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Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

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Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#381

Post by douglasheriot »

riho wrote: post #137
mattowen_uk wrote: post #20

I've also investigated this quite deeply. As I'm sure most of us know, the main problems with 'webcams', either the built-in ones or USB ones that you perch on top of your monitor, are the lens size, and the CCD/CMOS image sensor size. Manufacturers spouting specs like '4k' are deliberately misleading the public if the sensor and/or the lens aren't also upgraded. The only cost-viable methods to get 'broadcast quality…

Finally made an account, just to reply to this. With newer Canon DSLR bodies you can use the Canon Webcam Utility[1] to directly get the video feed show up as a webcam, with just a USB cable. I've been using the EOS R as my webcam with the RF 35mm F1.8 lens and it's working pretty great. I just hook it up with the USB-C cable and it shows up as a webcam. The only annoyance that I haven't been able to get around yet i…

To mount a camera on my desk, I'm about to purchase this "Neewer Tabletop Light Stand", and a mini ball head with standard 1/4 inch screw for angle adjustment.

I can't vouch for it yet, but hope it arrives and does the job. There's other similar products in other sizes by other brands.

[1] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001657723138.html

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#382

Post by [deleted] »

intricatedetail wrote: post #346
wruza wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For monitors it is more than that. For a pretty expensive 144hz/1440p/gsync category that I researched a couple of years ago there were three options: acer, asus and viewsonic (and unavailable aoc). It turned out that asus, despite being a “better, much more money” brand, did a worse job of mounting the panel, so it had statistically worse backlight bleeding at one edge.

What's wrong with Asus installing alarms in their monitors? I learned the hard way being woken up in the middle of the night by a loud siren I couldnt locate the source as I wouldn't have expected it will come from a frikin monitor! There is no way to turn that off apart from physically powering it off and it happens totally random.

[deleted]

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#383

Post by redler »

notretarded wrote: post #372
Swizec wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can turn your old phone into a webcam. An iPhone X has camera quality that competes with a cheap DSLR in a webcam situation. Main thing real cameras are better at is bokeh, but you won’t get that in a webcam. And software can passably fake it these days.

How?

On iOS there's an app called Camo. There are probably others.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#384

Post by Const-me »

eecc wrote: post #276
pembrook wrote: post #40

The reason you can’t buy a good webcam is the same reason you can’t buy a high quality monitor outside of LG’s unreliable apple collab. The lazy conglomerates who sell these peripherals often don’t actually produce the parts in them. They simply rebrand commodity cameras and IPS panels in a crap plastic housing and slap their logo on it. Then they give the product a hilariously user-hostile product name, like “PQS GR…

Let me chime in: just bought a T14s. Could be a dream machine but the shite 1080 panel (Windows recommends a hilariously crappy 1.5 scaling. Kidding me?) the pesky trackpad and the awfully glitchy Windows 10 (yah, probably the drivers but the platform enables this horror) destroy the value of this otherwise pretty solid device.

> Windows recommends a hilariously crappy 1.5 scaling.

Windows has multiple GPU-accelerated vector graphics GUI frameworks. Well-written Windows apps look well with non-integer scaling.

> awfully glitchy Windows 10

Here's what you should do with new computers.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 Make an installation USB drive, boot from that drive, remove all partitions from the laptop's SSD, perform clean install. You don't need product keys to reinstall Windows as long as the SKU matches (i.e. if you have Win10 home edition, reinstall the same edition).

Don't just blindly click through the wizard, read messages and you'll get better UX (you don't want cortana, personalized ads, geolocation, etc).

Connect to internet, run windows update.

Open device manager. If some devices are left in "unknown device" state, you might need to manually find their drivers. Make sure to only install drivers and not user-mode utilities.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#385

Post by chrismorgan »

riho wrote: post #137
mattowen_uk wrote: post #20

I've also investigated this quite deeply. As I'm sure most of us know, the main problems with 'webcams', either the built-in ones or USB ones that you perch on top of your monitor, are the lens size, and the CCD/CMOS image sensor size. Manufacturers spouting specs like '4k' are deliberately misleading the public if the sensor and/or the lens aren't also upgraded. The only cost-viable methods to get 'broadcast quality…

Finally made an account, just to reply to this. With newer Canon DSLR bodies you can use the Canon Webcam Utility[1] to directly get the video feed show up as a webcam, with just a USB cable. I've been using the EOS R as my webcam with the RF 35mm F1.8 lens and it's working pretty great. I just hook it up with the USB-C cable and it shows up as a webcam. The only annoyance that I haven't been able to get around yet i…

What resolution does it produce? My Sony α6100 yields only 1024×576, which is not great, though still better than any laptop webcam at 1920×1080, or mostly even a phone or tablet front-facing camera at 1920×1080.

(The Sony α6100 is also quite happy to run on USB power indefinitely, no fancy battery arrangement needed. I’ve used it thus for multi-hour webcam sessions, and plugged into a wall charger for multi-hour recordings, where its battery would otherwise be depleted after about 100 minutes.)

