Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Return rMBP due to iSight reasons?

C

curtisvadnais

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 2, 2012
21
0
Pretty self explanatory: should I return the Retina MacBook Pro due to the horrible, not even close to HD resolution iSight? One of the reasons I love the MacBook is the webcam for FaceTime. I should not have to spend another $20 on a full HD camera to hook up via USB because my $3,000 laptop camera was unsatisfactory. I was told the iSight on the Retina is the exact same as on the regular 15" model. Obviously, this is not the case. I'm not sure why, but should I return it for the regular 15" model that actually has a superb iSight cam? :confused:
 
They both have 720p picture. Are you maybe seeing a lower quality picture because your monitor is far superior?

1920x720 on 1440x900 will look great vs 1920x720 on 2880x1800.
 
lightz39 said:
They both have 720p picture. Are you maybe seeing a lower quality picture because your monitor is far superior?

1920x720 on 1440x900 will look great vs 1920x720 on 2880x1800.
Click to expand...

Wrong. The iSight is inferior to the 15" MacBook Pro. If you take an iSight image on the rMBP and send it on over to the cMBP, it looks exactly the same. Thus, the screen is not displaying it this way, it would be the hardware. Other people have mentioned this issue as well, even though Apple claims it's the exact same camera.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4196739?start=0&tstart=0

And the camera takes stills and video at 1080x720.
 
curtisvadnais said:
Wrong. The iSight is inferior to the 15" MacBook Pro. If you take an iSight image on the rMBP and send it on over to the cMBP, it looks exactly the same. Thus, the screen is not displaying it this way, it would be the hardware. Other people have mentioned this issue as well, even though Apple claims it's the exact same camera.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4196739?start=0&tstart=0

And the camera takes stills and video at 1080x720.
Click to expand...

Sounds like there may just be an issue with the Facetime Camera on your unit. If it was an issue with the rMBPs in general I'm sure we would have heard from more than 3 people (yourself and the 2 on Apple Support).

Do you live near an Apple store? You could take it in and compare it with the display models.
 
Anyone else? Post examples of your iSight pictures at normal lighting taken on a rMBP? :confused:
 
Why don't you prove that it is horrible? Keep in mind FaceTime (and others) adjusts quality based on network connections. Is it not taking video or stills at 720p?
 
kage207 said:
Why don't you prove that it is horrible? Keep in mind FaceTime (and others) adjusts quality based on network connections. Is it not taking video or stills at 720p?
Click to expand...
It is at 1080x720, but the quality is nothing close to HD. No detail in the pictures, nothing close to the sharpness of the regular 15". And is not just in Facetime, it is Photo Booth too, which does not use the Internet.
 
curtisvadnais said:
Wrong. The iSight is inferior to the 15" MacBook Pro. If you take an iSight image on the rMBP and send it on over to the cMBP, it looks exactly the same. Thus, the screen is not displaying it this way, it would be the hardware. Other people have mentioned this issue as well, even though Apple claims it's the exact same camera.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4196739?start=0&tstart=0

And the camera takes stills and video at 1080x720.
Click to expand...

It has the exact same camera lens as the cMBP. It's HD as in resolution - but at the end of the say, it's just a webcam. It's designed for internet videos which are compressed (you could hook up a full HD camcorder for facetime, it wont improve the quality - the quality comes from facetime's compression).
 
curtisvadnais said:
It is at 1080x720, but the quality is nothing close to HD. No detail in the pictures, nothing close to the sharpness of the regular 15". And is not just in Facetime, it is Photo Booth too, which does not use the Internet.
Click to expand...
Okay, may we see a sample image? I was also asking one in the original post but that's besides the point. I'm just trying to narrow down what's up. It always could be software not talking to the device correctly.
 
You've got your terms mixed up. HD refers to the resolution, the number of pixels, not the image quality.

If the image is blurry or has digital noise (that ugly grain), that would be because the lens / sensor are super small and simply not very good, but you can still call HD anything with a minimum resolution (1024x768 for 4:3, 1280x720 for 16:9).

So as long as the camera meets an HD resolution it's technically HD, so you couldn't call it deceptive marketing. It's just bad HD.

I'm personally coming from a 2011 MBA, which was a regular "FaceTime" camera, no HD. The one in my rMBP is definitely better, but still pretty bad.

I think it's simply impossible right now to make a camera that's considerably better than that in such a small form factor. I mean place your fingers and just look at how thin the camera unit sandwiched between the aluminium and glass must be.

As someone who rarely uses his webcam, I'd rather have a bad one than having a thicker laptop just for the sake of having a better webcam. Otherwise I'd just invest in an external unit which will be better than any laptop webcam by a long shot.
 
Last edited:
pgiguere1 said:
You've got your terms mixed up. HD refers to the resolution, the number of pixels, not the image quality.

If the image is blurry or has digital noise (that ugly grain), that would be because the lens / sensor are super small and simply not very good, but you can still call HD anything with a minimum resolution (1024x768 for 4:3, 1280x720 for 16:9).

So as long as the camera meets an HD resolution it's technically HD, so you couldn't call it deceptive marketing. It's just bad HD.

I'm personally coming from a 2011 MBA, which was a regular "FaceTime" camera, no HD. The one in my rMBP is definitely better, but still pretty bad.

I think it's simply impossible right now to make a camera that's considerably better than that in such a small form factor. I mean place your fingers and just look at how thin the camera unit sandwiched between the aluminium and glass must be.

As someone who rarely uses his webcam, I'd rather have a bad one than having a thicker laptop just for the sake of having a better webcam. Otherwise I'd just invest in an external unit which will be better than any laptop webcam by a long shot.
Click to expand...

My point exactly. Why would the image quality be so much worse on the top end model sold by Apple, than the standard MacBook Pro? We're talking $3,000-$4,000 here, I should not be having to buy a separate webcam because my webcam is ******. That's just unacceptable for the price I'm paying. Perfect example, there is little to no detail in this picture. It's not sharp, it's fuzzy and grainy. I could hold a book in front of it and I would still have to hold it up a lot closer because of the quality to read the book title. It looks like a badly compressed image taken on a PC webcam.

photoon122712at559pm.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back