Literally all webcam 'problems' come down to expecting your webcam to perform well in conditions that even a $5000 dSLR wouldn't do a particularly good job in. Buy a light and all of the issues from the article will magically disappear.
iPhone cameras aren't particularly great. They're good, but the thing that makes iPhone pictures really good is the iPhone's computational photography software. If webcams started including powerful CPUs, GPUs, AI chips, and OSs that can turn average pictures in to amazing pictures then webcams would be good. They'd also be quite a lot more expensive.
A webcam upgrading from a 50 cent ISP (Image Signal Processor) to a $2.00 one and a $3 lens instead of a $2 one (numbers based on conjecture from the average selling price of a low-end USB webcam) doesn't mean you need to build in a battery, a cellular antenna, a Wi-Fi radio, a desktop-grade CPU and GPU, give it a sturdy all-glass design and add speakers to it.
Still doesn't explain why a $300phone has a better camera than a $250 logitech BRIO. I recently bought a BRIO and in non optimal lighting the performance is just as mediocre as a $30 C230 so I returned it immediately.
In the en I convinced my wife to just use the DSLR (she was hesitant at first because of the extra hassle). A modern DSL had good IQ even ad candlelight, you really almost can't mess it up. Only way to destroy the image is to use different color lights (warm lightbulb on left side and natural light from a window on the right side will look weird on every camera I know of)
Of course, the point was more that regardless of price the following holds in poor light: webcam < phone < point and shoot cam < dslr. Why are there no webcams with actual optical zoom lenses and decent sensor sizes? Why doesn't Canon or Nikon have a go, or Sony? The market (at least now) is a lot bigger than that for camera's. Even in the longer run, I bet a lot of people are willing to spend a bit extra to have the best looking image in the meeting. Everybody my wife videoconferences with immediately notices here camera is way better than theirs
And also, not everyone wants to sit in front of a bright light
Nikon offer a free webcam utility [0] that allows recent DSLRs (and mirrorless) to be used as a webcam when plugged into a PC. I tried it with my D850. The advantage is, predictably, awesome optics. The downsides were a) finding a place on my desk for the camera and some sort of mount b) the camera battery gets eaten really quickly.
Interestingly, the webcam utility isn't available for the smallest Nikon cameras - the Coolpix range - so I guess there won't be a dedicated Nikon webcam.
I get the sense that you haven’t read the article.
This article controls for lighting, showing the results of different types of cameras in different lighting conditions, and showing that even with good lighting, all of the webcams are still poor, and most are terrible. And they’re all distinctly worse than any Apple phones from the last few years (and even the front-facing camera from an Apple phone from five years ago is better than half of them).
I viewed all of the examples in the article and they all look adaquate. The worst of them is fit for purpose, unless maybe you want to stare up somebody's nose and count their boogers.
Personally, I've been thinking about how to sandblast the lens on my webcam to permanently fog it. Who would even care? I think nobody.
No, it really isn't just about lighting. Not only do even cheap smartphone cameras perform better than the best webcams in typical indoor lighting conditions, but for example the "good" webcam everyone uses - the Logitech C920 - has a dodgy autoexposure algorithm that overexposes shots if people do use enough lighting, and the manual controls are apparently really buggy. Professional streamers mostly just seem to have gotten used to working around this. (Then there's the colour accuracy and autofocus issues, which everyone just puts up with.)
This is the truth. Even the Logitech C270, which is a basic, fixed-depth $20 camera, performs really well once you get a ring light. (I landed up getting a BRIO, which is a really nice webcam with the ability to swap out cables, which is handy for travelling.)
I use OBS Studio's output as virtual camera - and among the inputs I use cheap old Android tablets with DroidCam OBS over IP on Wi-Fi... They cost less than a USB webcam and deliver much better image quality.
Also, lighting. A couple of 5500 Kelvin Led lights on a clip mount, with good color rendition won't dent the budget but they will make even cheap webcams perform much better - color, frame rate, aperture. A softbox is wonderful but I don't have space for that, so I aim the light at the white wall - good enough substitute !
I wouldn't be surprised if the iphone cameras have had a billion dollars of development invested in them. But a large portion of this is on the software/firmware side which logitech doesn't benefit from.
