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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?

#541

Post by kalal »

atoav wrote: post #396
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"

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…

What is DOP?

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#542

Post by cbanek »

As for the design constraint that webcams have to be small to fit into the lids, I find the lid to be one of those places where I get the worst angle (both for lighting, and just in general), which is under your chin. I have to sit back a foot or two to make it look right.

Instead, what if there was a detachable part that was in the base that contained the webcam? Then you could hang it on the top lid (like normal place) or maybe set it on a table or higher up at any angle. I guess the next issue becomes powering it and getting the data there, but maybe just have a USB cable and solve both of them. I guess this would end up to be more like a go pro in the end though.

I have had some pretty good webcams in the past (the 1080p logitechs were pretty good), but they were about $100 then. But I think there won't be something that good in a laptop because the cost will just never be worth it. I wouldn't pay for it, I'd rather spend that money on a camera that won't turn useless in a few years.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#543

Post by ahelwer »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #494
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…

And then there's folks at the mid end, who buy an $80 Razer Kiyo purely for the decent video with built-in ring light so you're never backlit, with a separate $99 microphone and $150 audio interface. Buying all the bits separately gets you what this author wants, just not in a single tidy package.

I have this exact setup except I just bought the Samson Q2U microphone ($100ish with stand) which has USB output (in addition to XLR). I doubt I'd be able to tell the difference.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#544

Post by dan-robertson »

dan-robertson wrote: post #202

Regarding microphone arrays, is there a good description somewhere online which explains the mathematics of picking out the sound from one place using a mic array?

I didn’t find any reference but the algorithm is approximately this:

1. Assume there is one point source of sound which dominates everything else

2. Input two frames of samples, s and t, and compute cross correlation: a measure of how similar they are for a given delay between samples

  n(k) := sum(s(i) t(i+k)) / (s•s)(t•t)
3. Find the k which maximises n(k)

4. Do some beamforming to improve the signal to noise ratio. This sounds complicated but basically you just shift t by k samples and average it with s.

I’m not really sure how this works if k changes over time, but I guess something could be done to change it in a more continuous way.

I also don’t really know how it works with more than two microphones or if you know the geometry of the array.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#545

Post by ciarancour »

infomax wrote: post #416
HPsquared wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phones can already be used as a webcam, e.g droidcam app. No need for special hardware.

DroidCam connected via USB on my Android smartphone makes a great 1080p webcam. The latency is minimal. It has great linux support and works great with OBS (and its chroma key filter)

Seconded, I wasn't satisfied leaving droidcam streaming over wifi 24x7, password or no password, so I have a shell alias to unlock phone and open droidcam over ADB USB debugging.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#546

Post by ghaff »

kalal wrote: post #541
atoav wrote: post #396

Earlier 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…

What is DOP?

I assume Director of Photography.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#547

Post by FireBeyond »

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…

> We’re not streaming high-bitrate 1080p H.265 on our 5-person Zoom calls.

Right, even on my higher end webcam, on a connection with 200mbps up, Zoom shows my video (set to HD), as 720p15.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#548

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

post_break wrote: post #305
a2tech wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The monitor has a fan? That would be a huge negative to me

Like Apples monitor that also has a fan?

But Apple's fans are made from recicled SR-71 blackbirds to ensure ultimate noise suppression and each fan blade is assembled by a Swiss watchmaker to ensure quality.

Just kidding, it comes from the same Chinese factory as every other fan but Apple's fans(pun intended) like to believe in magic to justify the price tag.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#549

Post by brianwawok »

okr wrote: post #481
simonh wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

My laptop lid is as thick as my smartphone. I think there is enough space. I think the technology from smart phones has not swept over to laptop lids yet.

What if the Smartphone camera cost $20, and the laptop camera cost $5 to manufacturer? Smart phones can maybe justify the extra $15, laptop makers cannot. If a laptop maker can't raise the price $15, it literally eats their profits.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#550

Post by bhaile »

huhtenberg wrote: post #44
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…

Take a look at Eizo (pun intended).

Didn't know about this company but looking at their history here[1], they used to sell under the brand name Nanao in the US. Nanao made great monitors with consistent high reviews.

[1] https://www.eizo.com/company/information/history/

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