[vlmutolo]

I'm sure this will get lost because I caught this thread late, but there's one more thing you can do with a "real" DSLR-type camera for better image quality: zoom in.

Ideally, the camera is as far from you as possible, and zoomed in on your face. "Zooming in" is really just increasing the focal length, and zooming out is decreasing the focal length, producing an effect best known as "fish eye".

This is one of the first things people will tell you about photographing a human being for a portrait (which is essentially the same problem as a video conference). Get rid of distortion on the face. Use a focal length of at least 50mm (zoomed all the way in on the lenses mentioned in your article). Otherwise, the nose gets blown up and everyone looks worse.

[bscphil]

Yep, this is correct. Others in the thread have recommended getting the camera as close as possible to compensate for the wide angle lenses of webcams, but this is suboptimal. It creates the unmistakable visual impression of being right in someone's personal space while you talk to them. You can create the same effect where someone is easy to see just by using a camera with a narrower field of view and a longer focal length, without the distorting effect caused by being too close.