That said, we all reap the benefits of this because phone camera hardware has been driven down in cost considerably since phones first got cameras. There just needs to be more open software to help out, maybe like machine learning exposure, focus, color and more. Then even low-margin webcam companies will have good performance.
>I wouldn't be surprised if the iphone cameras have had a billion dollars of development invested in them
Which is neither here, nor there. There are tons of dirt cheap (often cheaper) compact cameras on the market with better quality that most webcams, and have been for years. Including equally small as webcam options.
There are also tons of dirt cheap Android phones with far better camera quality in an even more constrained space (for the camera module) than a webcam.
There are also embedded laptop cameras with better quality than most $100 and plus webcams.
As a sibling comment said: "I use OBS Studio's output as virtual camera - and among the inputs I use cheap old Android tablets with DroidCam OBS over IP on Wi-Fi... They cost less than a USB webcam and deliver much better image quality."
There's absolutely no reason webcam makers couldn't build a better product using components found in 5+ year old phones...
Even if it was expensive, the problem is there's not even an expensive $300 or $500 webcam with quality compared to a years old Android or iPhone smartphone of equal price, or a compact camera.
Heck, webcams sold as $1000 and $2000 "enterprise" webcams, in bulky enclosures to sit on a desk or large TV, have some more conveniences (to fit the enterpise moniker), but same (crap) image quality.
I think its more that laptop manufacturers don't care because no other OEM has made a selling point of it. Its a virtuous circle - some people care about a specific feature, some OEM makes it a selling point, more people start talking about it, OEM B calls an emergency meeting and asks for the feature to be in their new laptop line, they spend advertising $$ promoting it, more people get to know about it and ask for it, more OEMs start including it.
Most people don't care about web cams at work. Most of my meetings I'm looking at a power point, or some other screen and so the person speaking isn't an issue.
A few people enable their camera all the time, but not everyone. In the few meetings I've been in where everyone is asked to turn on their camera so we can see each other (in some sort of team terms) at least one person says they are in a family situation where they cannot.
Cameras are a must when calling grandma. In an office situation they are at best a nice to have.
Isn't the iphone camera a primary phone feature - used primarily for still photos, and secondarily for video?
I've seen apple billboards about ONLY the iphone camera, so apple is investing money in it.
Meanwhile for a laptop, people don't care (as much) if it takes 10 megapixel images and can see in the dark. Personally I would like a laptop without a camera (or with a hardware switch)
Even Apple was recently mocked for putting a 720p webcam in their latest 2020 MBP/MBA (while their phones sport clusters of cameras each in silly-megapixel territory)
Ugh. 720p is plenty of pixels for the use case, if the sensor is good quality. If the sensor is not good quality, more pixels won't help. Sensor size is a better first approximation of quality than pixel count.
If it would be possible, of all promotional posts, this would be the one that least needed such a tag.
It mentions the product just one time, in passing at the end, and is several pages of well written, well researched, general observations, plus a writeup of the results of actual testing of several cameras.
Thanks for your answer. I read your response as: If well written and well researched, self promotion material is presented on HN, there is no need for the reading audience to be aware of this. Ok.
I'd be willing to pay for a good webcam, but I'm not willing to plug something as bulky and heavy as a mirrorless camera to my monitor, let alone to my laptop. I don't think that's a weird stance to have.
I see this pattern everywhere - the market bifurcating into a) race-to-the-bottom garbage products that are barely crossing the legal threshold of fit for purpose, and are essentially a huge waste of natural resources, and b) quality goods sold to specialists or companies, usually severely overpriced (to cover low volume of sales, and/or just because the market will bear it).
Does it have a name in economics? Are there good ways of preventing this from happening?
This is called market segmentation, and is for some reason considered a good thing. Actually it's the means to extract maximum cash out of customers who want anything more than the bare minimum.
Mirror less cameras aren't really overpriced. You can get a good entry level canon (M50) and a quality kit lens for 600$
Or you can get a Sony A6100 and crappier kit lens for 700$
These cameras have significant strong (e.g. aps-c sensor size) capabilities not found in anything except mirrorless and DSLR cameras. Seems not to be overpriced to me.
Overpriced is like what nvidia does to the quattro cards...
