A webcam that bears an uncanny similarity to Pixar robot favourite Wall-E goes on sale at Asda this week for an astonishing £2.93.

Britain’s cheapest webcam boasts a 300k pixel camera with built-in drivers and will attach to any PC or Mac via its USB cable.

Asda’s internet expert Gabbie Wise said: “This is an incredible deal for our connected customers and will help to put thousands of distant friends and family face to face.  Obviously at this price the picture resolution won’t be amazing, but one customer’s lack of resolution is another’s ‘cosmetic filter’”.

At £2.93, the Asda webcam is a fraction of the price of other webcams on the market, which can routinely sell for £50 or more.  Some professional webcams can sell for as much as £2,000, nearly 1,000 times the price of the Asda model.

The Asda webcam goes on sale this week in-store and online.

Actually most of us could probably do with something somewhat more rugged than many of the products on the market. Queue Olympus! This stalwart of the photographic industry has just launched the TOUGH TG-620 and TG-820 - which as well as being tough are available in a number of colours to match your wardrobe.

Both models boast a "shockproof, waterproof and freezeproof exterior" - I'm not sure why only the exterior - but I expect that suitably protects the internals as well. Given how cold it is here right now freezeproof seems a particularly attractive feature!

They also both provide a 12M pixel sensor - which is good enough for most personal photographic needs and supports full 1080p HD video capture for those that like to capture more than just a snap. If your hand isn't too steady the image stabaliser technology is also available in video mode.

The two models seem to be very similar with the 820 adding "more" : a stronger crush proof case, waterproof to a depth of 10m rather than 5m and 'drop-proof' from a height of 2m rather than 1.5m (for tall people?).

No viewfinder of course, as is standard these days with a 3" LCD screen displaying images and status.

No - not the celebrity type - the twinkling kind!

We've reviewed many cameras here on GadgetSpeak but this one is a little different from those. Aimed at the amateur astronomer Imaging Source have launched a range of low-noise astronomy cameras using CCD sensors from Sony.The family includes sensors with resolutions of 640x480, 1024x768 and 1280x960 pixels and with either colour or monochrome capture options.

Each is equipped with a gigabit Ethernet interface allowing large quantities of live image data to be transferred quickly to a computer.

The cameras are controlled by PC software provided with the product that allow capture of single or multi-sequence images. The use of Ethernet for communication allows a highly affordable remote interface to the camera. The bottom of the camera has a standard tripod mount while the front lens nose-piece is threaded for a C/CS mount.

You can think of these cameras as top of the range web-cams especially designed to attach to your telescope and aimed at the amateur astronomer that wants to capture their observations for later analysis.

In Europe the cameras are available from Imagine Source on the URL below. Prices start at €440 for a 640x480 mono device. If distance isn't a problem then the family does include less expensive Firewire and USB interfaces, although with the latter bandwidth will be limited.

http://www.astronomycameras.com/en/products/

I have just been reading a 31 page review on the Internet of the new Sony answer to Minolta's D5 Digital SLR.

First of all it is nice that Sony are still creating the same environment where the Minolta lenses and accessories will still function on the new A100 camera.

It seems Sony have upgraded the camera from 6Megapixels to 10 Megapixels and have added extra functions. But alas some of the functions do not seem to be as effective as the old D5. But this is probably understandable as Sony have only been at it for a year and I am hoping that by the time they bring out a replacement for my own D7, they will have perfected their techniques in this area.

Watch this space.

Andrew Taylor