Griffin SightLight - Firewire Light for iSight

List Price: $39.99 Discount Price: $29.99

Features:

• Fresnel-based lens carefully adds a direct but diffused light to the subject directly in front of the camera
• When set to the Auto setting, it automatically senses the amount of ambient room light and adjusts its output accordingly
• Shares the incoming FireWire cable with your iSight

Customer Reviews:

Disappointing, throws off color balance [Posted on 2005-10-31]
I had high hopes for this product. After all, every video chat benefits from extra light, right? Unfortunately, this product is only beneficial in absolutely darkness. Its illumination is so weak that it's virtually impossible to detect any difference under normal office lighting.

Chances are that you will be using iChat AV with your iSight. And the blueish white light this product gives off completely upsets iSight's automatic white balance. Caucasian skin will have an unnatural pink or magenta tinge to it (like you have high blood pressure!) as the iSight will get confused between your office light, any daylight and the blue/white LEDs that power this light. Also the LEDs are very piercing and difficult to look at... not the soft glow needed from such a product. I guarantee you will squint everytime you look into your iSight with this light on.

Unless you need to videoconference in pitch black rooms or outdoors at night, I would avoid this product.

Save your $; Get iGoggles or some other program [Posted on 2006-02-01]
Is there ANY product by Griffin that has been designed competently? I doubt it and I doubt that this company will get any of my $$ again. NONE of the Griffin products I've bought are designed well. Some of the products actually work, but if there's a competing product, it is ALWAYS better.

The Griffin SightLight is as rotten as anything Griffin sells because the premise for the product is flawed. The idea is that if you shine a light on your face, you'll be able to get a better image from iSight. This makes intuitive sense, but what you get usually looks like an overexposed picture, or worse (i.e., see other reviews). One reason for this seems to be that the dynamic range of the camera usually can't accommodate the increased illumination of the subject from the SightLight. The gadget is unhelpful and unnecessary.

Software solutions are VASTLY superior, so you don't need to buy yet another piece of hardware. The iGlasses program in particular is very inexpensive, takes about 3 minutes to download, and allows one to set the brightness of the IMAGE in all lighting situations I've encountered. It takes all of 10 seconds to make this easy adjustment. The adjusted image looks like it should, which isn't the case with the SightLight. iGlasses also gives you the power to control many other features of the image: edge enhancement, hue, saturation, focus, contrast, and much, much more. Go to the ecamm website to get all the information. Moreover, iGlasses gives you contol over these settings on other programs, such as iMovie, QuickTime Pro Player, and maybe 20 other common programs.

Moreover, the SightLight will be obsolete as soon as you upgrade to a Mac with iSight built into the computer. The new iMacs and laptops will all have the camera built in. iGlasses is compatible with the built-in cameras, but the SightLight will at best be useable as a night light.

iSight Camera light [Posted on 2007-03-10]
Not very good. Light intensity on subject not as expected. Subject still appears dark using only Griffin Sightlight during video conferencing. Additional room lighting still needed.

a total waste of money! [Posted on 2007-03-25]
Worked marginally for the first month. Light works only at close distance (you have to be 12 from the light source). Then the fire wire connection failed. The light works on it's own, but not in conjunction with the iSight Camera. I've tried it with another camera and computer and conclude that the fire wire link is faulty. It's past the 30 day warranty so apparently I have no recourse. It's a lousy product and the Amazon return policy is inadequate.

Let there be light [Posted on 2007-05-12]
Too much light for camera mounted on laptop & personal 'web cam'ing, auto setting is fooled by dark backround. In genral low light from my desktop, it works fine

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