"Wow, karaterobot, your ultra compressed, stuttery video signal has such a great color gamut and and brightness. The 2-inch square your face lives in on my monitor looks amazing, except for the compression and stuttering. Did you get a new camera? ... What's that? Can't hear you... your audio is... yeah you sound like a robot... oops, looked like we lost him."
Using a "proper" camera as a webcam
241–250 of 499 posts
Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
Phone cameras are very good but owing much of it to the DSP and software. An iPhone camera will not produce iPhone quality photos without the chipset and OS.
That still leaves the original question of why dedicated cameras aren’t doing this.
there are cameras that do this; there are many UVC USB3 webcams with phone-grade sensors (medium quality).
Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam
#243I'll put Reincubate Camo here as an option too - turns your iPhone in to a webcam. I was so impressed I bought a used iPhone to use solely as a webcam; the whole setup was cheaper than the Logitech C920 he mentions. The picture quality is great.
Shameless plug here, but I want to mention the free alternative https://webcamplus.app for Mac/iOS. (It is a personal project of mine).
Does it support portrait mode?
Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
These look neat but not widely available yet: https://opalcamera.com
Yes, something like that. But not Mac-only and without a 4 usd per month subscription service to use it…
For what it's worth, the camera itself functions just fine without the additional software (which currently still has its quarks). I'm sure you could replicate at least most of the software functionality with OBS if you really wanted to.
Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam
#245A cheaper but somewhat more kludgy solution is using an old camcorder with a line out and converting that to USB.
I had an old camcorder laying around (a samsung https://www.samsung.com/ca/support/model/SC-MX20/XAC/ ) with composite out and I also had a composite to hdmi converter and another to convert hdmi to usb. (they also make composite to usb all in converters) I found the box for the samsung camcorder and I still had the RCA output cable. Chained them all together and windows sees it as a usb camera.
Works without a hitch so far.
Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam
#246I have a pretty full on setup, with a condenser microphone on a boom, studio lights and softboxes pointed at me, with a full frame mirrorless camera and a high frame rate capture card.
I tried doing meetings with it, but ended up getting a lot of inane comments about it, particularly as the microphone is in frame. Personally, I don't want to draw attention to myself in a meeting, so I've ended up going back to using a terrible webcam for work, like everyone else.
Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam
#247Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam
#248If you go this route, please make sure your system is robust and ready to go before meetings. We had to ask one employee to go back to his reliable built-in webcam because every other meeting started with 2 minutes of him getting his camera turned on, messing with audio inputs, getting his microphone boom in place, and fighting other quirks. He also had a tendency to drop out of long meetings when his camera overheat…
I've got a very nice mirrorless camera and glass and eventually came to the same conclusion: It's just not worth the hassle even for the improvement in image quality. However, I have found that it's absolutely worth it to upgrade to a better microphone . Just about anything is better than the mic built into most computers and better voice quality will give you more presence and make it significantly more enjoyable fo…
Ya, a good microphone makes a huge difference and it's just plug and play.
Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam
#249I use this webcam and I'm pretty happy with the quality: https://getlumina.com/
Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam
#250"Wow, karaterobot, your ultra compressed, stuttery video signal has such a great color gamut and and brightness. The 2-inch square your face lives in on my monitor looks amazing, except for the compression and stuttering. Did you get a new camera? ... What's that? Can't hear you... your audio is... yeah you sound like a robot... oops, looked like we lost him."
It's ridiculous that even the free tier of Jitsi Meet gets better quality than most expensive videochatting services.