I wouldn't diss kit lenses... I built my reputation as a local photographer on a Nikon D3100-and-kit-lens Costco special. I could print shots at 13x19 and they'd come out crisp as hell
Hell, that DX 18-55 kit lens had, in some ways, better optics than the FX 24-120 that cost more than the entire D3100 kit
Polarization is used to describe something similar for Job Market. But I am not aware of an exact term for Product. Bad money drives out good could also be used to describe it, or basically Good Enough is the enemy of better and best.
The problem is most people have very little understand of quality. And that is why Marketing matters.
In WebCam, most dont cares much about the quality because you rarely use it. It wasn't until pandemic people were forced to use it more often did they realise how crap it was.
Marketing is about educating customers why your product is better, how you should spend more on it. And Apple is an example, they are exceptionally good at it.
> usually severely overpriced
Most of the time I find that to be false. Not because of the market will bear it, but those market also requires constant innovation so profits are being funnel back into R&D. Generally speaking most "market will bear it" type of product disappear within 5 years when a competitor found they could make something better and cheaper.
Sears' niche was in the middle. Everything was good, but not great, quality. Products were durable, came with good warranties, and "We Service What We Sell". Sears sold to the middle class, with middle prices. They went bankrupt with that model.
I'm coming around to the "b) quality goods sold to specialists or companies, usually severely overpriced", is actually fairly priced. It just seems expensive compared to the junk that is incredibly cheap. I used to be worried about getting ripped off I never bought good quality but now I appreciate it.
0. People who don't want a web cam on their computer at all.
I know a lot of people who have put tape over their webcam. In fact that is the policy of several departments where I work. Some people use their web cams, but a large number of people I work with never use theirs.
By using a cheap web cam manufactures can cover 1 without having to make a model without a webcam for those who don't want it - this would be more expensive than shipping a piece of tape to cover it just because they would need to design a second case and have a new part number.
I bought a HDMI->USB video capture card, and tried to use it with my DSLR camera. It works fine in Teams, but not in Zoom. And that's because Teams selects a reasonable capture resolution that matches the 16:9 aspect ratio image produced by my camera's HDMI output at 1080p. Zoom selects the lowest possible resolution, which is 640x480, which makes me look squished. There is no setting in the Zoom interface that lets me change this.
If you haven't, try going into your video settings on Zoom and selecting "Enable HD". This solution has fixed the aspect ratio problem you're describing for my company's customers in almost every case.
No, Linux. I think I have found out how to use gphoto2 and a direct usb link instead of the capture card, which may fix it, but that'll have to run on my main computer, not my slow laptop.
I'd love to be able to tell the v4l driver for the usb capture card to just not offer the 640*480 resolution. That would fix it in a better way. Anyone have any ideas how to do that?
That's ... exactly what I just said. However, the transcoding burden would be a little too much for the Atom in my laptop, so I'd have to do it on my main computer instead.
Regarding the capture card. The aspect ratio mess-up is entirely its fault.
I use a Nikon D610 through a camlink 4k, and then a movo um700 for audio. The camlink 4k firmware has a bug (it reports modes it does not support), so I have a small workaround in place on Linux for that.
Overall quality of everything is very high. Does it save money? I guess I already had the camera.
Is it a good idea to broadcast myself at that level of quality? Probably not ;)
And a few decades ago most people would say that SDTV looked absolutely fine for everything but some high-visuals movies that they would rather see in the cinema. Now, even a newscast looks crap in SDTV.
I think if webcams look absolutely fine to you for online meetings it's probably because you have become used to the crappiness. People don't typically show notebooks or pieces of paper in online meetings, because the cameras are crap, and they know they will create an awkward moment trying to focus on the notes and probably failing. For the same reason, people often won't use a whiteboard in an online meeting, etc. These would be totally normal things to do if we had decent webcams.
I agree. I rarely find I’m bothered by the quality of another person’s camera in video chat situations.
However, it’s significantly bothersome when people refuse to use earbuds or a headset so audio isn’t constantly clipping during conversation, or they have a massive light source behind them like a window and their face is just a shadow the whole time, or their camera is staring god knows where the whole time.
There’s a lot of low hanging fruit to up the quality of a video chat before you need to get too worried about the quality of the camera.
Obviously this is for everyday video chat. If you’re live-streaming or doing some kind of professional video presentation, then yes it’s frustrating that the market is $100 or $1,500+.
Of course existing webcams meet expectations for online meetings - nobody expects meeting participants to use something that doesn't exist.
