Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

Post by tobyhinloopen » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 9:22 AM UTC

alibarber wrote: post #20

I also discovered that I couldn't use my Canon SLR to record more than 30 minutes of video continuously. The problem however wasn't Canon, but that I lived in a region (EU) that would have imposed a customs tariff on cameras that could do that, but by keeping it under that, the camera would be classed as a 'stills' camera and so was therefore exempt. Admittedly this is different from the case in the article - but it…

Post by resource_waste » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 9:22 AM UTC

doix wrote: post #4

> However, Canon is a hardware company, not a software company, That probably makes it pretty easy to reverse engineer their software to bypass the restrictions.

Post by tobyhinloopen » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 9:24 AM UTC

franga2000 wrote: post #25

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bit of a weird argument considering you can use other brand cameras as webcams without any third party software. At least, all my Sony cameras can just be plugged in using USB and it works immediately. No drivers required.

Are you sure? The article talks about using it as a webcam and none of the Sony gear I've used supports that (A6500, A7 I/RI/II/SII/III/RIII/SIII). They did make the "Imaging Edge Webcam" program, I think some time during the pandemic, but AFAIK it's just a PTP preview to webcam driver, so the quality is pretty terrible and you can do that with OBS+gphoto2.

Post by throw738484848 » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 9:24 AM UTC

Post by eurekin » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 9:26 AM UTC

davidgerard wrote: post #29

eurekin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this is the case, but to play devils advocate - Sony themselves might have to license it from a third party

There is no reason to bend over backwards to make up excuses for bad behaviour.