Coincidentally, I read about the v4l2loopback driver which enables this yesterday. It was in an article about how it it a PITA to get working on Fedora due to the requirement for signed kernel modules. Glad to see it's easier on NixOS. https://dev.to/archerallstars/i-am-no-longer-use-fedora-36-t...
How to use your DSLR from 2008 as a webcam in 2022 (NixOS)
31–40 of 67 posts
Re: How to use your DSLR from 2008 as a webcam in 2022 (NixOS)
#32Also - discovered you can make an old iphone stream rtsp via app periscope HD.
Only gotcha is thermals...don't think it can run like that long term without active cooling
Re: How to use your DSLR from 2008 as a webcam in 2022 (NixOS)
#33whole guide about using some gphoto software, yet not a single link in article btw it's only for Linux, so don't even bother reading the linked web, if you are in windows http://www.gphoto.org/ Correct title: How to use your DSLR from 2008 as a webcam IN LINUX in 2022 (NixOS) I wished people would not omiss such important information in title when writing articles or linking them wasting everyone's time including ser…
NixOS is Linux
Which may someday replace Arch in the saying that Arch people never forget to mention they are using Arch :-).
Re: How to use your DSLR from 2008 as a webcam in 2022 (NixOS)
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
NixOS is Linux
Which may someday replace Arch in the saying that Arch people never forget to mention they are using Arch :-).
Throughout the article, they use NixOS specific features.
You can't really follow this in Arch without installing Nix and changing some parts of the instructions.
Re: How to use your DSLR from 2008 as a webcam in 2022 (NixOS)
#35I literally tried this yesterday (with official Canon Webcam software) and gave up. I think I’ll give it another go.
I've also heard colleagues struggling with the manufacturer software. Many of them resorted to buying HDMI capture cards which seem to be working a bit more seamless (also a nice plus if your software installation abilities on your work laptop are limited)
Re: How to use your DSLR from 2008 as a webcam in 2022 (NixOS)
#36I've been using an old Android phone as a webcam for a while, it's very good and latency is minimal, but conferencing software will just kill your stream. There's no reason to have even an HD webcam when your fellow participants will see a very compressed 0.4 Mpixel stream.
I don't think resolution is everything, I can definitely notice that the image is "better" in other ways when people are using proper cameras (whereas for a phone camera the resolution is a bigger part of what makes it better than a webcam), I'm quite happy with my own webcam being clear but not too clear though, it's a meeting not Instagram.
Re: How to use your DSLR from 2008 as a webcam in 2022 (NixOS)
#37I've been using an old Android phone as a webcam for a while, it's very good and latency is minimal, but conferencing software will just kill your stream. There's no reason to have even an HD webcam when your fellow participants will see a very compressed 0.4 Mpixel stream.
A normal lens in the 50mm to 85mm range farther away will show your features much less distorted than the typical wide-angle lenses of webcams. Wide-angle lenses close to your face will make your closer features like your nose look bigger. It's basically very ugly.
Doing this is less for the image quality and more for the natural representation of your face.
Re: How to use your DSLR from 2008 as a webcam in 2022 (NixOS)
#38Note if the author reads this (perfect is the enemy of good, feel free to ignore): You can make udev run systemd services directly, replacing RUN=... by e.g. TAG+="systemd", ENV{SYSTEMD_WANTS}+="foo.service" That might require you also remove the 'enabled = true' for the service, and make sure gphoto2 dies when the camera is unplugged? Anyway, it was a nice read :)
Huh, I was solving similar problem some time ago. I needed to run some pulseaudio commands (to split stereo input into 2 mono ones) after USB device was reconnected and my solution was RUN script adding a systemd timer (the commands had to be ran after pulseaudio registered new device) that just ran it few seconds after device was connected
Re: How to use your DSLR from 2008 as a webcam in 2022 (NixOS)
#39Any restrictions about how long you can keep it turned on? I tried to do this but found I'd need to flash the cam's firmware to override the 10min recording limit. (I read that cameras which can record longer are taxed as video cameras, so they're deliberately crippled)
Why recording limit? Leave it in live view, no need to record. Or is the HDMI output not active then? I don't think this tax applies anymore.
The webcam described in the article is so old, it has PAL/NTSC video out.
Later generations switched to HDMI, but not all of them have a 'clean feed', so some information regarding exposure settings, battery level etc will remain in the picture.
Re: How to use your DSLR from 2008 as a webcam in 2022 (NixOS)
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Live view turns itself off after a period of time. I believe with my Nikon it's 30min. For me, having to press the LV button twice an hour seemed more preferable than flashing the firmware.
Can be disabled
Live view auto shutoff can be disabled? No it can't[1], not without modified firmware that either doesn't exist[2] or is only available from sketchy mega uploads[3]. There are other[4] hacky workarounds, but nothing clean.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Nikon/comments/c5wjg6/how_to_turnof...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Nikon/comments/hqp2wu/any_way_to_tu...