ELP IMX323 0.01LUX 5-50mm Mini USB Camera 1080P 10X Zoom Webcam

I do Astrophotography and control the telescope from my laptop. I mounted this camera on my telescope to provide a wide angle view of the night sky. The full constellation of Orion fits in the view with room to spare. The software I use puts a cross-hair on the computer monitor to center the telescope target. The camera is great for the price. All the visible stars show up on the screen.

2022 12 15 update: Added 4th camera for another close up. Great. Was able to screw three of these to an extension for a selfie staff that holds the three cameras at about 8 feet. Manually focused the cameras to each of three views. Connected one camera at a time (renaming each for OBS). Added the sound board using https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-7-1-USB-Sound-Card/dp/B002LM0U2S/ref=sr_1_10?crid=OK3K55NNJK5O&keywords=audio+input+to+usb&qid=1661538474&sprefix=audio+input+to+usb%2Caps%2C108&sr=8-10. Made up 10 different scenes in OBS and set up streaming and recording. Sound people can run it. All works well.

I'll skip going into details about what the other reviews have pointed out: cable is slightly different then as pictured, packaging is minimal, camera housing is extremely robust. This is an industrial monitoring camera, not really designed for turnkey webcam use. Product as sold includes a telephoto lens with manual adjustments for aperture, zoom, and focus. please note that it is not a parafocal lens like on most video cameras, it's a cheap varifocal and will not retain focus when changing zoom! This is a mild annoyance for me, but may be a showstopper for someone looking for a turnkey webcam product. Auto exposure works fairly well, video output tends to blur/drop frame rate at higher levels. Auto white balance can be overly aggressive. took lots of fiddling in full manual mode to clean out a yellow/green hue. while it claims a 5-50mm zoom using a C mount lens, but due to sensor crop it's like a 50-500mm lens on a crop sensor DSLR. at widest zoom, it requires about a 3 foot / 1 meter distance from mount to person to frame your typical webcam shot. likely will have issues with a typical desk layout. if you are able to place the camera 8-10 feet away, it results in a very pleasing framing and presentation for a seated profile. due to lens and sensor, depth of focus is extremely tight under casual lighting. this is aggravated by how sensitive the focus ring is. you can crank up the gain and brightness while closing aperture and gain a bit more DOF, but quickly run into noise and motion blur. might be able to cobble together a faster prime lens and make this into a nice desktop webcam configuration, but at that point there are better turnkey options. overall a nice unit, but misaligned being listed as a 'webcam'.

This camera is like products sold by an old boat motor company that prided itself in having very few bells and whistles. Their slogan "If it's not on there it can't break" describes this compact camera perfectly. Manual focus, which is perfect for many YouTube projects where you don't want the camera "hunting" for the correct focal point while you shoot. A nice, manual zoom feature, and the ability to hand control the aperture setting for desired depth of field. Reviewers who complain about picture quality are likely not using enough light. The circuit board photo in this review was taken from the ELP-5. I've used a lot of video cameras over the years, and highly recommend this one.

Good price for a decent camera. Not super easy to use. The lens is touchy and while as a professional TV camera operator I always appreciate manual lens controls, getting sharp manual focus on this unit is difficult. Note that this unit appears built as an industrial or lab imaging tool. It has a much narrower field of view, even at the wide end of the zoom, than you'd normally want in a regular webcam. I specifically wanted a tighter shot, so it works well for me. No drivers needed on standard Windows, but that means your color control is somewhat limited & dependent on the software/app you are using.

Very nice camera for the price. Plug and play. The camera body is exactly what I was looking for. I really do not see reasoning for all these other cameras having unnecessarily large bodies. The minimum zoom is a bit more than I expected, but the lens assembly is changeable. I just need to find a wider lens that I can swap.

So far the camera works great, but I ordered this item because the product images show a connector I can easily replace with a custom cable that suits my needs better. The first Image is the 4-pin connector I expected. The second image is a very similar product i found on amazon https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MJFZK4S?pf_rd_p=183f5289-9dc0-416f-942e-e8f213ef368b&pf_rd_r=HF06RTKDDEH185PR757Z but it has a connector that is not easily replacable, and I can't even identify. You shouldn't show product pictures that will not match the product recieved.

This works just as a Web Cam, plug-n-play. No setup required. Has a nice smooth Zoom, focus, and aperture adjustments. Only issue is that it does not come with any App for a Windows System. Not a big deal, but it is a little difficult to find software which will allow resolution settings to work correctly. I used the OpenCvSharp package for C# support. Worked fine.