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Why webcams aren’t good enough

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Re: Why webcams aren’t good enough

#2
Literally all webcam 'problems' come down to expecting your webcam to perform well in conditions that even a $5000 dSLR wouldn't do a particularly good job in. Buy a light and all of the issues from the article will magically disappear.

Re: Why webcams aren’t good enough

#3
post #2

Literally all webcam 'problems' come down to expecting your webcam to perform well in conditions that even a $5000 dSLR wouldn't do a particularly good job in. Buy a light and all of the issues from the article will magically disappear.

So why is it that the iPhone example looks much better than every webcam in exactly the same lighting conditions?

Re: Why webcams aren’t good enough

#4
I use OBS Studio's output as virtual camera - and among the inputs I use cheap old Android tablets with DroidCam OBS over IP on Wi-Fi... They cost less than a USB webcam and deliver much better image quality.

Also, lighting. A couple of 5500 Kelvin Led lights on a clip mount, with good color rendition won't dent the budget but they will make even cheap webcams perform much better - color, frame rate, aperture. A softbox is wonderful but I don't have space for that, so I aim the light at the white wall - good enough substitute !

Re: Why webcams aren’t good enough

#5
post #2

Literally all webcam 'problems' come down to expecting your webcam to perform well in conditions that even a $5000 dSLR wouldn't do a particularly good job in. Buy a light and all of the issues from the article will magically disappear.

[deleted]

Re: Why webcams aren’t good enough

#6
They're comparing apples and logitechs.

I wouldn't be surprised if the iphone cameras have had a billion dollars of development invested in them. But a large portion of this is on the software/firmware side which logitech doesn't benefit from.

That said, we all reap the benefits of this because phone camera hardware has been driven down in cost considerably since phones first got cameras. There just needs to be more open software to help out, maybe like machine learning exposure, focus, color and more. Then even low-margin webcam companies will have good performance.

Re: Why webcams aren’t good enough

#7
post #3
post #2

Literally all webcam 'problems' come down to expecting your webcam to perform well in conditions that even a $5000 dSLR wouldn't do a particularly good job in. Buy a light and all of the issues from the article will magically disappear.

So why is it that the iPhone example looks much better than every webcam in exactly the same lighting conditions?

Because the iPhone is a pretty expensive mass-produced camera with millions of dollars in development costs that a webcam would never have.

Even a highly-optimized “let’s steal a smartphone camera” webcam would never cost under $100, so it would sell extremely little.

Re: Why webcams aren’t good enough

#9
post #2

Literally all webcam 'problems' come down to expecting your webcam to perform well in conditions that even a $5000 dSLR wouldn't do a particularly good job in. Buy a light and all of the issues from the article will magically disappear.

Still doesn't explain why a $300phone has a better camera than a $250 logitech BRIO. I recently bought a BRIO and in non optimal lighting the performance is just as mediocre as a $30 C230 so I returned it immediately.

In the en I convinced my wife to just use the DSLR (she was hesitant at first because of the extra hassle). A modern DSL had good IQ even ad candlelight, you really almost can't mess it up. Only way to destroy the image is to use different color lights (warm lightbulb on left side and natural light from a window on the right side will look weird on every camera I know of)

Re: Why webcams aren’t good enough

#10
post #3
post #2

Literally all webcam 'problems' come down to expecting your webcam to perform well in conditions that even a $5000 dSLR wouldn't do a particularly good job in. Buy a light and all of the issues from the article will magically disappear.

So why is it that the iPhone example looks much better than every webcam in exactly the same lighting conditions?

iPhone cameras aren't particularly great. They're good, but the thing that makes iPhone pictures really good is the iPhone's computational photography software. If webcams started including powerful CPUs, GPUs, AI chips, and OSs that can turn average pictures in to amazing pictures then webcams would be good. They'd also be quite a lot more expensive.
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