Black & White QuickCam

Features of the CCD sensor
Features of the camera
Features of the softwares
Minimum configuration
Someexamples of images

Five years ago, this WebCam was one of the first available. Connectix is bout tocelebrate the millionth one sold ! At first glance, this VCAMlooks like an egg. It weights less than 100 gram and the diameteris 58 mm. The CCD sensor is the well known by experts , as somefamous cameras are equipped with such a sensor :  ST5SBIG,  PixCel 255 Celestron, Pictor 208 and 216 Meade , andSCR200 from Synonyme. The size of the 324x243 10µm square pixelsframe transfer CCD sensor is 3,2 x 2,4 mm. Of course, this sizeis far from of photo film's. A CCd sensor of the same size (24x36mm) coats a bomb, and only professional astronomers can affordit. The TC255 is well adapted for astronomical jobs, because itis very sensitive and the frame transfer speed is high. As thereis no shutter, there is no vibration.

This camera connect on thePC parallel port. The 5V power current is supplied by thekeyboard port. Parallel cable, keyboard adapter and the softwaresare furnished with the camera. This camera allows very goodplanetary and lunar imaging. Deep sky is possible only on brightobjects (see  Frequently Asked Questions ). Nevertheless, you may take weakstars images (reaches the 9th magnitude with a 200mm refractor)with the maximum 5s exposure time.

Features ofthe CCD sensor :  

Features of the camera :

Features of the softwares :

64 gray level (6 digits)-320x240 pixels image

Other image sizes : 160x120 or 80x60 pixels and 16 gray levels

Tuning of brightness, contrast and color balance, or automatic mode

Snapshot software : QuickPict. Uses BMP, TIF or JPG format for backing up images

Storing capacity : 36 images

Size of a 320x240-gray levels image file : 76ko

Video software : Quick Movie. Uses AVI format for backing up videos.

Minimum configuration

PC 386 20 Mhz (PC 486 recommended)

Windows 3.1, W95 or MS-DOS (see the special driver at Drivers page)

RAM : 4 Mo, free space on hard disk : 3Mo

Some examples of images

Otherimages in the image gallery  

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