d look kind of silly walking around with a MacBook, prying the lid back, and trying to aim the darned thing everywhere. WebCamera gives you the freedom to move and record over your local network by turning your iPhone into a WebCam, making it useful to revisit all the relatives who already miss you from the Holidays.
The Mobiola WebCamera for the iPhone is very neat, and amazingly simple to set up. Working with a desktop companion on OS X (and even Windows), WebCamera on your iPhone or iPod touch (4th gen) scans your local network for your desktop client, you then tap your computer to connect, and after you allow permissions on your Mac via a quick popup, you’re all set to start recording.
I don’t know if the desktop software automatically adjusts the image quality based on your network connection, but mine started out very poor (low quality). Amping the quality via the iPod touch’s settings, I aimed for the highest setting. While I got excellent image quality, recording video on the Mac side was very laggy - you’ll have to have some considerable in-network bandwidth if you want to capture the best wireless video from your device.
The software on both the iOS device and OS X client is easy to use once you find where things are – I was at first confused that settings were controlled by your smartphone and not by the desktop, a quick adjustment had me recording in no time. While I haven’t taken any sample video for this review, I can verify that it essentially works just like taking a photo doe – a bunch of good or blurry pixels is the same regardless of what you do. Below I have some sample images so you can compare a low-quality image to a high-quality one.
* I’ll note that your image quality will largely depend on what device you are using. Along with the pixels and image resizing you’ll get via the image quality you set for your network, the iPhone 4’s camera will deliver a significantly better picture than the iPod touch, which I used for this review. For video it shouldn’t matter.
When taking pictures or recording video, I didn’t notice any snapshot sounds or clicky noises, leaving me to wonder if the desktop client had responded to any input. The developers noted that sound would be coming in the next update, which is being reviewed by Apple now.
I think WebCamera is great in that it utilizes what you already have to generate a wireless camera you can take around the house. While the idea of using WebCam’s themselves may be flaunted by ideas like FaceTime and Skype Video (where I can simply use a front & rear facing phone cameras with an app instead of both a computer and a phone), being able to extend your iPhone in this manner may come in handy: you never know when your dog is going to do that crazy stupid thing you’ve always wanted to show your brother-in-law. For $2.99 in the App Store, I think it’s worth the purchase for the simple convenience it provides.
