Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam • Hacker News Board

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

#451

Post by phkahler » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 2:40 PM UTC

>> Software development isn’t free, and I’m happy to pay for software I use regularly. However, Canon is a hardware company, not a software company, and they should—due to the lack of standards—provide software that allows you to use their cameras as intended.

Software development isn't free, but everyone needs to hammer the message home to everyone they know that the marginal cost of software is ZERO. Any company continuing to charge for software is probably rolling that money back into enshittification which nobody wants anyway.

This Canon software would actually make their product more valuable like the software inside the camera that they don't charge subscription for. Perhaps a one time price for an app, but this whole subscription and advertising trend is one I have not and will not join.

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

#452

Post by JBiserkov » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 2:41 PM UTC

moomin wrote: post #437

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...

In universe, arguing the X-Men are not human would put you firmly in the villain category.

Capitalists? in the villain category? Impossible!

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

#453

Post by ElizabethGreene » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 2:46 PM UTC

p0w3n3d wrote: post #266

p0w3n3d wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a custom ROM for canon available quite a few years ago... Now all I can find is https://www.magiclantern.fm/ but I believe the previous one was called CHDK or something like that

Got it only in German here: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Hack_Development_Kit and on fandom.wiki there's a page ... But I used it like hundreds of years ago so not sure if it still works...

CHDK is what came to mind for me too. I used to make great time lapses with it. 10/10 software.

It looks like they have firmware for the G5 X, but not the G5 X 2. :/

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

#454

Post by wruza » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 2:46 PM UTC

redox99 wrote: post #180

K0balt wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why would jackets even be taxed differently than shirts. It's so silly.

It’s a silly world where people who never worked send people who only worked as mobsters to take money from people who work for a living. Then the first two groups share that money in 999999:1 proportion. They call it “taxation”.

It has upsides like having an army for defense, roads and other common things. But don’t forget the primary nature and motivation behind it. They just want your money, and your offspring to please them in various ways.

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

#455

Post by etrautmann » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 2:46 PM UTC

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…

That is absurd and annoying - you might prefer to just get a USB remote shutter release for future work.

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

#456

Post by pwg » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 2:46 PM UTC

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #357

rsynnott wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of thing happens relatively often; Sony also tried (unsuccessfully) to have the PS2 deemed a personal computer (which would have lead to 0 tariffs in the EU): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yabasic#PlayStation_2

I often wonder what the ROI is on this. How much did Sony have to pay engineers to implement this interesting but seemingly pretty useless functionality vs. what it actually saved them in the aforementioned tariffs? I know the knee jerk reaction is to say it obviously saved them some money or they wouldn't have done it, but I've seen far too much corporate stupidity in my life to take that as a given. I'd love to see…

When you ship millions of units of the kit, you only need a small savings per unit for the sum total to become a big enough saving to be noticeable to the financial dept. bean counters.

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

#457

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 2:48 PM UTC

tjoff wrote: post #227

brushfoot wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The principle is to use the right tool for the job. USB can do just about anything. Video out is one possibility. But HDMI can already do that. It doesn't make sense to expect the manufacturer to provide a free app to make USB do something you can already do over HDMI, and for which HDMI is intended. This article is rage bait where there's no real cause for outrage. But it's adjacent enough to "right to repair" and "…

The right too for the job most certainly is not HDMI. The video feed should (depending on usecase, sure) be compressed on the device and sent over USB. Sending uncompressed video just to be badly compressed in a capture device is most definitely not the right tool for the job.

Realtime compression in a portable device with limited processing power is going to reduce quality. It is better to transport uncompressed video and let the receiver decide how to manage it. USB-3 has adequate bandwidth for doing this. USB-C lets you switch to DisplayPort if the receiver can handle it.

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

#458

Post by hylaride » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 2:48 PM UTC

aredox wrote: post #170

jorvi wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a relic left over from a bygone era. Like the digital storage levy we still pay despite music and movie piracy only being rampant from 1990s-2000s :) I love the EU but it certainly has its idiosyncrasies.

The very raison-d'être of the EU is to remove all tarriffs between 20+ countries. Without the EU, there would be a worse patchwork of rules and exceptions.

Patchworks of rules and exceptions can be beneficial. It allows for experimentation and/or competition as well as the fact that regulations can often enough not keep up with change and they can be more entrenched if done at a higher level. Where, when, and what is better harmonized across a whole market VS allowing variation is a matter of debate.

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

#459

Post by dTal » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 2:50 PM UTC

pkphilip wrote: post #267

Pawka wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds insane. But what is more surprising to me - is why dolls were taxed differently than other toys. At first glance, it looks like stupid rules force to play silly games.

In India, the pizza base has a different tax rate than the topping and so some restaurants will have two separate lines on your pizza bill - one for the base at 5% tax and another for the topping at 18% tax. The tax on popcorn is also totally crazy. "Unpackaged and unlabelled popcorn with salt and spices is categorised as 'namkeen' and taxed at 5%. Pre-packed and labelled ready-to-eat popcorn attracts a 12% GST rate.…

The pizza thing seemed incredibly silly to me. Surely the restaurant has already paid the tax when they bought the raw ingredients? Must any product served in a restaurant be taxed according to the rate of the most highly taxed ingredient in it, regardless of proportion?

So I looked it up. And yes, that is exactly the case, and it's an absurd situation that is causing massive headaches.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-63281037

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

#460

Post by sharpshadow » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 2:52 PM UTC

ramses0 wrote: post #290

redox99 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would jackets even be taxed differently than shirts. It's so silly.

5% of a $100 jacket is $5 15% of a $33 shirt is $5 5% of a $33 jacket is $1.65 ...it's definitely gamesmanship but if you squint you can see where it comes from.

This reminds me of maybe the worst tax in human history which is also unconstitutional. The Pauschalabgabe[0] in Germany, which also got adopted in other countries, implements a freely decidable flatrate tax on all mediums which can be used to create a pirated copy.

How much tax for a laser printer? Well it depends how fast it prints:

Up to 14 pages/Minute: 25,00 € Up to 39 pages/Minute: 50,00 € From 40 pages/Minute: 87,50 €

For every storage medium this tax has been paid, because of the possibility of making a pirated copy. Technically we all paid already to make pirates copies.

0. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauschalabgabe