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

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

#201

Post by snaily »

amelius wrote: post #183
jampekka wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some countries it's done so and poisoning is banned. E.g. Finland and Poland got an exemption from the EU to do this because so many people died from the poisonings.

Where can I read more about this? What poison were they using?

Methanol has been used, as has rubbing alcohol and methyl ethyl ketone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol for further reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatonium is used to make it unpalatable. Fun fact: the same chemical is also coated onto Nintendo Switch cartridges to discourage children from putting them in their mouths.

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

#202

Post by morsch »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #149
morsch wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evidently these cameras are capable of exporting high quality video via USB, if you pay 5 bucks a month. This doesn't sound like a hardware problem. It also has a control channel, unlike HDMI.

> these cameras are capable of exporting high quality video via USB No, they are not. The USB port is (usually) USB 2.0 and the video output, even though the application might claim 1080p 30 FPS, is a 'digital upscale'[1] from XGA or 720p. That in my view is decidedly not 'high quality'. My monitor has eight times that resolution and more than four times the framerate, totalling more than a 32× increase in bandwidth,…

Fair enough -- though I'd take 720p from my DSLR over 1080p+ from my webcam every time; that's enough pixels for a meeting. And I also had to get a capture card for it, because the USB access was locked behind proprietary/shitty software (Sony).

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

#203

Post by dghughes »

This reminds me of Samsung and the SPO2 the oxygen sensor on the S8+ (I think) phone. All was well until one day an update disabled access to the sensor. Worse it was only for Canada where it was blocked. The access to the physical sensor on a phone I had owned for a few years, gone. Oh but you could buy their new watch that had an SPO2 sensor on it.

Disabling a physical component on a device a person owns and has owned for a while shouldn't be permitted.

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

#204

Post by dspillett »

brushfoot wrote: post #191
dspillett wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is already implemented, otherwise they wouldn't be able to enable it once the subscription is active. Why should the OP need to pay a subscription to enable a feature that is build into the camera, that is a standard feature on other cameras and imposes no ongoing costs to the manufacturer¹? This is an example of gouging, pure and simple. ---- [1] unless they are forcing the user to use their hosted service for st…

> Why should the OP need to pay a subscription to enable a feature that is build into the camera Getting video into your computer through USB is _not_ built into the camera. Else why is OP downloading an app to do it? The app is part of the implementation, and it costs money. I have no problem with the manufacturer charging separately for that. The rest of us can use a video cable to get video into our computers.

You are entirely ignoring the subscription for what should, at most, be a one-off cost.

> The app is part of the implementation

Give other cameras can do it, there has a standard for it since 2003, and there are F/OSS implementations for others, maybe I'm asking the wrong question and instead should have asked “why should the OP pay a subscription for their bad choice of how to implement the feature?”.

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

#205

Post by Toutouxc »

frognumber wrote: post #113

I firmly believe this is the branch digital cameras are dying on, and at this point, probably must die on. If these opened up, at least to the level iPhone did in 2007, they'd have an ecosystem as people still used them. As-is, for most purposes, my Android phone is a better camera than my full frame interchangeable lens camera.

> my Android phone is a better camera than my full frame

I'm probably a terrible photographer and I shoot with a "budget" kit (Canon R10, RF 100-400mm F5.6-8 IS USM, RF 35mm F1.8 IS STM), but looking at the 10 last photos I've taken and liked (so going back a year basically), I don't think I'd be able to retake a single one of them on my iPhone and get something comparable.

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

#207

Post by brushfoot »

dspillett wrote: post #204
brushfoot wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should the OP need to pay a subscription to enable a feature that is build into the camera Getting video into your computer through USB is _not_ built into the camera. Else why is OP downloading an app to do it? The app is part of the implementation, and it costs money. I have no problem with the manufacturer charging separately for that. The rest of us can use a video cable to get video into our computers.

You are entirely ignoring the subscription for what should, at most, be a one-off cost. > The app is part of the implementation Give other cameras can do it, there has a standard for it since 2003, and there are F/OSS implementations for others, maybe I'm asking the wrong question and instead should have asked “why should the OP pay a subscription for their bad choice of how to implement the feature?”.

The company can charge whatever they want for this feature. Most people who can afford to use a good camera as their webcam will never use it, because they know the quality is worse and they'd rather use industry-standard HDMI.

If I asked Sony for a power generator to charge my camera's battery, they could charge me a million a month if they'd like. Hopefully that would signal to me that there are better and more standard options.

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

#209

Post by meitham »

halgir wrote: post #68
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…

Reminds me of when lawyers successfully argued that X-Men are not human, so that their action figures would be classified as "toys" rather than "dolls" and thus charged a lower tariff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Biz%2C_Inc._v._United_Stat...

The tax system is over complicated! Why the distinction between toys and dolls?

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

#210

Post by Springtime »

bayindirh wrote: post #175
Springtime wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The funnier thing is, you can't use the videos out of your camera for commercial purposes, because the video codecs inside your camera doesn't come with commercial licenses out of the box. Do you have a link? Could only find a 2010 article[1] that appears to have been debunked by MPEG-LA themselves (per the updates in the blog post). [1] https://www.osnews.com/story/23236/why-our-civilizations-vid...

Of course. Below a selection of some user manuals, with the texts copied verbatim. From Nikon D500 User Manual [0], page 22: From Nikon Z6/Z7 User Manual [1], page 236: Sony has a similar note for A9 [3], but can be grouped under here, which is almost the same: AVC Patent Portfolio License: THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR THE PERSONAL AND NON - COMMERCIAL USE OF A CONSUMER TO (i) E…

Thanks. Yeah that seems to be the same AVC/h.264 'personal and non-commercial' text the 2010 article I linked centered on. MPEG-LA spoke to Engadget[1] (finally found a working link I could read) and said that a separate license for shooting commerical video isn't required and that distribution of commercial content via licensed providers (Google/Youtube, Apple, etc) is fine.

It seems the one caveat, per the Engadget article, is directly distributing AVC video to end users (I suppose like a direct download link on a personal site) is what requires a license but that license is free to obtain.

[1] https://www.engadget.com/2010-05-04-know-your-rights-h-264-p...

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