Panasonic BL-C1/20

The Panasonic BL-C1 is a great little network camera at a great little price (about £65 including VAT if you shop around). Whereas the Panasonic BL-C20 is roughly the same camera but with wireless interface, in addition to wired Ethernet.

However, at about £122 this latter is nearly double the cost of its much cheaper sibling and not worth the extra in my view. I say this because, to make BL-C1 wireless, you just buy an SMC Wireless Bridge (or similar) at circa £30, and you've got a wireless BL-C1 with a saving of some twenty-seven quid - which you can put towards a 'second' BL-C1.

Yes! I want another soon; I'm so chuffed with the first.

Mind you - a word to the wise. Setting up the SMC bridge wasn't exactly simple. It took me all evening. But I got there in the end. You must follow the instructions carefully and not be blas about the operation (as I was). To configure this device, your SMC Bridge and your PC MUST have local IP addresses (192.168.xxx.xxx) on the same subnet (255.255.255.0), and the SMC SSID must be the same as that on the wireless router you wish to use.

Otherwise SMCWEBT-G is the biz for making BL-C1 or any other bare Ethernet device 'wireless'.

Compared to the Axis 206/207 cameras I already have BL-C1 seems to produce much sharper images and the colour rendition is far better - quite superb in fact for such an inexpensive piece of kit. The camera is dead easy to set up via a 'wizard' supplied on CD-ROM, and Panasonic offers a free DDNS service, which allows you to access your camera from the Internet. There's also recording software, which can be upgraded at extra cost to cope with more than one Panasonic network camera.

However, as I use ActiveWebcam (which copes with an unlimited number of cams from all the major manufacturers), this is not an issue for me. Go for ActiveWebcam and you won't be disappointed. Really.

The BL-C1 web interface is eminently configurable and allows you to 'digitally' zoom (and thus pan and tilt) the image at will using the mouse wheel and left and right buttons. It's not as cool as a true PTZ facility, but you can't expect that on a camera costing only £65. Besides - Panasonic makes the BL-C10 and BLC-30 with pan and tilt heads (but no optical zoom), albeit these units cost bags more and are beyond my budget.

The BL-C1 is just the ticket for me. And you too I bet, if top quality at an unbeatable price is what you're after. For example, you could probably buy 'two' BL-C1s for the price of a BL-C10 (and 'three' for one BL-C30 wireless version of the same).

Hence I really cannot recommend BL-C1 highly enough.

BTW - while all the cams cited above are for indoor use only, you can point them out windows, PROVIDED: you avoid direct sunlight and other strong lighting, which will trash the image sensors PDQ.