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Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

> If I could I'd still be using my 480p external 2003 iSight camera through an increasingly ridiculous series of dongles

Why? 480p does not sound better than today's mediocre webcams, does it have some amazing light balance or face detection for focus or something?

I would want to do this as well for shits and giggles, a 2003 webcam with 4 dongles being nearly on par with modern webcams is fun / hackery / a conversation starter, but I'm curious if it's more than just that. (My own ~2005 webcam simply connects with USB and works out of the box on any modern hardware running Linux. I suppose I didn't and don't think different enough.)

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Mainly for the external case design, which is still top-notch.

http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/apple-isight

Great features too in the magnetic monitor attachment and the fancy aperture to close and turn off the camera.

The low resolution is somewhat appealing, in a retro way. If I'm going to be using a crappy external webcam it's cool that the image looks like an early 2000s PowerBook.

The FireWire iSight camera's image looks like ass but it's good enough for my potato face.

The camera's bundled FireWire 400 cable connects to a hard drive enclosure that also has a FireWire 800 port (the camera's cable is detachable so this could be replaced with a FireWire 400 to 800 cable). The FireWire 800 cable runs to a Thunderbolt 2 dock with a FireWire port and the dock's Thunderbolt 2 cable runs to a Thunderbolt 3 to 2 adapter connected to an Intel MacBook Pro.

I like built-in, irised camera cover though by twisting it open/closed, I often shift the position slightly. The camera's stand sits on a box wedged between the wall and my monitor; I wish I had a slightly smaller box so the camera was a little lower, closer to the top of the monitor.

I had all these parts so it was a zero dollar way to get a camera above my external monitor. I might try the free version of EpocCam with an old iPhone (too old to work with Apple's forthcoming Continuity Camera feature) but that's bound to be more fussy to start/stop.

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