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

461–470 of 665 posts

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

#461

Post by jollyllama »

dgb23 wrote: post #283
jwr wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, nobody cares. As long as consumers keep making uneducated choices and companies keep copying one another, that's what we will be getting, and honestly, that's what we deserve. After all, people watch "reviews" of video gear on YouTube (pretty much all "reviewers" get the gear for free and then pretend they are objective). These "reviewers" use the gear for all of several hours before making the video an…

You're assuming that these practices are actually beneficial in any way on the market. That's a fallacy. Just because a company is making money, doesn't mean they are making good products.

Where do you get that idea? It's in no way implied in GP's comment. These practices don't have to benefit the company at all. GP is just saying, as long as enough people keep buying despite the practices, then the practices will continue.

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

#462

Post by stray »

jjcob wrote: post #27

In case you are considering Nikon as an alternative, their Webcam Utility might be free, but it doesn't work on the latest version of macOS. There are 3rd party utilities (paid), but I had trouble with autofocus when I tried them. I wish camera manufacturers put half as much effort into usability as smartphone companies. Why does a camera need drivers to be recognized as a webcam at all? Why doesn't my 2000€ camera c…

Nikon's HDMI output works just fine on MacOS.

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

#463

Post by pc86 »

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…

One of the obvious "wtf?" things about this regulation is that regulators believe 29 minutes of video doesn't qualify as video?

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

#464

Post by tartoran »

formerly_proven wrote: post #409
tartoran wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nice but is it worth spending so much to get natural boketh in over team calls?

I don't think too many people are buying a Nikon solely for this purpose, but rather they already have it and _also_ use it as a webcam. The main advantage there is - in my view anyway - that it allows you to control the field of view easily, compared to the built-in webcam. The far better image quality is just a bonus.

Absolutely but when you set up one as a webcam you usually leave it in place as a webcam setup unless you want natural bokeths only from time to time. It also depends on the line of work, if you're in some media related field and it is required to have pristine streaming, well, that is a whole different story.

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

#465

Post by LegitShady »

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…

I wonder what the commercial licenses actually cost. I know there was a big movement of shooting movies and events with canons when good video on dslrs first became a thing. I never even thought about codec licenses, because that stuff shouldn't exist. the manufacturer should buy the license so the camera can use it forever, because its just a paperweight without it, and I dont think they should be able to sell cameras with hidden text licenses like that.

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

#466

Post by coldpie »

JBiserkov wrote: post #442
panzi wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not from the UK, but wasn't there also a cake Vs biscuits thing for tax reasons?

And windows being covered with bricks for tax reasons.

The window tax features prominently in a visual novel video game (The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles), which also contains a bunch of wildly outlandish historical nonsense and characters like mad-scientist inventors, teleportation devices, and Sherlock Holmes types. I was blown away to learn the window tax was actually a real thing, not something silly just made up for the game.

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

#468

Post by jrockway »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #84
School-Cotton wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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/

> making cheap ethanol poisonous and with different color closes the loophole in healthcare policy

I have never seen this as anything other than the death penalty for evading taxes. If the tax were designed to reduce consumption across the population, it needs to scale with income or net worth. Otherwise, it's just a tax on the poor.

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

#469

Post by xyst »

bayindirh wrote: post #83
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…

That requirement is reversed in the last five years IIRC. My Sony A7-III doesn't have that, for example. Neither modern Canons, AFAIK. 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. So if you are going to use your camera for production which you'll earn money, you need to pay c…

Wipe the EXIF data on the images when you make it public and nobody will be the wiser ;)

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

#470

Post by skrebbel »

_n_b_ wrote: post #436
eitally wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is akin to Fox News arguing in court that it is, in fact, entertainment and not news, despite it's name.

What Fox News argued was a bit more nuanced than that all of Fox News isn't news. Rather, "Fox successfully argued that one particular segment on Tucker Carlson’s show could only be reasonably interpreted as making political arguments, not making factual assertions, and therefore couldn’t be defamation."[1] That feels like a fairly reasonable assertion for anybody watching Tucker Carlson. [1] https://popehat.substack…

I know nothing about the case but isn't that a little like saying "look, we weren't lying, cause we never said we were saying the truth"?
Post reply on HN