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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?

#641

Post by leokennis »

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…

Right on the money.

I’m not sure I get people’s use cases here. Ok, if you’re creating/streaming video, I get that you need a good webcam.

But for your teams’ standups, refinements etc...is video quality really an issue?

Usually I’m in a call with 5-10 others. One will be sharing a screen or we will be collaborating on a whiteboard. Other people’s webcam feeds are stamp-sized somewhere in the periphery of my vision. Most people want to hide their surroundings and will use a lame backdrop or a blur filter.

So we’re talking about spending hundreds of dollars to make your 100x100 pixel face that no one is looking at anyway a bit sharper?

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#642

Post by dathinab »

HPsquared wrote: post #380
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.

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

It depends on you phone.

I tried it with my phone and latencies made it unusable for video-conference usages. Given that this is my main usage reasonable low latenzies are for me much more important then super good image quality. So when I had to buy one recently I ended up with a ~70€ not super good but not bad webcam. I thing normally I might have bought something like a C920 but prices-return ratio was just madness when I bought (sight, Covid19 madness ;=) )

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#643

Post by chupasaurus »

garaetjjte wrote: post #250
muro wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dell sells good monitors.

Dell has very nice adjustable stands, but panels are mixed bag. eg. P2416D (1440p) is fine, but P2415Q (4K) has quite bad ghosting. So annoying I had to disable browser smooth scrolling.

Owner of P2415Q, can't say that ghosting on mine is extraordinary.

You have to choose between ghosting or proper colours, higher refresh rate IPS panels are better in this metric but still suck compared to TNs.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#645

Post by antiterra »

lumost wrote: post #529
thayne wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why can't I buy an external webcam, where that isn't an issue, with the same quality as a smartphone camera?

The market for dedicated external webcams is a little sparse because most people don't want to have more peripherals. There's probably a good opportunity for home office external displays to incorporate smartphone cameras, studio mikes, and maybe even lighting elements to help people look good while working from home.

Since COVID the webcam market has exploded. Logitech had to significantly ramp up production due to increase in demand back in April. It’s not just remote work, but also aspiring content creators.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#646

Post by thewebcount »

wongarsu wrote: post #336
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoy having a high quality display for all kinds of reasons. Better comfort while programming, accurate colour representation while looking at photos, having a good sense of what things might look like for others (accurate colour means you might be the middle ground of your users experiences, inaccurate colour means you can’t be sure at all), and otherwise, if I’m going to spend a lot on something I’ll own for hal…

> accurate colour means you might be the middle ground of your users experiences, inaccurate colour means you can’t be sure at all Having a setup with multiple cheap monitors is imho really underrated for design and development. Moving something between screens and seeing clear contrast disappear, or see pleasing color choices turn ugly can be eye opening.

Agreed! Back when I was in music school, they brought in Tony Bonjiovi[0], a well-known record producer at the time. He talked about how the ultimate test of any recording was to copy it to a cassette, take it out to the engineer's Camaro with 1 broken speaker and see how it sounded there. If it sounded good there, it would sound great anywhere else.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Bongiovi

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#647

Post by graiz »

I went down this rabbit hole at the start of the pandemic and it's more complex. The thing that makes for a good web-cam is a great lens. The sensor and body of the camera is mostly commodity and contributes at max $50-$100. A good lens with shallow depth of field will cost $500-$700. So the best case current solution would be $700+ for something that will look as good as a high-quality DSLR without the body complexity.

I designed a prototype of this type of camera and I think there's a market but it's difficult to defend. You end up competing with Logitech or Canon, GoPro & Apple enter the market.

It's more likely that cell-phone quality cameras start being added to laptops and the shallow depth of field is done in software.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#648

Post by wx196 »

rconti wrote: post #554
jonpurdy wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote an article a few months back about this(1) and post when it's directly relevant. Main takeaways: audio is more important than video; get that correct first. Easiest thing is using a cheap headset microphone. Advanced noice cancellation algorithms with a great microphone placed far away can't complete with the physics of having a mic close to your month. Since publishing, I also found Webcam Settings, an app f…

I have a logitech 920, bought about a month before the pandemic, and it's great.. except sometimes it completely forgets how to focus.

Try to install Logitech G Hub, it should help

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#649

Post by prewett »

leadingthenet wrote: post #564
greedo wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's extremely frustrating is that Apple makes an excellent 27" 5K monitor in a nice housing for $1800. The only problem is that it comes with an iMac... So clearly, Apple could sell a monitor for about $1600, that would be perfectly compatible with Mac Pros, mac mini and as a secondary monitor for all the various MacBooks.

I genuinely don’t understand why they stopped doing that...

Maybe it's related to the reason why you can't use the 5k iMac as an external monitor. I can't remember where I found the sources, but the problem was that they essentially needed to video cards to drive the thing and making sure that both sides of the output looked identical was tricky and not something that an external source would be able to do.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#650

Post by SergeAx »

jablan wrote: post #366
SergeAx wrote: post #225

When this pandemic fuss was at the beginning in January, I've decided to buy a webcam just in case I got sick and have to work from home. It was Logitech C310 HD[0] for like $40 including delivery. When we became full WFH in april, people in working chats started asking me what kind of that super nice camera do I have. Our company is issuing MacBooks for workers. Turned out that internal webcam of MacBook is so crapp…

Now that camera costs ~$100[0]. [0] https://www.amazon.de/Logitech-C310-720Pixel-Schwarz-Webcam/...

That's strange. Maybe local high-demand/low-supply peak? It's still $42 in Russia: https://market.yandex.ru/product--veb-kamera-logitech-hd-web...
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