What's wrong with cheap webcams?

[MrsWobbleTheWaitress]

I'm looking at webcams to buy for my daughter to use with the stop motion animation software we're going to get her for her birthday next week. Lots of them are very, very cheap - less than £10 - and some are much more expensive.

What should I worry about if I buy a cheap one? What do I need to consider at all when buying one?

Thanks

Probably nothing wrong with one of the cheap ones. Given you want to use stop motion software, check the unit can take still images (many have a button on them).

I remember seeing one at Lidl for 6.99 or 7.99 (but they were for laptops, and looked a bit like this one at Maplin but Maplin charge more for most things!

I don't think you should have a problem if you pay 5 to 10 quid for one. I just found a couple in the 5.50 to 6.00 price range.

If you already have some software, check if it suggests any minimum and maximum image size.

I only mention it because one of the webcams I found said 8 Megapixels while the other is 300K (VGA quality 640 x 480). If there are lots of photos to build into a movie then the software may work better with lower resolution images.

If you want, I'll try to post links to the two webcams I spotted (I copied them into 'my ebay' to be able to find them again).

Thank you.

I'm afraid I'm so daft I can't understand the issue with the image size! I think I can probably check what it says on the software website as it's a pretty comprehensive site.

It is a laptop it'll be used on. And thanks for the pointer about the ability to take still images.

Re image size - 640 x 480 uses about 300,000 pixels (dots) to form the image. As with cameras, or mobiles, the more dots, the better the quality of the photo if it is ever enlarged or the view is "zoomed in".

Was just thinking, if the software is going to make a movie from a set of images, it may have some limits on how many pixels (dots) each photo can have (big difference between 300,000 and 8,000,000 per image) as the software could take longer to process bigger (high quality) images than for smaller ('standard') images, or might just not be able to cope with images above, say, 2,000,000 pixels. Hope that explains it a little better.

Yes it does, thank you