I firmly believe that video conferencing is essentially a dead end. It is uncanny and unpleasant. Having experienced some of the early VR social experiences, I think that is the way forward. We will need to fully embody the other person and project them in a 3D AR or VR space with positional audio. I think in many ways we are incredibly close to this goal and should be seeing the first products hit the market within…
I suspect a lot of us are in video conferences that perhaps don't require our full attention. It is very hard to be in VR and quietly code on the side.
IMHO if you have decent lighting the Logitechs are ”good enough” for the usual video call purposes. What real value would much better image quality bring? Most of the time you are just small box on other participant’s screen. Of courae totally different thing if you are producing video content. In order of importance for me 1) Get sound right. Use headset if needed. 2) Try to get good light for your face (check on Yo…
I think the article does a very good job of showing why even professional studio lights can't help a bad webcam - especially Logitechs.
Hmmh, I couldn't care less about webcams. I'm not that pretty and not all that eager to share the interior of my dwelling. I do however care about sound quality. With my accent and mumbling I need all the help I can get. Others reported that the camera in their phone beats most webcams, but what about the microphone(-array)? The sound quality of phablets hasn't quite won me over. Is there anything better available, s…
I'm an amateur musician with a USB audio interface, several hundred dollars worth of microphones (though for office work, it's just the Shure SM27 condenser), and wired set of good headphones. And it is glorious. Until everyone got used to it, I got consistent compliments on the sound quality. You'll sound like a radio DJ. Because everything is wired, latency is minimal and a lot less of "okay, go head. No, go ahead.…
I was under the impression that dynamic microphones are much more suitable for non-studio settings, where echoes and other noises happen, as well as for regular speech, not music (and that they are actually used on radio stations). And XLR dynamic ones can be connected to a computer even with just an XLR-to-TRRS cable, not requiring phantom power. Or a proper audio interface if one wishes to, not something built into a microphone. Do you have any experience with those, and/or reasons to prefer condenser microphones for speech?
How big is the market for "good webcams"? If 99% of the people just need a "good enough" (to recognise your face) webcam, that they turn off after the initial "hello!" (so noone notices they have no pants on if they have to stand up), does that really make it worth it to develop new tech for the 1%? ...compared to phone cameras, where people actually want (and are willing to pay more) for a good camera, especially fo…
With the rising popularity of streaming, a lot of people are getting a mirrorless camera and capture card. This is ridiculous overkill, and I imagine that a "premium" webcam could provide the desired features* at a much lower price point and smaller package
* Good auto-focus, depth of field, "natural" color, high resolution.
Good optics need physical space that a super flat screen doesn't have (in depth). My Macbook screen is like 1/4th of the depth of my iPhone
If people don't mind a bulge in their phone, I doubt they'd mind a camera bulge sticking out the back of their laptop.
Johnny Ives was obsessed with thinness - it’s the same problem which lead to the bad keyboards. Now they’ve been putting people who haven’t forgotten about usability in charge I would not be surprised if the next case design included a non-terrible webcam since it’s unlikely that anyone is going to stop video conferencing even if we do go back to the office.
front-facing cameras (i.e., webcams) are unnecessary on a laptop, tablet, or phone. manufacturers should remove them in favor of better supporting dedicated equipment, since they'll never be 'good enough' when video quality actually matters. video calls have been part of the futurism canon for at least 100 years, but they still have little utility beyond a simple phone call (or even text messages in many cases). they…
> but they still have little utility beyond a simple phone call We've collectively been running a huge experiment for the last year that has pretty conclusively proven this hypothesis false.
Narcissistic managers demanding everybody on their team use webcams during meetings hardly refutes clairity post.
I spend a lot of time on video calls every day, and wanted to take advantage of my iPhone camera. I had tried Epoccam and it was buggy, and broke between releases of Zoom or didn’t work in Slack calls. Screwing around with OBS was time consuming and pinned my fans. Reincubate Camo has been a pleasure to use over the last 3 months, and has never let me down. Having good image quality on video calls is on par with wear…