Another thing to be aware of when using fancy cameras like this is the latency: you’ll get added latency of 100–400ms, which is easily into the disconcerting zone if audio and video are out of sync by that much, so you may need to do things like add a corresponding delay on the audio, if that’s connected to the computer directly (which will give much lower latency). OBS Studio can do this. I don’t yet have an HDMI capture card, so I’m not certain about it, but the impression I’ve received is that latency will be much lower with a decent capture card than the USB/PTP approach, though still probably higher than your webcam.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#386

Post by arendtio »

MrApathy wrote: post #319
arendtio wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the LG monitors outside of the Apple collaboration are not good? Recently, I bought two 27GN950, which is a 27" 4k@144Hz gaming monitor with good colors. So far the worst part is the fan and in the long run the absence of HDMI 2.1 might be disappointing, but overall I have the impression of a good product. Yes, it doesn't have the same PPI as smartphones, but I am not sure if we are going to see that…

I think it's in part related to fractional scaling, which hasn't been sorted everywhere. Text at 4k on a 27 inch is too small to run at 100%, too much of a waste to run run at 200% (equivalent to 1920x1080). So you're running 150% or 175% and that can be an issue if you're running something that doesn't like fractional scaling. 27 inch is perfect for 1440p 100% or 200% (i.e., 5k), but it seems like no one other than…

Yes, fractional scaling is an issue, but I don't think it is as much of an issue as it was a few years ago. In fact, I think the only application that doesn't scale for me is steam currently. Everything else seems to be handled by setting the correct DPI in the xorg.conf and the scaling factor of KDE (150%).

But as this is clearly a software issue, I wouldn't blame the hardware for it ;-)

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#387

Post by leetcrew »

itsoktocry wrote: post #296
gaudat wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so often I ask if the seller can provide a "perfect" display, that is, without any artifacts on the display. This adds 100-200 CNY to the price. There's a Chinese panel manufacturer called BOE that makes products competitive with some of the lower-end Samsung / LG panels. I got one 15.6" 2160p external display with a BOE panel that offers 100% sRGB coverage. I can see a huge difference compared to my Dell Latitu…

> I can see a huge difference compared to my Dell Latitude laptop display. And outside of a few occupations that might actually require pixel-perfect colour, what does this matter? Is this like the audiophile world, where people argue about seemingly subjective things that no else cares about? The customer interprets colours differently than you, the customer sees colours differently than you, and the customer is usi…

monitor image quality is quite a bit more objective than what audiophiles look for in high end audio equipment. sRGB defines a specific physical color that ought to be displayed for each RGB sequence. if you can get a very accurate display for <$1000 just by doing a bit of research, why wouldn't you?

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#388

Post by SomeHacker44 »

roel_v wrote: post #113

The premise of this article is nonsense. Get a Logitech Brio and a Blue Yeti boom mic and you'll be so far ahead of the average Zoomer that people will make comments on how good your picture looks and sound sounds. If you want to take it up a notch still, mix it all through OBS and use a stream deck to control screen share transitions. You'll look like a wizard after some practise.

This is what I do (Brio and Blue Yeti USB mic) and I am happy with it. My company locks down laptops so I use no non Windows software but the approved and centrally managed Teams and Zoom. I also have an $80 variable warmth panel light mounted to a desk stand about 8" behind, above and slightly to the side of the web cam. Useful as the lighting changes throughout the day.

I like the mute button directly on the mic.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#389

Post by dekhn »

ramraj07 wrote: post #368
postalrat wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A camera off a $50 budget phone will probably beat every $100 webcam on the market. So why can't I get that same camera module, minus the phone parts but plus a usb interface, for $100.

You can https://www.e-consystems.com/13mp-autofocus-usb-camera.asp I bought one of these for using with my lab microscope since the alternatives from thorlabs was 10x more expensive for no reason. It worked fine for a year then it stopped working. Maybe I spillled something on it? Who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

thorlabs cameras, and scientific cameras in general, have very different response functions. useful if you want to make quantitative measurements, accurately represent a B&W scene, etc. I use a BlackFly (FLIR) camera on my scope, but have been looking to do something similar to you, since the camera API is not V4L2, but rather a custom framegrabber SDK.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#390

Post by gimmeThaBeet »

sambroner wrote: post #358
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #329

The real reason is buried in the article: You can’t buy a good webcam because the number of people willing to pay a lot of money for a high end webcam is very small. At the lower end, people are satisfied with their built in laptop parts or a cheap webcam that sits on top of their monitor. At the high end, people go down the rabbit hole of buying a do-everything mirrorless camera that they can use for so much more th…

I'm just not sure I buy this... The number of people willing to pay significant money for a high end webcam was very small. Now my parents and their friends are talking about better lighting and camera angles. It seems like this industry is unusually ripe for a "better webcam" that "just works"

Did somebody say iSight 2?
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