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iSight quality question

A

AzMacNoob

macrumors newbie
Original poster
I have a MacPro and a friend gave me an old iSight she got for her first 12" MacBook about 3 years ago.

What is the quality difference in current MacPro or iMac's in comparison to the old iSight that you clipped to the monitor.
 
The new one is supposed to have better picture quality generally and better low-light performance, but it is fixed (infinity) focus, whereas the old one had a motorized autofocus.
 
I know the one built into a new MBP is much higher resolution (although you have to use 3rd party software to capture at the higher resolution, unless iMovie '08 can capture at full resolution - hopefully the new Photobooth with Leopard will fix this).

However there is more to quality than resolution, the external iSights have a much nicer lens, and I would think its good bet that its color reproduction is better than that of the built in ones.
 
Oh, yeah, I'm sorry, I forgot about the resolution. It changed from VGA (640x480) to 1.3MP (1280x1024) at some point.

http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/334/C12763/

To my knowledge, not all internal iSights are 1.3MP; I'm not sure exactly when it started, although I believe it was discovered with the Santa Rosa MBP. It looks like at least some pre-SR Macs had it, but I'm not sure which ones do and don't, and if the Macbook has a 1.3MP one in it yet or not.
 
Nice info, thanks guys. I didn't know how far the iSight has come along in quality in the past 3 - 4 years, at least now I know that there has been a few changes in the quality.
 
i always wondered why some people who have a builtin isight in their macbook/macbook pro buy an external isigh and connect it to the same laptop >_>...i wish i knew why really..i dont think that all of them have broken builtin isight..
 
XheartcoreboyX said:
i always wondered why some people who have a builtin isight in their macbook/macbook pro buy an external isigh and connect it to the same laptop >_>...i wish i knew why really..i dont think that all of them have broken builtin isight..
Click to expand...

Because we all don't like the camera facing straight at us all the time?😕
 
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