111–120 of 610 posts
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Not depthwise.
Neither are phones with great cameras... Which is why there are camera bumps.
Webcams feel like a deadend technology like self-rewinding cassettes on the eve of the release of the compact disc. The fidelity is garbage relative to something like a DSLR inside an Errol Box[1] and miles away from Starline style holography[2]. Eye contact is poor. Putting in a software filter to fix eye contact should be universal practice at this point. Hell even getting basic ring light next to your lens is univ…
You know what's vastly worse than a co-worker whose camera has a sub-optimal image quality? A co-worker who's constantly struggling to get their overkill setup to behave, wasting everyone's time while they fix the mix on their audio or switch cameras because their mirrorless camera turned itself off from thermal overload yet again.
Literally just use a wired microphone for instance and not only will one have better fidelity but one also immediately gets past the "Can you guys here me?" one finds with airpods or fancy wireless gaming headsets.
You can use you phone's camera as a webcam with Reincubate's Camo App. This required a wired connection iirc. You can also use OBS Studio along with a virtual camera plugin to use any device which can output directly to your computer. But most of these solutions do not work on Safari or FaceTime unless you manually modify the app. Now, Apple is going to soon introduce their "It Just Works" solution with the next rele…
Getting good lighting was more of a challenge for the next few vids.
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Not entirely sure if this was meant as satire, but in case it wasn't: If I wanted to be judged on my physical looks or the quality in which those are presented to others over the wire, I would have been working in the film industry.
Genuinely believe a loss in fidelity moves us from acceptable telepresence to uncanny valley. Landlines had exceptional fidelity and let one pick up the nuance of a person's emotional state. Today's cellular connections not so much. Thankfully things like Apple Facetime (audio only) recapture some of that. Likewise with a high quality webcam I think it's important to treat your coworkers with respect by giving them t…
I agree in that improved audiovisual quality would be beneficial, but, at least for regular video calls, I don't believe it's reasonable to expect for people to go out of their way to do better than the quality their (not too old) laptop provides - not past ensuring they're in a reasonably quiet environment with halfway decent lighting anyway.
Besides, recent generations of laptops are finally shifting to better quality webcams and microphones. We'll get to where we'd both like it to be, eventually :)
You can use you phone's camera as a webcam with Reincubate's Camo App. This required a wired connection iirc. You can also use OBS Studio along with a virtual camera plugin to use any device which can output directly to your computer. But most of these solutions do not work on Safari or FaceTime unless you manually modify the app. Now, Apple is going to soon introduce their "It Just Works" solution with the next rele…
Great, because I never want to use my phone while in a meeting What the actual fuck are they thinking just use a decent cam in the laptop But yea, mic audio is always trash too
Laptops rarely have decent cams, because phones are afforded a greater thickness than the typical location of a laptop camera(above the screen).
The webcam in my macbook has about 1/8" to work with, whereas my phone camera has almost 1/3"
There is a reason that for hundreds of years painters and (later) photographers have preferred working in spaces with North-facing windows[0], and that is because it's a simple way of ensuring neutral, even light. My home office is (by design) in a room with one North-facing window. I use a Logitech C920. Many people have told me how good my webcam feed is. I don't think it's that the C920 is particularly brilliant,…
So yes, all things being equal, better lighting helps. But this post is showing that a better (but similarly sized or even smaller) camera helps enormously, and the webcam market is persistently unwilling/unable to give them to us.
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Care to share some quick tips?
Sure! 1) Avoid fluorescent lighting like the plague. You’ll look sickly. 2) Find a nice warm (tungsten/more orange) lamp if your lighting is inadequate. It can be small it doesn’t matter. Place it diagonally from you at eye level. 3) Camera at eye level. 4) If you want to get fancy, get another lamp higher above you (several feet) and place it opposite your main lamp for a backlight. So if your main light is front ri…
There is a reason that for hundreds of years painters and (later) photographers have preferred working in spaces with North-facing windows[0], and that is because it's a simple way of ensuring neutral, even light. My home office is (by design) in a room with one North-facing window. I use a Logitech C920. Many people have told me how good my webcam feed is. I don't think it's that the C920 is particularly brilliant,…
Or, just turning on any bright lights will do wonders. Most people have very dim lighting.
Umm, it really depends where those lights are relative to the camera.
None of us look our best when light brightly from directly overhead, or from one side, or - if you're really after that Dracula look - from directly underneath.
The sun is a unique (free!) light source, particularly if you're able to get access through a North-facing window. It's quite costly (time and money) to get anywhere close to replicating that effect using artificial lighting.
This made me laugh. > Using an iPhone as a webcam is easily the best option without dropping an excess of $1,000 for professional camera gear. Using the iPhone you already own, or a recent hand-me-down, a moderate investment in lighting, and Reincubate Camo, you can get excellent results and none of the frustration and hassle that accompanies standalone webcams. I don't have an iPhone. So if I want to buy one that is…
OBS camera won’t work in many MacOS programs nor will GoPro Webcam. It should be noted that the M1 MacBook Pro has a camera which is noticeably better than it used to be.
I did use gopro (an older one, hero3) as a webcam, and it did work, to a point. Hero3 has hdmi output (not clean, but it dissapears after few seconds), so connecting it via hdmi capture dongle did work as a standard usb webcam in MacOS. The picture was great, the latency was under 10 frames when doing 60 fps capture. The problem was, that it could not charge and record at the same time, and it didn't give any signs of life when the battery was empty (other than signalling the charging). You could not even leave it powered, so it would charge when empty - it would notice only when you press some button, that it is empty and start charging. It was annoying to make sure the battery is charged enough when needed, so I just got an logitech webcam; the picture is worse, but just works, all the time, without babysitting.