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Webcams aren't good enough

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Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#431

Post by kalleboo »

jsdwarf wrote: post #302
nojito wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

From your link

> Now that I’ve used the webcam for myself, I can say that it’s woefully impractical. In order to actually have it looking at my face, I have to tilt the entire laptop up due to the fixed angle of the camera. It’s a cool idea, but probably shouldn’t have made its way to an actual retail product. People are likely to be super frustrated trying to use this webcam

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#432

Post by shaggie76 »

One criticism I haven't seen brought up is that while UVC drivers are plug and play on Windows their settings are not persistent across reboots [1]. I would painstakingly manually tune the exposure and white balance of my Brio and get it to be less than terrible and then windows update would reboot over night and I'd fire up a stream in the morning looking purple. I have softboxes and high-CRI lights too so this was particularly enraging.

The flipside is non-UVC driver are less terrible but less compatible: I've switched to an Avermedia PW513 which uses their own drivers -- this works great for OBS when I stream but nothing that uses UVC works without using an OBS Virtual Cam. Just don't run process monitor and watch what their software is doing to your registry every second.

So the driver system, at least on windows, is part of the problem IMO.

[1] After I switched to non-UVC I learned about a UVC driver restoring utility but I've never tried it.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#433

Post by modeless »

adrusi wrote: post #344
modeless wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Smartphone cameras are small and far better sensors than what you get in webcams. They rely on software to produce images of the quality we're used to seeing, especially with less-than-ideal lighting, but the lenses and sensor are still far better than the Logitech C920. A webcam doesn't need the latest and greatest video hardware. Give it a camera module from a midrange 2017 smartphone and use the latest image proce…

> Give it a camera module from a midrange 2017 smartphone and use the latest image processing tricks, and you'll blow almost any webcam on the market today.

Sorry, that's exactly the strategy of these webcam startups, and Apple with the Studio Display, and the results empirically suck. Even if you could get 2017 smartphone quality (which is still apparently an unsolved problem), why should you settle for that in a webcam that doesn't need to fit in your pocket or run on a tiny battery or cost a tiny fraction of the BOM of a much more complex device? We should be doing way better than that. And way better is definitely possible.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#435

Post by post_break »

graupel wrote: post #233
post_break wrote: post #42

The logitech C920 can put out incredible video, if you have access to every setting. For some reason logitech puts the training wheels on and doesn't let you adjust every single setting like gain. There was an incredible app called "webcam settings" for mac that let you refine that webcam like putting a dslr into manual mode. I was able to get it so dialed in you thought it was a top of the line webcam. That software…

https://github.com/Itaybre/CameraController this replaced "Webcam Settings" for me, and it's a brilliant program to pair with the C920 and make it look great!

Oh man I'm gonna try this tomorrow at work. This looks promising. Thank you.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#436

Post by jonahhorowitz »

kcb wrote: post #2

Webcams 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.

Agreed. I set up a really nice webcam by using a Mirrorless Full Frame camera and my wife refuses to use it when she sits at my desk. She doesn't want her coworkers to see her with that much detail and clarity.

By the way, just using a Sony or Panasonic mirrorless is fine, you don't need to buy a custom high-end webcam, and you can use those for taking pictures and videos when you're out on the weekend.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#437

Post by m348e912 »

rlei wrote: post #171

I'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…

Hijacking top comment to mention that Apple is planning to let you use an iPhone as a webcam soon.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/6/23156834/apple-iphone-webc...

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#438

Post by post_break »

mezzman wrote: post #434

Marshall, a company that makes miniature video cameras used in broadcast has a great USB camera that is UVC1.5 compliant, you can change lenses, it's not that big, and has great image quality. https://marshall-usa.com/cameras/CV503-U3/

It's also $400. I was excited until I saw the price.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#439

Post by roughly »

mezzman wrote: post #434

Marshall, a company that makes miniature video cameras used in broadcast has a great USB camera that is UVC1.5 compliant, you can change lenses, it's not that big, and has great image quality. https://marshall-usa.com/cameras/CV503-U3/

That looks great, but I do think I’ve just discovered my price ceiling for caring about how I look on Zoom calls.

Re: Webcams aren't good enough

#440

Post by jonahhorowitz »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #421
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some models definitely overheat. Some models also don’t have clean HDMI output. Basically, you can’t just buy a random mirrorless or SLR camera and hope it works. You have to pick from a smaller list of known-good setups.

> You have to pick from a smaller list of known-good setups. Any recommendations for the cheapest second hand SLR one can buy to have streamer quality webcam feeds?

Grab an old Panasonic GH3 and the 20mm f1.8 lens. It looks great. This is a pretty decent list: https://www.elgato.com/en/cam-link/camera-check
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