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

Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

tratt.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 499 posts

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#301

Post by zrail »

tzs wrote: post #188

We had a surprising result using a "proper" camera instead of a webcam for a task. We needed to take a picture of a particular thing every 15 seconds over a weekend. Our first though was to get a cheap webcam that has some reasonable interface to retrieve static images. Then someone remembered that the owner of the company was doing some personal projects that involved photography and he had a bunch of cameras in his…

> We then bought an under $100 Logitech webcam that ran a web server on its ethernet interface

Wait hold up. Logitech webcams run web servers and have ethernet interfaces?

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#302

Post by draw_down »

waddlesworth wrote: post #246

I have a pretty full on setup, with a condenser microphone on a boom, studio lights and softboxes pointed at me, with a full frame mirrorless camera and a high frame rate capture card. I tried doing meetings with it, but ended up getting a lot of inane comments about it, particularly as the microphone is in frame. Personally, I don't want to draw attention to myself in a meeting, so I've ended up going back to using…

No post body was provided.

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#303

Post by osener »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #282
skrbjc wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What camera did you end up with that had a narrow FOV?

Hi - I assume your question is which webcam did I use for narrow FOV - for actual camera, it's trivial to pick a lens or zoom :). I ended up getting Logitech Brio. It's expensive for a webcam, and honestly I'm a bit peeved - I don't feel I am getting my money's worth in terms of image quality. The software is also absolutely atrocious, so I don't really use it. But it is the best compromise of image quality and FOV t…

I find the LogiTune software good enough for managing my Brio webcam. Certainly less buggy and frustrating on Mac than some other official software I tried previously.

https://www.logitech.com/en-us/video-collaboration/software/...

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#304

Post by jrodthree24 »

jamescun wrote: post #284
867-5309 wrote: post #277

I picked up a new C920 a few years ago on a £30 deal (I think they go for around £50 now) and it is by far the best USB webcam for quality at this price point I'm am at a loss as to why this guy is comparing said camera to cameras in the region of £600-1300. if they could produce 20x the quality, then it might be a wothwhile comparison, but they evidently cannot the C920 has inbuilt hardware h264 encoding (for £30!)…

+1 for the C920. Got lucky and got one before the prices of webcams went crazy due to pandemic demand. Think they are back to around ~£60 now. It just works. Plugged it in, picked up within macOS without a problem, immediately usable in Google Meet. Picture is fine, audio is fine. No complaints.

Are you actually using the webcam microphone? And does it normally work well for you?

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#305

Post by bradlys »

I hate to say this but it’s almost entirely not worth it.

The image quality only shows up here because they’re uploading images that they took from the camera locally. Trying doing it with Zoom.

The compression is absolutely terrible. You’re gonna find that you spent a lot of time and money only to see a decent quality image on your side. Everyone else is gonna see the same muddy mess that they always saw.

The image is always bad due to the compression. If you’re a twitch steamer or something where you’re doing a 50mbps bitrate then whatever. But for most folks - there is little to no improvement. Your best way to improve image quality would be to improve lighting. Even a good camera will have a bad image with bad lighting.

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#306

Post by MrStonedOne »

aeturnum wrote: post #280

Webcams often simply use cheap, small sensors but I think it's worth mentioning that these "proper" cameras are also not designed to do on-demand video well. It turns out that if you spend $1000 on camera + lens it will look better than your $100 camera + lens, but that's not because the tool is 'better designed' for your use. On the higher end, cameras make different choices around pixel quality, heat fluctuations,…

No post body was provided.

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#307

Post by munk-a »

maccard wrote: post #270
foo92691 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"relatively inexpensive"

Thats roughly my team's budget for a laptop.

To be honest, 1.5k is a pretty decent budget for any non-gaming laptop. It's definitely a red flag to start at a company and get a bargain bin laptop, but giving out 5k laptops to every new hire is probably just being wasteful with about 3.5k. Chairs & desks are where penny pinching is an even more dreadful flaw.

If you expect someone to sit for 8 hours a day give them a good chair lest they start having back issues after two months of employment.

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#308

Post by klodolph »

aphit wrote: post #260
klodolph wrote: post #214

For video, I think this is a waste of time and money. Audio is a different story. The quality of your audio has an impact both on the intelligibility of what you're saying and on listener's subconscious evaluations of you. Audio software and hardware is also cheaper and much, much easier to deal with than video--I've had no problems with essentially the same setup across Mac, Linux, and Windows. The cost of entry is…

I would love to upgrade my audio game but don't know where to start. Any similar guides like the OP but for audio?

There are a ton of guides online, especially since the pandemic started. Getting a USB microphone is so easy and cheap that you probably don't need a guide for it. The guides that I've seen for USB mics are generally focused on the features that streamers need, which are somewhat unique (they want to capture desktop audio at the same time).

If you are going for the prosumer option, I recommend Scarlett Solo + Shure SM58 + XLR cable + mic stand. This may be a bit overkill for meetings, but it's a good starting point if you want to record music, stream, record a podcast, etc.

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#309

Post by __mharrison__ »

callumprentice wrote: post #79

The quality aspect is obviously important but I'd suggest that the location of the lens is also vital if you don't want to have meetings where everyone seems to be not looking at you. I cannot wait until cameras work behind the screen and can be positioned right in the center but for now, the only option I found was something called Center Cam that mounts a small lense on a skinny support that can be positioned over…

This is why I use a teleprompter... See my other comment for links to my setup.

Re: Using a "proper" camera as a webcam

#310

Post by Kudos »

munificent wrote: post #182
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #137

If you go this route, please make sure your system is robust and ready to go before meetings. We had to ask one employee to go back to his reliable built-in webcam because every other meeting started with 2 minutes of him getting his camera turned on, messing with audio inputs, getting his microphone boom in place, and fighting other quirks. He also had a tendency to drop out of long meetings when his camera overheat…

I've got a very nice mirrorless camera and glass and eventually came to the same conclusion: It's just not worth the hassle even for the improvement in image quality. However, I have found that it's absolutely worth it to upgrade to a better microphone . Just about anything is better than the mic built into most computers and better voice quality will give you more presence and make it significantly more enjoyable fo…

Every other day I have someone ask me about my mirrorless setup (I frequently have calls with new people), it is night and day to my expensive waste of a webcam.
Post reply on HN