But if you've avoided the $15 Amazon's Choice webcams and purchased the absolute peak of what the webcam industry can produce, wouldn't you expect something better than the mediocrity shown?
What if you're someone who cares about their appearance, and the pallid, unhealthy look of the C920 would have you reaching for your makeup bag if you saw it in the mirror?
What if the pandemic has forced your dating life into zoom calls, for a first date you want to absolutely look your best, and you don't like how the Kiyo makes your forehead look shiny and really adds contrast to your receding hairline?
What if you're slightly into photography and presenting such a shitty image as the best you can do goes against your pride when you can see so much wrong with it?
I also noticed fairly early on, that phone cameras were improving by leaps and bounds, while laptop webcams and USB webcams seemed to be at a standstill, image-quality wise.
I don't know why that is, but even Apple would seemingly rather shave 50 cents off the BOM by speccing a 720p Facetime camera in their $3000 Macbook Pros, and trying to make up the difference with software, like with the new M1 Macs that have better image quality using the same 720p webcam.
For my desktop I've taken to using an action camera, since software that supports using Android phones as webcams seemed to not be so good when I looked. It plugs in via USB, is cheap, has auto-focus and supports a wider angle of view than most webcams. Good for group calls. One can always zoom in with software.
> even Apple would seemingly rather shave 50 cents off the BOM by speccing a 720p Facetime camera in their $3000 Macbook Pros
The reason I've heard is that the macbook display assembly simply doesn't have the depth to house a decent camera. The camera bump in phones exists for a reason - and phones are already way fatter than macbook displays.
I also thought about this but then look at the iPad and iPhone Facetime cameras. They offer much better image quality than Macbook webcams. There are a few ways to offer "rear camera" quality on Macbooks, like having a little bump sticking out from the back. I don't think that's what people are asking for though. They just want a webcam that's as good as the webcam in their phone.
Also this doesn't answer the question of why USB webcams are so terrible. They have tons of room.
Those devices are significantly thicker that a MacBook display.
I could imagine a bump towards the front that would sink into the body when closed, but doing it in a way that looks and feels good also seems rather hard - but also harder to avoid should they want to implement things such as face id.
Fortunately this is the Internet. You can see those parts plenty of places - like ifixit for example. Yes, the front facing cameras on iPhones are thicker than what would fit in a current MacBook display.
Honestly though, I think the real reason webcams on laptops suck is that until recently 95% of people didn't use them 99% of the time.
That improvement in image quality requires Apple Cortex CPUs due to Apple’s implementation strategies for cameras. I expect Apple will update the cameras in future laptop models as Apple Silicon arrives fully across their product lines, likely using the same package from their phones.
The display frame has plenty of space for a phone-type camera sensor of any resolution, it's just a flat CMOS. Even a really big phone sensor is only 8x6x3mm
A good lens is more difficult to fit in the Z-dimension but that doesn't constrain the resolution of the sensor. A small bump in the bezel and a corresponding recess in the base would allow a better design of lens.
Yes exactly, there's plenty of space for a decent sensor and lens. On top of that we're talking about a wide-angle lens, which are generally flatter. Two things add thickness and complexity to camera lenses - telephoto and autofocus. Phones only recently started getting thick bumps for the rear camera when telephoto lenses became more popular. My phone has a sizeable bump for the telephoto camera but the ultra-wide angle one is outside of that bump.
3mm? Based on my measurement just now, the lid of my 16" MBP is just about 4mm thick - so no, after the case and front glass there's enough room for even the sensor, let alone a lens.
Huh? Their "thinnest laptop ever" (the air) isn't the only laptop they sell. The macbook pro is almost all battery and its quoted at 17 hrs web browsing / 20hrs of video playback. thats massive.
I think apple deserves criticism for a lot of things they do, but their battery life is fantastic. (Well, unless you've got half a dozen electron apps running. But thats not apple's problem to solve.)
Is the image quality any better on iMac? At the very least on expensive iMac Pro? If not, the issue is not physical limitations of Macbook, it's most likely cost.
Yes. The new iMac 27" and iMacPro both use a 1080p webcam and also use the T2 chip for image processing. I recently upgraded from a 2015 iMac 27" to the 2020 iMac 27" and the webcam is better although still not great.
