I did a side-by-side comparison of the Logitech Reach to my Hovercam Solo 8+ 13mp document camera, and the difference in image quality was shocking for such an expensive camera. The Reach is quite low-res by comparison, and the color/white balance is totally inaccurate compared to the Hovercam. I want to return this equipment for a refund asap. My husband says this is a $25 webcam attached to a $244 stand. And the stand is wobbly at that!
Now having it in my hands I can say "It was a good idea, badly executed". There is no one glaring thing you can point to and say “That’s what ruins this”, other than the lack of quality from the camera. It’s a series of small things that have been overlooked, and they all add up to a giant disappointment. My experience with it: - The pivot point of the vertical riser is looser than you’d expect. To make movement smooth (and to increase rigidity to reduce shaking) there should be a small amount of resistance, this is missing. This is especially annoying as this allows the USB cable to easily mess with its resting point. - Because the vertical pivot point is loose, there is some slop in it (the top of the vertical riser can move around by about half a centimetre)… as you can imagine this amplifies at the end of the boom arm and makes it sensitive to vibrations when shooting. - The USB cable is too rigid and too short. The provided extension is ok, but they really should have just put a port on the back of the camera and allowed us to swap the cable out. - The bearings of the boom arm stick in places. - The you can't lock the camera to a specific point on the boom arm, so if it's at an angle it will slide out of position. - The boom arm only rotates outward in a single direction. To get it to go in the other direction you have to swivel the upright 180 degrees and rotate the boom arm. This isn’t a big thing on its own, but combined with the rest of it, highlights the lack of thought put into the design. - The boom arm doesn’t lock at anything other than at a right angle. Two things here: - A basic resistance fit able to lock at any arc of movement wouldn’t have been hard, - There is also absolutely no option of being able to progress past right angle to a declination angle. Unfortunately either of these would have been useless given that you can’t lock the camera position on the boom arm. - The rotation control of the camera is just terrible! It feels cheap, sticking in some sections and rotating freely in others. This feels like poor quality manufacturing highlighting bad design. There are times I’ve experienced… it’s not backlash, but because it moves more freely in one direction than another in specific positions, it feels like there are spots of backlash. - The camera head movements (any of them, from rotation to the pitch and yaw provided by the resistance ball and socket) don’t have any tactile home points, this is true for all directions of movement… so good luck getting it back to true. - On the topic of the ball and socket joint at the end of the boom arm, the yaw angles are pathetic… maybe a couple of degrees. - On the topic of not having home points… the camera has an accelerometer in it to try and figure out its orientation (portrait/landscape). This works when it’s looking horizontally at a subject but has MAJOR issues flipping between portrait and landscape mode when filming top down. There doesn’t appear to be a way to disable this, and if there are any vibrations (which are common, see above) then it’ll bounce around between these two orientations like a rabbit on cocaine. - Sometimes it will get confused and display the video as landscape inside a portrait frame resulting in black bars. This continues until I power cycle the camera. This was probably an artefact of OBS, but it only happens after it's been flipping between orientations for a bit so I'm going to blame the camera. - The camera quality is… It’s not great. On both Mac and Windows it looks… like a cheap camera. I’m using my Logitech 920 as a reference so you can’t say that I’m comparing it to some high end set-up.
Any chance of a version where we can attach a Brio instead?
Would it not be far more convenient with a built in light?
Agreed!
I did a side-by-side comparison of the Logitech Reach to my Hovercam Solo 8+ 13mp document camera, and the difference in image quality was shocking for such an expensive camera. The Reach is quite low-res by comparison, and the color/white balance is totally inaccurate compared to the Hovercam. I want to return this equipment for a refund asap. My husband says this is a $25 webcam attached to a $244 stand. And the stand is wobbly at that!
Now having it in my hands I can say "It was a good idea, badly executed". There is no one glaring thing you can point to and say “That’s what ruins this”, other than the lack of quality from the camera. It’s a series of small things that have been overlooked, and they all add up to a giant disappointment.
My experience with it:
- The pivot point of the vertical riser is looser than you’d expect. To make movement smooth (and to increase rigidity to reduce shaking) there should be a small amount of resistance, this is missing. This is especially annoying as this allows the USB cable to easily mess with its resting point.
- Because the vertical pivot point is loose, there is some slop in it (the top of the vertical riser can move around by about half a centimetre)… as you can imagine this amplifies at the end of the boom arm and makes it sensitive to vibrations when shooting.
- The USB cable is too rigid and too short. The provided extension is ok, but they really should have just put a port on the back of the camera and allowed us to swap the cable out.
- The bearings of the boom arm stick in places.
- The you can't lock the camera to a specific point on the boom arm, so if it's at an angle it will slide out of position.
- The boom arm only rotates outward in a single direction. To get it to go in the other direction you have to swivel the upright 180 degrees and rotate the boom arm. This isn’t a big thing on its own, but combined with the rest of it, highlights the lack of thought put into the design.
- The boom arm doesn’t lock at anything other than at a right angle. Two things here:
- A basic resistance fit able to lock at any arc of movement wouldn’t have been hard,
- There is also absolutely no option of being able to progress past right angle to a declination angle.
Unfortunately either of these would have been useless given that you can’t lock the camera position on the boom arm.
- The rotation control of the camera is just terrible! It feels cheap, sticking in some sections and rotating freely in others. This feels like poor quality manufacturing highlighting bad design. There are times I’ve experienced… it’s not backlash, but because it moves more freely in one direction than another in specific positions, it feels like there are spots of backlash.
- The camera head movements (any of them, from rotation to the pitch and yaw provided by the resistance ball and socket) don’t have any tactile home points, this is true for all directions of movement… so good luck getting it back to true.
- On the topic of the ball and socket joint at the end of the boom arm, the yaw angles are pathetic… maybe a couple of degrees.
- On the topic of not having home points… the camera has an accelerometer in it to try and figure out its orientation (portrait/landscape). This works when it’s looking horizontally at a subject but has MAJOR issues flipping between portrait and landscape mode when filming top down. There doesn’t appear to be a way to disable this, and if there are any vibrations (which are common, see above) then it’ll bounce around between these two orientations like a rabbit on cocaine.
- Sometimes it will get confused and display the video as landscape inside a portrait frame resulting in black bars. This continues until I power cycle the camera. This was probably an artefact of OBS, but it only happens after it's been flipping between orientations for a bit so I'm going to blame the camera.
- The camera quality is… It’s not great. On both Mac and Windows it looks… like a cheap camera. I’m using my Logitech 920 as a reference so you can’t say that I’m comparing it to some high end set-up.
Nice but too rich for me.