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

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331–340 of 665 posts

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

#331

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.

> As-is, for most purposes, my Android phone is a better camera than my full frame interchangeable lens camera.

The smartphone ate the market segment that was previously occupied by point and shoot cameras, not pro / enthusiast camera. I don't think dedicated / non-smart cameras as we have today will die. You will still need dedicated camera for wedding, sports, wildlife, etc. For these you don't need a software ecosystem, you need a robust hardware.

I agree that for sharing to my family a photo of my dog looking cute my phone is a better camera. However for the use case I mentioned, I don't see how I can decently edit a 50 Mpx image on a screen that's not even a quarter of the size of my laptop.

Not to say that better software/feature is not needed though; I would love to be able to do an efficient initial culling/sorting of a given shoot in-camera.

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

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding products from China being cheaper: remember that Japanese, Korean, and Western companies are the ones mostly innovating and absorbing the R&D costs. Remember how modern OLEDs were made feasible basically by LG and Samsung? Having stolen that IP[0][1][2], without any R&D costs but with dirt cheap manufacturing due to direct and indirect subsidies like relatively almost nonexistent labour protection laws, PRC…

>Remember how modern OLEDs were made feasible basically by LG and Samsung? That was Japan's game to lose and their loss was absolutely deserved. Japanese companies are more interested in bickering with each other, while Korean and Chinese companies have bigger worldly goals. Japan Display[1] and Renesas[2] could have been the LG/Samsung had Japan realized much sooner that there are better things to be doing than drag…

I am not sure what you are saying. LG and Samsung are both Korean… They had the original OLED tech that was leaked to China. LG recently had to shut down a factory due to reduced demand IIRC. Hard to compete with fully state-controlled command economy.

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

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hoo boy we have some classics in that category in the UK. My personal fave is when morning TV host Lorraine Kelly successfully argued she wasn’t hosting as herself but acting a character called Lorraine Kelly, with very favourable tax consequences.

I think Steven Colbert hosted a show using himself as the host. I’m not sure about the tax implications though.

I'm pretty sure that was Chuck Noblet pretending to be Steven Colbert.

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

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canon advertises their cameras as webcams.

No, they don't. They advertise that the camera can "turn into" a webcam with the right software or through HDMI out.

You're simply mistaken.

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

#335
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Hoo boy we have some classics in that category in the UK. My personal fave is when morning TV host Lorraine Kelly successfully argued she wasn’t hosting as herself but acting a character called Lorraine Kelly, with very favourable tax consequences.

Alex Jones argued this, with the obvious implication, that whoever buys Infowars also owns the character of Alex Jones, and Alex Jones cannot play Alex Jones any more without infringing their copyright. (But I suspect this incoming government doesn't care to apply logical consistency to his case)

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

#336

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…

Sony’s software is still terrible… but fwiw they have built in timelapse functionality in their cams since the A7 III released in 2018.

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

#337
This one behavior was the reason I bought a Sony instead of a canon, and will never buy a Canon. I’m just too old to fuck around with this type of bullshit anymore.

I’m willing to offer so much loyalty to companies who aren’t in the business of fucking over their customers.

Fuck Canon, fuck shady ass business practices.

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

#338
post #200
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays, MP3 is an open audio codec. The patents have expired.

The format itself is patent-unencumbered. That doesn't mean I couldn't still write a non-free decoder and license it to Pioneer for use in their CDJs. Due to organizational inertia, I suspect that's what's going on here (e.g., they licensed a decoder from Fraunhofer or another commercial implementer twenty years ago, and have been using the same one since).

In this case, everyone at Pioneer knows their CDJs are used almost exclusively for commercial purposes, and perhaps they couldn't get away with lying about it in the fine print.

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

#339
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like "so you can't drink it" without the taxes part. Those taxes play important role in reducing alcohol consumption (though they are of course not the only tool), so making cheap ethanol poisonous and with different color closes the loophole in healthcare policy rather than opens a loophole in taxation. E.g. study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3860576/

Couldn't they just make it taste bad, for safety's sake?

Chicago does it: https://malort.com/

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

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hoo boy we have some classics in that category in the UK. My personal fave is when morning TV host Lorraine Kelly successfully argued she wasn’t hosting as herself but acting a character called Lorraine Kelly, with very favourable tax consequences.

I think Steven Colbert hosted a show using himself as the host. I’m not sure about the tax implications though.

If there were any tax implications, they were incidental. The show was parody, so the opinions he espoused in character were necessarily ones he didn't actually hold.
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