1) you can use your dSLR as a webcam
2) you can use your mobile phone as a webcam
Not sure why you would want to buy a webcam
Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
431–440 of 794 posts
Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
#432The 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 don't know, a $400 Apple Cam™ might do the trick.
Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
#433Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked as a freelance DOP and worked with cameras + lenses that coat more than a decent car. And while there is certainly room for improvement with typical webcams: the problem is in many cases not the camera, but the conditions under which it operates. Low light, shooting against the light, smeared laptop lenses, weird angles (not eye level), weird perspective framing, bad combination of light and framerates, mixe…
> And while there is certainly room for improvement with typical webcams: the problem is in many cases not the camera, but the conditions under which it operates. Low light, shooting against the light, smeared laptop lenses, weird angles (not eye level), weird perspective framing, bad combination of light and framerates, mixed light temperatures, low CRI lighting, etc. If you take an 40k€ Arri and a 20k€ Zeiss Prime…
The problem is laptop lids are a lot thinner than smartphones and just don't have the depth to contain a decent optic. Apple have tried to mitigate this a bit in the new M1 machines using some computational photography to improve the image.
The Surface machines from Microsoft actually stand out in this regard. Because the brains of the machine are in the same section as the screen and camera, they are a lot thicker and can put in pretty decent camera modules.
Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
#434This article does seem to skirt around the obvious, that you _can_ buy a decent webcam, if you pay Logitech the money they want. Given how often they've been sold out this year, people are buying them.
Both the C920[1] and the StreamCam[2] work well.
1 - https://www.logitech.com/en-gb/products/webcams/c920-pro-hd-...
2 - https://www.logitech.com/en-gb/products/webcams/streamcam.96...
Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
#435A used GoPro is probably fine for people who want more than a junk camera but less than some pro level stuff.
I wonder how easy it is to get OS to treat a GoPro as a webcam?
Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
#436This camera seems to check all of the boxes for what he was looking for.
https://thorbroadcast.com/product/4k-hdmi-and-usb-e-ptz-comp...
Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
#437This article does seem to skirt around the obvious, that you _can_ buy a decent webcam, if you pay Logitech the money they want. Given how often they've been sold out this year, people are buying them. Both the C920[1] and the StreamCam[2] work well. 1 - https://www.logitech.com/en-gb/products/webcams/c920-pro-hd-... 2 - https://www.logitech.com/en-gb/products/webcams/streamcam.96...
C920 is literally 8 years old.
Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I just wanted something to capture transmitted light images on a real-longterm setup. Turns out the best method is to wheel a simple tissue culture microscope to a warm room and put a cell phone on the eyepiece :) made some cool movies for sure!
Currently I'm playing with this: https://github.com/bionanoimaging/UC2-GIT
which does a lot of that (mainly for educational purposes- I think most scientists should focus on getting grant money to buy professional equipment).
Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
#439The 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…
This doesn't make any sense. Mirrorless cameras cost a couple thousand dollars (I have one) and the last thing I am going to wear down/abuse this equipment with, is to jump into daily meeting lol.
At the low end, there are decent webcams, like Logitech HD 1080p, but it costs over 100$ and honestly, it's a couple of years behind the current. There don't seem to be webcams of around 100 to 200$ that are state of the art. If you look at mobile phones, you see the difference. Those mobile cameras are like 1/5 or 1/10th of the size a webcam could be, so there is LOTs of room for improvement, even in this price segment.
I am pretty sure we could easily get 4k recording with decent, artificial depth-of-field (LIDAR & all) under decent lighting conditions (which is why this can be done cheap) at a price point of 100 to 200$. Just nobody seems to be doing it.
And yeah we definitely do stream 1080p over meetings and most people are always like "Oh wow, what kind of webcam are you using". That's for my years old logitech... The bitrates are pretty low, even for 4k. You can definitely have a couple of those over almost any current internet connection without issues.
My main gripe is depth-of-field. Add some LIDAR and I am happy. Apple webcam anyone?
Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
#440Tangent: I really wish that Apple would make it easier to use the iPhone camera as a webcam when using a Mac. It would be a killer feature since so many people are in the ecosystem and iPhone cameras completely outperform webcams these days. I tired EpocCam but I wasn't completely satisfied with it. This seems like a missed opportunity for Apple, given their seamless integration experience mantra.