I have bought Elgato Facecams for our offices. The image quality compared to the previos webcameras I had my hands on is on a different level. The sharpening effect was a bit too much but their software can be used and save the profile to the camera so you only have to fix it once. Otherwise the picture quality is amazing and is useable even in badly lit conference rooms.
Webcams aren't good enough
301–310 of 610 posts
Re: Webcams aren't good enough
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
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It's simple math. To hold the camera housing of an iPhone camera the thickness has to go up which means the entire top lid needs to become thicker. This will easily double the weight of the laptop.
Objection. Huawei has a webcam coming out of the keyboard: https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/25/17050098/huawei-matebook-...
Re: Webcams aren't good enough
#303I'm the cofounder at Lumina - we're building a modern webcam designed to solve some of these problems. There's really been a lack of innovation in the entire home office space, with the webcam being particularly bad. It sucks that a decade-old product (Logitech C920) is still the bestselling product today -- that would be like if Apple stopped releasing new phones after the iPhone 4S (launched 2012), and it remained…
I think mics and webcams suffer a simple problem: the person who enjoys the benefit of higher quality is not the operator. Indeed, the operator may never experience how they look or sound.
That might be true, but your reputation is at stake as well. For the same reason that you might wear a suit to an important meeting, you might also take steps to ensure that your video and audio quality are presentable when you're having an important meeting virtually. (Of course, once you've paid the cost for that, you can just do a good job for all meetings. Much easier than a trip to the dry cleaners.)
Re: Webcams aren't good enough
#304I'm the cofounder at Lumina - we're building a modern webcam designed to solve some of these problems. There's really been a lack of innovation in the entire home office space, with the webcam being particularly bad. It sucks that a decade-old product (Logitech C920) is still the bestselling product today -- that would be like if Apple stopped releasing new phones after the iPhone 4S (launched 2012), and it remained…
I have the Lumina! I think the hardware has been pretty good from the very start when I got it about a year ago. The software originally was... not very good, but you guys have improved it by leaps and bounds over time. I still have to manually adjust the exposure (which is fine), and fiddle with settings to get the colors right, but it works better than any webcam I have so far. Keep up the good work.
Re: Webcams aren't good enough
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lighting and composition can do a lot to compensate for a weak camera, but read the post: this isn’t saying “Zoom video looks bad [potentially because of bad lighting and composition],” it’s saying “even high-end webcams are enormously worse than even old, low-end/front-facing cell phone cameras in the same conditions, and it’s not getting better.” So yes, all things being equal, better lighting helps. But this post…
> So yes, all things being equal, better lighting helps $63 on a C920, add one window (typically ships free with your house/apartment) plus access to one truly special light source which although it's 93 million miles away you were lucky enough to get a free lifetime subscription to when you arrived on this planet. Why spent time worrying about what a cell phone camera can achieve in poor or uneven lighting if a bog-…
> if you just fix the damned lighting?
How do I add a new window to my apartment??
Yes, all cameras look good with great natural light. That's not particularly interesting or useful, because we're not always in perfect lighting to compensate for mediocre cameras that've stagnated for 10 years.
Re: Webcams aren't good enough
#306Webcams are good enough for their purpose which is video conferencing and calls. In the end your video is likely going to be encoded in like 360p low bitrate. I personally prefer not being in razor sharp detail on calls anyway. Anyway this is the one I've been using. https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Webcam-Built-Stereo-Micropho... I like the integrated shutter better than the cover thing for the c920.
> "In the end your video is likely going to be encoded in like 360p low bitrate" But a low-bitrate video that uses better-quality source pixels can still look much better than if used bad pixels as input.
specially if the "bad" pixels are noise that consume most of the bitrate without carrying information.
Re: Webcams aren't good enough
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't use a sony A6**; they overheat. Use a fujifilm or an A7 series.
The other guy said literally the opposite. Maybe you two fight it out, and report the outcome?
Easy solution; use Fujifilm. We both agree they don't overheat. Incidentally, I think they are also much better cameras for most use cases.
Re: Webcams aren't good enough
#308I'm the cofounder at Lumina - we're building a modern webcam designed to solve some of these problems. There's really been a lack of innovation in the entire home office space, with the webcam being particularly bad. It sucks that a decade-old product (Logitech C920) is still the bestselling product today -- that would be like if Apple stopped releasing new phones after the iPhone 4S (launched 2012), and it remained…
> Size isn't everything. As the iPhone shows, you can get very good image quality from a tiny sensor and lens if you have the right tech supporting it. (At Lumina, most of our eng effort is on the software layer) This is my problem with all the webcam startups. So what if you can mask some of the problems of small sensors and lenses using machine learning that adds a whole new set of problems? You could have done tha…
Completely agree, this is the old adage: "Garbage in, garbage out". Improving the data the sensor collects is surely much easier than using ML models to correct after the fact. The people willing to pay a premium for nice big lenses/sensors are the market to go after, everybody else won't care since they already feel their current set up is good enough.
Re: Webcams aren't good enough
#309Lighting and audio are more important than raw image quality. Getting an expensive camera to send heavily compressed 320p low bandwidth video doesn’t really improve a whole lot. Honestly the #1 improvement most people need to work on is speaking clearly and loud enough. #2 would be having literally any light source in front of them rather than being purely backlit.
Just FTR for the active speaker Zoom streams heavily compressed 720p that goes up to 1080p if HD is enabled. It’s low bitrate but still makes a difference in clarity.
Re: Webcams aren't good enough
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Find a nice warm (tungsten/more orange) lamp if your lighting is inadequate. Just buy a high-CRI LED bulb from the hardware store. It shouldn't necessarily be "warm". In an office only used during daylight, and lit with commercial lighting, a "warm" bulb is going to look extremely orange and out of place. What matters most is matching color temperatures of your light sources.
Obviously you should find a color temperature that works for your setting, but in general, warm is a safer bet for preserving skin tones unless you are actively fighting daylight bulbs in the room.
Since warmer tones tend to be safer, I recommend it in the absence of more specifics about the environment. But you’re right, it’s not always the best fit.