Digital Camera as webcam

My boss asked me to find a couple high-quality digital cameras that can also double as webcams. I have searched around without much success to locate such an animal. I know there are webcams that can be used as cameras, but they aren't very good quality, and it won't work for our needs.

Yes, I know we can just get some good cameras and go buy cheap webcams, but we need to do it this way. We have a lot of money available for webcams that we must purchase, and rather than lose the rest of the funding in a couple months at the end of the FY, we would like to just "adjust" the scope and get something that we can use more than once every couple years.

Is there a certain brand or model that will do what we want, or can I buy some equipment and software to make any digital camera behave like a webcam? Any ideas are most welcome.

Thanks!

Personally, I've never heard of such a thing. I know there are a few cameras out there that have video capabilities, but I've never seen one where this had the capability of streaming over the Internet.

Generally the streaming part is taken care of by separate software. Webcam32 comes to mind as the most widespread. It will allow you to upload an image to the web in several ways - ftp, java, or a direct connection to the camera.

I've seen Sony cameras that can do the connection. Although they are generally handheld video cameras that have an S-video output.

There was a thread about something like this a while ago: http://forums.devshed.com/showthrea...l+camera+webcam