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

521–530 of 665 posts

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

#521

Post by paradox460 »

reaperducer wrote: post #384
virtualritz wrote: post #224

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 required an app to be installed on the camera that was paid-for. Apple had a similar situation once. I was among the thousands of people who paid Apple something like $10 to get a CD-ROM in the mail containing a single CODEC for something video-related. Sorry for being vague, it was way back in the early days of OS X, so I can't remember exactly what the situation was. But I do know I still have the file in my arc…

Apple used to sell prorec and Sorenson stuff. Usually you could get them with a QuickTime pro license, final cut license, or similar

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

#522

Post by RobotToaster »

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...

Was their lawyer William Stryker?

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

#525

Post by rtkwe »

K0balt wrote: post #143
halgir wrote: 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...

Or my shirt that has a tiny, useless pocket on the inside of my shirt (down where it might often be tucked inside of your waistband.) It has a tag with a picture of sunglasses on it, and a reasonably sized pair of sunglasses might just tenuously perch inside. This makes it a jacket, and jackets are taxed at a lower rate than shirts. The same shenanigans more or less work for most types of taxation. There’s always an…

I don't think I've ever seen that on any of my shirts here in the US. Is this in the US?

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

#526

Post by Macha »

panzi wrote: post #426
walthamstow wrote: post #316

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

Subway fell on the wrong side of similar tax laws in Ireland - their sugar content in their bread was too high, so for tax purposes, their subs are legally cakes: https://www.npr.org/2020/10/01/919189045/for-subway-a-ruling...

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

#527

Post by seanhunter »

walthamstow wrote: post #316
halgir wrote: 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.

There was also the famous decision in the Jaffa Cake case where the VAT treatment depended on whether or not a Jaffa cake was a cake or a biscuit https://standrewseconomist.com/2023/12/31/let-them-eat-cake-...

The tribunal decided that Jaffa Cakes were cakes because when they go stale they go hard like a cake whereas a biscuit tends to go soft when it goes stale.

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

#528

Post by frankchn »

formerly_proven wrote: post #196
jolmg wrote: post #167

> and they should—due to the lack of standards—provide software that allows you to use their cameras as intended. There is a standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_video_device_class

Yes, the articles complaints (no free way to use it as a webcam, 30 minute limits etc.) doesn't seem to apply to many camera brands apart from Canon.

It doesn't apply to Canon's recent cameras either. The R1, R5 Mark II, R6 Mark II, R8, and R50 have built-in UVC support now.

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

#529

Post by acjohnson55 »

GranPC wrote: post #353
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #28

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 from the HDMI-out in the camera? Most decent capture cards also expose themselves as cameras to almost all applications. This is my setup, and it works perfectly. Nikon D7500 as a webcam. More professional setups use Atomos monitors with built-in NVMe drives mounted directly to the camera. I generall…

This is hugely dependent on whether the camera supports clean HDMI output - that is, without overlays. My Canon camera for example insists on showing a focus square over HDMI no matter what, and it is impossible to disable.

The particular camera he's talking about, the G5 X Mark II, does support clean HDMI out. I used to use it as my webcam.

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

#530

Post by maerF0x0 »

helboi4 wrote: post #95

The fact that its a subscription is what really rubs me up the wrong way. Not everything deserves to be a subscription. Why is everything a subscription these days?

The reason for subscriptions is because we've applied a debt based financial model to everything. And for whatever reason customers do not understand the model and how bad they're getting screwed.

$100 of one time purchase software is approximately $5-10 per year of recurring revenue. And so if they can convince you that $5 a month is "not bad" then you're effectively outlaying $1000 for the software. In return you do get massive flexibility like, say, using the software for 1 month and then never again.

Some of it is due to inflation, we'd choke if we saw the real capital cost.

a quick google suggests that maybe Black Ops Cold War (2020): Over $700 million in development costs, 30 million copies sold. Thats $23 just in dev, not marketing and distribution, operation of the servers etc. Whereas black ops 3 was about $10 a copy, but sold for $60. Most of us would balk at paying ~$140 for a game, but that's roughly the inflationary pressures.

Anyways long story, I dont like subscriptions either, but I also dont want to lay down $100s on a piece of software I might not use in a month's time, especially if there wasnt a free trial for me to confirm it's not total crap.

Post reply on HN