I suddenly needed several reasonably good quality webcams (had to instrument my home lab for teaching electronics remotely, and wanted multiple views in some cases. NDI and OBS plus my pre-existing pile of old iPhones (a largish extended family's worth) have proven an admirable resource, especially since the screen lets me tell at a glance what the frame is. Even set up a jig to use an iPhone with my optical microscope.
Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
671–680 of 794 posts
Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
#672Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
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…
Agree with your general stance. My current monitors are from 2007 and have endured many hours of use and a capacitor replacement.
I am considering my next purchase on the basis of at least 5 years of service and that is a long time to be looking at something "not quite right".
Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
#673The 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"
The rear-facing camera on a recent iPhone (or comparable high-end Android phone) is already going to exceed the quality ceiling for what streaming 2-way video will support in resolution and bitrate, given acceptable lighting and background.
If the front-facing camera on their laptop or tablet doesn't cut it, they should use the rear-facing camera on their phone, and put the rest of their effort into lighting and setup.
Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
#674The 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…
tbh I'm surprised that GoPro hasn't been exploding into this category. Granted, their cameras do a heck of a lot more than just webcams (... which is good for longer-term use), but they're small, cheaper than a mirrorless, wider angle than a normal mirrorless camera lens, and already have a stable market and existing users.
Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
#675Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
These differences are very clearly noticeable. I upgraded many years ago from a 72% sRGB to a 99% sRGB Dell IPS and everything looked much better. I just got the LG 27GN950 which is 95% DCI P3... I was mainly getting it for the 4k/144 with the P3 as a nice bonus (I already had 4k/60 on the Dell). Looking at the Dell, I was thinking that P3 might be nice to have but it wouldn't really matter much aside from photo edit…
Seconded. I have 2 LG 27GN950-B's on my desk, and love the 27" 4K HDR @ 144Hz experience (at least on Catalina. Big Sur has completely broken DSC and will only do HDR @ 60, non-HDR @ 95).
I love them for my photo editing.
Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
#676you can buy a good webcam. its unfortunate that to get decent image quality you need a good cammera. here is a tip you can skimp on the hdmi to usb dongle it digital 15 dollars should do it.(elgato seems to be a vlogger conspiricy) i found the best results from a cheapish dslr (that i already had) with a fixed fast macro lens at F3.5. best value is probably a mirrorles with a decent lens. when your in front of a big monitor less need for ring lights.
Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
#677The 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…
Tip: try to find out what panel the monitor you are buying has. Then look the panel up in a database like panelook.com. This way you can get the specifications without any marketing bullshit. It also works the other way round. Find a panel that is good enough for your eyes, then see if there's a mass marketed display with that panel. If you are adventurous, you can grab "DIY" or "assembled" monitors with the panels o…
Does anything else have that LG 5K panel? :D
Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
#678Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am from Warsaw, Poland and believe it or not, Warsaw is about 7 degrees north from northernmost part of Vermont. Vermont spans 42 to 45 degrees while Warsaw is at 52 degrees. Did you know that most of people in Canada live at the lattitude of Croatia or south of it?
I lived in .be for 3 years. I believe it :-) I think my favorite tidbit is that Rome and Boston are at the same latitude.
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Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
#679Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I just completely don't understand your point. There's no misleading advertising here - the resolution is exactly as promised ,at the size promised....what's the problem? That would be relevant is my problem was false promises or misleading advertising. But my problem is not (a) "Monitors say they are 4K and they are not" but: (b) "Most monitors out there are BS-4K, but for the best quality/viewing comfort at their…
For me it's hard to believe that 4k on 27" is not enough, I use 1440p 27" 144Hz display as daily driver and barely see any pixels(usually with badly hinted fonts, and still not pixels, but uneven forms of letters), because I sit around one meter apart from it, and sitting closer makes me turn my head around too much, except when watching movies.
>For me it's hard to believe that 4k on 27" is not enough, I use 1440p 27" 144Hz display as daily driver and barely see any pixels
It's not just about "not seeing any pixels", and "barely see any pixels" is not the same as enjoying hi-res typography and fine detail.
27-inch 1440p monitor is about 108 ppi. That's hardly better from what we used in the 90s and 00s, dpi-wise. Sure, if you haven't used to hi-dpi it looks ok. But try using a 5K/27-inch monitor for a while and then go back to 1440p/27-inch to see the difference you miss.
Now, 4K hi-dpi (pixel doubled) on 27" is 1920x1080.
This makes pixels just fine and detail is great, but everything too large and cuts off screen space, as it's 33% less area than 1440p (which, I presume, you don't use pixel-doubled)
The solution is either 5K/27" (which gives you back the 1440p kind of screen space and UI control size PLUS hi-dpi), or using a non-doubled, fractional resolution, to overcome, (which is not optimal, looks fuzzier, and wastes cpu).
Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
#680I'm not sure that the product the author describes trying to make is really any better than the top-of-the-line Logitech units that sell for $200. I have seen them in action, and unless you're pixel-peeping at 4k, their results are at least on par with a mid-range phone. Without investing $$$ in computational photography to clean up the images, you're not going to get flagship smartphone quality photos out of cellphone-sized assemblies, no matter how high quality they are.
A more interesting take on this space would be to try and offer the same quality as the mirrorless camera setup in a smaller and cheaper package. Upscale to a 1-inch or APS-C chip and a wide aperture lens, and you could get the blurred out background effect naturally, get an overall higher quality image. Without the need for a display and by offloading autofocusing compute to the computer, you'd be able to reduce the per-unit cost substantially below a standalone camera.
Another interesting product for this space would be a teleprompter-style monitor-camera pair that effectively lets you place the camera behind the screen. This allows the user to naturally maintain eye contact with the camera, which can marginally improve connection and trust with the human on the other side of the call. For, say, sales teams that may have to rely more and more on video calls, compared to in-person meetings, this marginal improvement could be worth a lot of money.