D-Link DCS-900
Purchase price - 90.00$. Category - surveillance camera. 2 March 2008 Normally I wouldn't test this camera, because it's not a webcamera used for PC, but I got it from a friend of mine, so I said why not to take a look, and compare it with the rest of the cameras. Camera was tested in February and March 2008. As it's written on D-link's site it has a 1/3” CMOS Digital VGA Sensor, Manual Focus, Aperture: F 1.8. It can be mounted on a wall or put on a plane surface, camera it's pretty heavy and you may not be afraid that it may fall. There is no possibility to connect the camera to a usb port, just a ethernet interface is present (and it needs a power adapter too), so I had to use Active Webcam to capture the images, not the usual YawCam. The web-camera is very mobile, rotates almost in every direction for 70-90 degrees. Images made by DCS-900 are sharp and with good colors only if the light is bright, in low light images are very noisy, this is strange if you think that this is a surveillance camera, I guess that in the night there is no use in it. The lens, about 3mm, are located behind a protective glass. Overall it was interesting to see how this camera acts.
Sample images: Pros: * Good focus * Nice colors Cons: * Heavy and massive * It's getting warm after a while * Noisy in low light Verdict: DCS-900 image quality is comparable with the quality of the images you get from a usual low end web-cam.