I use skype. Im on 10.04 too...................

Skype++;......................

I have used Cheese with some success for creating video clips, though it still
seems a bit rough.

Cheese if you use GNOME/ Unity or Kamoso if you use KDE, but either will
work in the other's desktop environment. Both work fine with my HP webcam.

I sometimes forget to ask the question properly.

My plans are to use the web-cam with a microscope or a telescope. Under
these condition, the light source is low. The program I need will
either compensate for the low light or allow me to do it manually.

I hope this helps your recommendations.

Both Cheese and Kamoso allow you to change basic settings, brightness,
contrast, hue, etc.

Thank you for referring to Kamoso . Didn´t know that app ; now
installed and working well.

Let us know which you prefer and how it turns out in meeting your needs.

Kamoso is very similar to Cheese ; however after messing about with Cheese
the video in Skype remained very if not tooo bright . With Kamoso
brightness is back to what I consider as normal .
But both apps do not provide flowing video but a sequence of stationary
pics.........which is probably the purpose of both apps. Anyway ,in
future I shall check with Kamoso.
BTW my current normally used distro is Linux Mint 12 ( ref Ubuntu 11.10)
with KDE desktop .
However on the same HD I initially installed Linux Mint 11 Gnome, where I
keep all my files.
I am very happy with the Mint family of distros and intend checking Mint
with LXDE on an older desktop PC from AD2002 (AMD-Athlon , 1GHz ; 1GB RAM)
on which I currently run Lubuntu 10.04 ; Ubuntu 11.10 - Unity and Windoze
XP ,the latter very rarely for a specific Amateur Radio app only,which
shortly I hope to port to Wine.

In Q2-2012 I intend settling for Linux Mint 13? -KDE (based upon Ubuntu
12.04 LTS) but shall follow development of Ubuntu with Unity in a dual
boot arrangement on hardware with Intel i7 (first generation) CPU and 6GB
RAM

Perhaps your computer is too slow to record video? Cheese makes good videos on
my system, although they are "webcam" quality. $10 doesn't replace a decent
camcorder.