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

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

#411

Post by brushfoot »

dmix wrote: post #367
deskr wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. But why does he need to buy a USB capture card and HDMI cable? He can just hire someone to come and record the videos for him. They'll also do the post processing. Why does he even even record the videos himself? He can just hire actors to do what he wants, probably a lot better. And what's the whole thing with buying a camera? He should just buy a studio and hire a crew to manage all that stuff.

Buying usb capture cards is a standard accessory for content creators. It's not a big deal.

Not a big deal at all.

The outrage in this thread is incredible. Buying a couple A/V adapters to adapt a non-webcam camera into a webcam is somehow seen as a terrible burden.

If someone doesn't want to do that, perhaps they should buy...a webcam. No adapters needed.

A camera comes with more power at the cost of simplicity for this use case.

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

#412

Post by thunky »

eitally wrote: post #368
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.

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

It's true though. All cable news is "entertainment news", not "news".

Nobody should have been getting their "news" from Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, or Rachel Maddow.

IMO they shouldn't be allowed to call themselves news without putting entertainment in front.

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

#413

Post by bluGill »

dnh44 wrote: post #260
dingdingdang wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I love the EU but it certainly has its idiosyncrasies. That is an acceptable position and you will likely nor require further investigation as long as the criticism remains vague and is offset by positive sentiment. I too love the EU.

I have a family member of retirement age who got into the habit of anonymously expressing their love of the EU in the comments section of a local newspaper. After a few months of this they received a phone call on their landline warning them that such public expressions are inappropriate and that there could be consequences should they not find a new hobby. I too love the EU but I loved it much more 15 years ago.

If this story is true then I'm suddenly in favor of brexit while before I thought it was worse for everyone. Of course I live in the US and so my opinion should be of zero interest on anyway. Still if you live in the EU I would hope you are concerned.

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

#414

Post by vr46 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #400

This article is missing some very critical details. Do you have to use the software from Cannon? What about any other webcam software that runs on Mac? Does Cannon's software support non-Cannon webcams? IE, is it standalone software that the author prefers to use over other webcam software? Is this a case where most customers will never use the webcam software, thus Cannon is "passing the savings on to them" by charg…

Canon, and yes you do, the camera is not recognized without the drivers installed. Actually, it barely works even with the drivers installed. There is a free version that I have had working in the past, to glorious success, with the Canon 1DX, but the current 5Div does nothing, and I don't want to pay to find out that it still doesn't work.

There's half a camera's worth of features in these things that people won't use, but they still pay for them.

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

#415

Post by vr46 »

archerx wrote: post #363
GranPC wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can remove it by installing magic lantern. It lets me use my old 650D as a second camera.

ML doesn't work on a lot of cameras - yet. It's quite far behind the last generation of SLRs and stays away from the flagship models.

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

#416

Post by Koffiepoeder »

gwbas1c wrote: post #400

This article is missing some very critical details. Do you have to use the software from Cannon? What about any other webcam software that runs on Mac? Does Cannon's software support non-Cannon webcams? IE, is it standalone software that the author prefers to use over other webcam software? Is this a case where most customers will never use the webcam software, thus Cannon is "passing the savings on to them" by charg…

I use a Canon EOS 90D via hdmi & streamlink, so yes there are alternatives.

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

#417

Post by dnpls »

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…

I had a Panasonic GF1, which couldn't do timelapses as well (there was no such thing as apps for that camera, only firmware hacks). What I did was to buy a remote shutter release that had a timer and other functions, which allowed me to do so much more.

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

#418

Post by wat10000 »

veltas wrote: post #7

And this is probably because Canon corporate won't justify a budget for developing this software unless they expect separate revenue for it, even though it's clearly just value-add to the (already very expensive) hardware.

It reminds me a little of the time Apple charged $2 for a WiFi driver update, claiming some accounting rule said they couldn’t distribute it for free.

I guess they figured out a better way to do the accounting, since they never did that particular stunt again.

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

#419

Post by jjkaczor »

Ugh - the continual "enshitification" of products and offerings. (Betchya 5-6 years ago this would have worked without issue)

Am sick of basic features being pay-walled, or subscription-only - or abandoned/bricked when the company decides to "end-of-life" them after a couple years.

While it ain't pretty - or small - at least it doesn't require a subscription... "CinePi"... (https://github.com/schoolpost/CinePI)

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

#420

Post by oliwarner »

> Canon is a hardware company, not a software company

The problem is we commercially enable hardware companies to be shitty software companies by buying hardware that lacks basic open protocols. We accept single platform lenses that could work in any similar mount. Photographers invite this mistreatment.

It would be trivial for Canon to stream the live view out as UVC over USB and it would have Just Worked™ as a webcam on every platform.

This isn't just a Canon problem. It took Nikon several generations of dSLR to add standard USB ports. This could be Japanese hubris or a lack of competition or a lack of engineers actually talking to their customers.

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