I've got a late 2019 iMac, and it's got the same piece-of-shit camera that the MBPs do. I think (without looking it up) recent iMacs bumped the specs. It is one of my few disappointments with this machine. OTOH, my workplace doesn't use cameras on online meetings. My musical jam group does, though. And I paid about $3K for this machine, so it shouldn't even be a discussion.
Thats the same story someone I know that works at Apple told me. They would like to put a better camera in there as much as we would like one, but its not economical at the moment.
That's what I thought recently about the MacBook Camera. I have switched to Mac Mini M1 and bought Logitech StreamCam for ~£150. It sucks in every possible way: focus does not work properly in any conditions except natural daylight, CPU expensive, additional meaningless software for basic features, etc.
Now, I miss the MacBook camera. Yes, it is 720p, but do I need more for my meetings? Nope. It just works. The quality is acceptable, no problems with any applications/web-tools, plays well with system resources, etc. If we are talking about "Zoom me" cameras, I would prefer the MacBook's one. If we are talking about YouTube streamers, etc., then it is a bit different area, and yes, MacBook's camera will not help with this.
As smartphones essentially replaced point and shoot cameras, image quality became a major selling point. In fact, for many people, that's the only reason for getting a modern, high-end phone.
Laptop cameras are typically used only for the occasional video chat, with so much compression on the line that the image looks like crap anyways. And before 2020, I'm quite sure most laptops didn't see their webcam used even once.
Maybe for the following years, now that people realized that their laptop webcam is not just a place to put a sticker on, manufacturers will put on something better.
In my view, phone cameras are used for photography, in addition to conferencing. So they need to be better quality for that use. Nobody takes pictures of their outdoor adventure, or an image of a document, with a laptop camera.
Well, some people do. My kids were in the youth orchestra, and they had to issue a rule that parents are not allowed to hold an iPad up in the air for the entire duration of the concert.
When I wasn't able to purchase a webcam (for a reasonable amount) at the beginning of the lockdown, I started using my Pixel 3 with DroidCam[1].
My video quality is consistently the best in all the meetings I'm in, so I can really recommend using your phone.
I stream the video over adb myself, to make sure I don't drain the battery too much and to keep everything wired.
I can confirm this as my colleagues have mentioned the quality difference between my feed (samsung tablet) and their webcams. I used a couple different webcam apps orginially but DroidCam was the best IMO.
Yes, this is what I used to to, but it has drawbacks.
If you only join from your phone, you can't really see other participants (unless you use your front cam, and in that case your screen is obviously still very small) and you won't be able to screen share.
If you join on both, you will be in the meeting twice (which can look weird to other people).
In my case, I want to use a dedicated microphone, not my phone's microphone that might be blocked by the arm that is holding it in place.
That results in a weird AV delay since the audio is coming from a different user in the call (and it means your video is not highlighted when you speak).
In short - my current setup hides the implementation details and makes it all work transparently without bothering people I'm in a call with.
Nice, I have joined a few meetings from my phone and my desktop simultaneously because my desktop didn't have a webcam or microphone. It worked in a pinch but I wouldn't do it on a regular basis.
I was disapointed by the quality of my Logitech c920. Because I coach people with Zoom I've switched to a Sony ZV1, which is quite expensive but has better quality (although their webcam software only supports 720p - camlink is in the mail)
My old iMacPro has the best camera of a computer I know.
But given that you have a 4K RED setup in your bedroom with a studio microphone, what technology actually preserves most of the quality over the video call? Let's say both participants have fibre connections and located in the same city.
Plain old RTMP stream with h.265 inside probably. The problem is that nobody uses this for streaming because h.265 encoding is expensive even for hardware encoders in GPU. So to satisfice, use h.264 at good bitrate. Over 80 Mbit should be fine ;)
You just moved the goalposts. The UX for setting this up is terrible, but as approximately zero people have a Red camera hooked up to their computer and a dedicated fiber connection to multiple people, so presumably the setup is a one-time cost.
If you're using a Mac, this article is the best I've found, though the CamTwist Studio setup is a bit slow if you don't have a Macbook Pro with 16GB RAM or more: https://www.nicksherlock.com/2020/04/using-a-canon-dslr-as-a.... I plan on writing a more comprehensive article for Mac users in the future.
All the steps are free! No paid software or hardware needed.
I've taken to doing this, and while the setup is a bit tedious, people are always super impressed with the bokeh and all-around nice quality of my "webcam." I haven't told anyone it's really a DSLR yet.
