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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?

#471

Post by [deleted] »

leemailll wrote: post #207
riho wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Have you try to use the max aperture, and let other enjoy the bokeh? ;-)

[deleted]

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#472

Post by neartheplain »

I encountered this problem in college when I worked on some custom motion-capture systems. My priority then was not sound, light, or necessarily video quality, but speed. Every prosumer webcam I tested from Best Buy or Amazon had horrible motion blur.

My solution was to buy a bunch of used Playstation Eye cameras, developed by Sony for Kinect-like games on the PS3. Sony had designed it from the ground up for low-latency motion-capture, and it performed remarkably well in this application. The PS3 Eye is still popular today with DIY mocap systems [0].

[0] http://ipisoft.com/support/

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#473

Post by JansjoFromIkea »

soylentcola wrote: post #318
JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #234

One I've been using recently is a Kinect v2; the image is a decent 1080p but with OBS I'm able to give a way better green screen effect than the one built into Zoom. Has the added bonuses of being a 3D scanner, and semi-functional full body tracker for VR. Cost £70 including the PC cable, which seems to be the going rate. A Pi Zero with the high def camera module is probably a decent shout too, although I've not used…

Hmm...I only have a v1 from the days of playing around with interactive projection stuff. For a while it seemed like the v2 was expensive and/or hard to get with the cable. Also have an early Intel RealSense camera around somewhere but I don't know how well supported it would be. I know OBS has specific Kinect functionality built in so that sounds like it would be interesting to mess with.

100% just got it to mess around with. Cable for V2 seems to be about £20 nowadays (mine was official but most seem to not be, doubt it makes a difference), most stuff online seems to talk about it being multiples of that. The step up in tracking ability and image quality from Kinect V1 is absolutely gigantic. However, you can very easily get a v1 plus adapter for under £20 in total and it probably covers most of what people would want to play with.

Dunno about built in functionality, I used a plugin. MaxMSP has Kinect functionality via a plugin too, which I haven't dabbled in but looks pretty fun. There's a node library for v2 as well I believe.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#474

Post by ptoomey3 »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #422
em500 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "proper resolution for MacOS" mean in this case? There are tons of 27" 4k that work fine in macOS in Retina mode and matches the medium tier iMac (their low end today is still 21.5" 1080p). Unless you declare everything below 5k subpar, I don't see where you're coming from.

I don't have the exact numbers in front of me at the moment, but a 27" 4K monitor will not match the pixel pitch of every other Mac -- screen elements appear larger when both are set at the same scaled resolution.

Yeah, to match the dot pitch apple is designing for, the 4K monitor would have to be more like 22 inches instead of 27. We know this since the 4K iMac is a 21.5 inch screen.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#475

Post by inickt »

save_ferris wrote: post #451
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s an app called EpocCam that lets you turn the iPhone into a webcam. I was disappointed with the results. The colors get washed out easily, especially in strong direct light. It’s nothing like the image quality you get when taking a video (which was what I expected).

Same, I tried it and was disappointed in the results. Nobody is better-positioned to wirelessly integrate the iPhone camera and a Mac better than Apple is, and it would encourage folks to stay in the Apple ecosystem.

Check out Camo (https://reincubate.com/camo/). I also had problems with EpocCam and switched earlier this year with an old iPhone 6 and have been really happy. $40/yr isn't super cheap but its easier and higher quality than me buying a webcam.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#476

Post by Tepix »

kevincharm wrote: post #73
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…

I use a similar setup with a Panasonic GH5 I already had, but I bought one of those €15 Chinese HDMI capture USB UVC cards [1]. These work surprisingly well, and I've had zero issues using them for ~4 hours back-to-back Zoom meetings on my MBP. They've also received some good reviews on YouTube [2]. For audio, I use my Airpods. Great setup for meetings. Latency is good enough IMO. -- [1]: https://www.amazon.nl/gp/pro…

Panasonic released a (beta) webcam software this year. It supports the GH5 and works well. Give it a try, it's free.

https://www.panasonic.com/global/consumer/lumix/lumix_webcam...

It's available for Windows and macOS. The Mac version seems to have more issues with various apps than the Windows version at the moment.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#477

Post by arafsheikh »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #174
iamacyborg wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly the implementation of USB-C on models like the U3419W isn’t to standard and causes known issues when used with Apple laptops.

I’m guessing this is why the cursor seems to visibly ghost when hooked up to my MBP.

Sounds like for some reason the monitor is running at 30Hz. You can confirm that using an app like EasyRes.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#478

Post by hellisothers »

I’m surprised nobody has mentioned that a huge hurdle to wanting a nicer webcam is recording at higher quality doesn’t matter. Zoom is limited to 1080p and even then you’ll rarely actually get it due to various limitations. Zoom for our (large) company limits streaming to around 640x320

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#479

Post by Tepix »

piranha wrote: post #32
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…

> you can get cheap china-knockoffs for about £12, I don't know how good they are. They are so-so. Well, they are much-much better than any webcam, of course, but 1080p is almost the same as 720p on them. So as a budget thingie it'll work, but Elgato's adapter is much better, of course.

It's converting a digital signal (HDMI) to another digital signal. Why should there be any quality loss even if it's a cheap chinese model?

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#480

Post by the_pwner224 »

asdfk-12 wrote: post #426
sambroner wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

A webcam that "just works" seems like a herculean task if the goal is to have native compatibility with most devices without installing a package - Chromebooks, Apple, *nix, etc. but given how decent cameras are standard on mid-tier phones, you're spot on

Most webcam's I've tried do "just work" with *nix since they use USB UVC. And most linux distributions come with or can easily install the qt v4l2 package which can show you a live feed and let you adjust all the webcam's parameters that are exposed over UVC - for my current Logitech that's the common stuff like resolution, FPS, brightness/contrast/saturation, but also hardware-specific things like exposure (or autoexposure), pan/tilt/zoom, and focus / autofocus.

I'm pretty sure the situation is the same on ChromeOS and Macs. And I've seen that webcams these days also tend to be pretty plug-and-play on Windows.

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