Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

romanzipp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 665 posts

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

#221

Post by brushfoot »

baxtr wrote: post #212
brushfoot wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a reason OP can't get themselves a $50 USB capture card and a $20 HDMI cable, and use OBS to capture the feed? This is how I've used my Sony camera since COVID. It works great. I wasn't sure at first if OP was trying to do something nonstandard, because you get video to your computer with a video cable. Plus a way for your computer to capture that, which for me is CamLink. Honestly, I'm surprised there's a…

OP expects the camera comes with some decent convenience at that price.

OP is using a camera as a webcam that's not sold as a webcam. That's fine, I do the same with mine, but it's also fine of the manufacturer to allow for that by simply providing A/V interfaces instead of trying to account for every use case.

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

#223

Post by pluc »

baxtr wrote: post #212
brushfoot wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a reason OP can't get themselves a $50 USB capture card and a $20 HDMI cable, and use OBS to capture the feed? This is how I've used my Sony camera since COVID. It works great. I wasn't sure at first if OP was trying to do something nonstandard, because you get video to your computer with a video cable. Plus a way for your computer to capture that, which for me is CamLink. Honestly, I'm surprised there's a…

OP expects the camera comes with some decent convenience at that price.

Convenience is always extra

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

#224

Post by virtualritz »

That's reminds me when I was in South East Asia a few years back and wanted to do some time lapse or series photography with my Sony Alpha a7ii. A camera that I had paid close to 2k€ for (just body, no glass).

It required an app to be installed on the camera that was paid-for. Which in term required the camera to be connected to a WiFi.

Imagine discovering this while on a trip in the jungle or the desert or whatever ...

It was a one time purchase (I think around 10€) but it was still a complete wtf.

You had to purchase the app through the camera's app store. You read right.

Ofc this failed as my CC was declined because I live in Germany and the transaction got marked as suspicious, coming from SEA.

So I had to go to town and hunt down a wifi USB dongle so I could turn my laptop into a WiFi hotspot for the camera, while using the VPN masking the built-in WiFi to be connected to a German IP.

You had to enter the CC details through the camera's on-screen keyboard that was operated with the joystick on the camera's body. It took me a good ten minutes.

No words.

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

#225

Post by stuartjohnson12 »

traverseda wrote: post #218

I know this isn't the point, but here's my nixos script for using a canon DSLR as a webcam https://codeberg.org/traverseda/nixos-config/src/commit/ee3f... To get this out of nixos you need to create 4 files dslrWebcamConfContent goes into your modprobe config dslrUdevRule goes into your udev rules dslrWebcamScript goes somewhere, probably /opt dslrWebcamService is a systemd service.

Upvoted for hacking on hacker news

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

#226

Post by chefandy »

vr46 wrote: post #214
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…

It may have been a customs and taxation issue here, but manufacturers are constantly adding costs of their own onto software before often reversing track. Examples: Leica (for Fotos) charged a princely sum for various trifles before removing these fees. Naim: charged £35 for the control app - which I paid - before going free, and now the app is the only way to control whole swathes of their increasingly-execrable har…

It’s somewhat subjective, but I disagree it’s easier to fleece photographers than audiophiles. There are professional art photographers that use Leica cameras because they’re great, and $250 is pocket change for a lot of serious optical equipment. Look at the Canon L lenses and the like. Lots of people that buy that stuff don’t need it, but it’s not expensive solely for the sake of being expensive.

I have yet to find a professional sound engineer, producer, or artist that calls themself an audiophile or uses the insanely overpriced gear marketed to them. Lots of that stuff is demonstrably bullshit and only valuable because it’s expensive.

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

#227

Post by tjoff »

brushfoot wrote: post #144
timewizard wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. I can do anything. It's the principle of the thing.

The principle is to use the right tool for the job. USB can do just about anything. Video out is one possibility. But HDMI can already do that. It doesn't make sense to expect the manufacturer to provide a free app to make USB do something you can already do over HDMI, and for which HDMI is intended. This article is rage bait where there's no real cause for outrage. But it's adjacent enough to "right to repair" and "…

The right too for the job most certainly is not HDMI.

The video feed should (depending on usecase, sure) be compressed on the device and sent over USB.

Sending uncompressed video just to be badly compressed in a capture device is most definitely not the right tool for the job.

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

#228

Post by JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B »

c120 wrote: post #75
jorvi wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a relic left over from a bygone era. Like the digital storage levy we still pay despite music and movie piracy only being rampant from 1990s-2000s :) I love the EU but it certainly has its idiosyncrasies.

This levy is not meant for piracy, but for legal access - like copying the CDs you already bought to your phone. Compared to what we used to pay on blank media it's not so bad. If the alternative is that you are not allowed to keep private copies of anything...

> This levy is not meant for piracy, but for legal access

Backups are already legal in France. It’s pure greed. Why should we pay twice? Also this levy goes to major labels, why should I fund the local Taylor Swift if I want to backup my computer?

> blank media

But we still pay that levy on blank media, phones, tablets, computers, hard drives, and USB keys. They even wanted to put that tax on refurbished items.

> the alternative is that you are not allowed

But it was already legal for the past 50 years. They added this tax, it’s not a gift for us, it’s yet another restriction on what was previously legal.

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

#229

Post by mjevans »

SSLy wrote: post #148
brushfoot wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a reason OP can't get themselves a $50 USB capture card and a $20 HDMI cable, and use OBS to capture the feed? This is how I've used my Sony camera since COVID. It works great. I wasn't sure at first if OP was trying to do something nonstandard, because you get video to your computer with a video cable. Plus a way for your computer to capture that, which for me is CamLink. Honestly, I'm surprised there's a…

OP wants to just use the USB cable, which makes sense for me.

USB 2.0, that bog standard version from 2000 that is assumed to be the lowest common denominator possible for any new hardware...

Edit: 4am math correction...

480Mbit/sec transfer; Uncompressed, that's ~333333 pixels per frame for 60FPS. Not even considering overhead, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_video_device_class 1.1 support from 2005 includes Motion JPEG (low compression, all patents probably expired given it was developed in the 90s) and MPEG2 (also sufficiently old, to be unencumbered now).

However, if they'd use USB 3.0 ~ 5gbps, ideally over a USB-C port, the connection would be more modern, and easily able to handle even 4K video with now free from patents and well supported compression algorithms.

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

#230

Post by beAbU »

School-Cotton wrote: post #59
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…

This vaguely reminds me of the fact that in many countries, pure ethanol sold for industrial purposes is intentionally made poisonous, so you can’t drink it and thus merchants don’t have to charge the taxes on it that they would for spirits.

I heat my house with oil, a truck comes every couple of months and fills a massive tank in my back yard.

This "oil" is basically diesel. It smells and feels identical to diesel. But it's about 70 cents cheaper per litre compared to road diesel. It's dyed red, and you are not supposed to put it in your car, but I reckon it'll be more than fine for older diesel engines.

The red diesel is not taxed like road diesel, and is much cheaper.

Post reply on HN