For the cost of a small desk tripod, £50, and Canon’s latest Webcam Utility, I was able to repurpose a 2012 DSLR (1DX) into an absolutely fantastic webcam.
IMHO if you have decent lighting the Logitechs are ”good enough” for the usual video call purposes.
What real value would much better image quality bring? Most of the time you are just small box on other participant’s screen. Of courae totally different thing if you are producing video content.
In order of importance for me 1) Get sound right. Use headset if needed. 2) Try to get good light for your face (check on Youtube three point light setup videos to get the rough idea, then improvise). 3) Try to arrange boring and simple background.
Wasn't there a discussion about image processing because of a lack of dedicated and optimized on-camera software? Usually phones are tuned to deliver an "as close as possible to the result" viewfinder image, while webcams in general do very little or no processing on their side. I might be completely wrong here though, however I do agree with the article. It's 2021. If Thunderbolt can provide enough bandwidth to support a full-on GPU, then we can dedicate resources to do correct image processing either on our CPUs or boycott Webcam makers to actually invest some time to finetune and optimize Webcams. As the article states, it's better to buy a used iPhone 6 and buy EpocCam by Elgato to use the phone as a cam. At least it's actually good as compared to the C920 which has been price gauged to oblivion throughout the world
How big is the market for "good webcams"? If 99% of the people just need a "good enough" (to recognise your face) webcam, that they turn off after the initial "hello!" (so noone notices they have no pants on if they have to stand up), does that really make it worth it to develop new tech for the 1%?
...compared to phone cameras, where people actually want (and are willing to pay more) for a good camera, especially for one that works better in shitty lighting conditions.
On the flip side, with my phone I'm usually calling friends and family in my pajamas. With my laptop I'm calling serious people for serious business, sometimes as a group. It makes more sense for the laptop to have a better camera.
I think until recently enterprise IT hasn't cared about laptop camera quality because the understanding was that proper video conferencing would be done from a conference room with a $2k camera setup. The pandemic has flipped that on its head.
With the rising popularity of streaming, a lot of people are getting a mirrorless camera and capture card. This is ridiculous overkill, and I imagine that a "premium" webcam could provide the desired features* at a much lower price point and smaller package
* Good auto-focus, depth of field, "natural" color, high resolution.
Since there are many webcams available for over $150, I'd say the market for "good webcams" is big enough. If people spend $150 on a webcam I think they expect it to be good.
I keep mine on. I've noticed that coworkers who don't keep their cameras on seem less human. Without a face to the name, it's harder to conceptualize them as a person.
So I keep mine on. I think video presentation is going to become the new "dress for the job you want" over the next decade or so, so it's worth it to put a little bit of effort in. Now that remote is becoming normalized, do you want to be the person on Zoom with a video that's grainy from trying to compensate for the lack of light, or the person with lights that make them look like they just came from the spa all the time?
I started to use my Canon EOS 80D DSLR as a webcam. Canon finally release drivers in November. The image quality amazing. It's also a bit overkill though to use a (back then) 1400€ camera to act as a webcam (also hard to compare with default webcams at that price point), but as long as I'm not using it otherwise, I think it's ok :)
Agreed! DSLRs are great for this kind of stuff. I posted two links to guides on how to do this for Mac and Linux here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25870161, if someone has a guide for Windows I'd love to see it.
My first job straight out of university was at Reincubate. I thought I'd share my experience because Reincubate is a small company - you could count us with your fingers when I joined.
It was a fun place to work with nerf guns and rubber balls to throw at each other. You learnt to keep your computer locked the "fun" way. We always went for a team lunch on Fridays - something that I've missed ever since. I enjoyed coming into work every day because of the people.
The favourite highlight of my entire career was there, back in 2015. The whole team of engineers (~6ish) worked together to figure out how to decrypt iOS 9 beta backups as Apple had changed the encryption system. Everyone contributed in some way and I delved into using a disassembler, IDA Pro, from zero prior experience armed with a textbook. It took a whole week from the beta being released, and I believe we were the first (public) company to do it.
The values of the company, as described on the website, have changed, but what they say now still matches up with my time there.
Switching to something more relevant to this article. I was looking for a webcam a couple of months ago for quite a while before it also hit me that my iPhone camera was actually damn good. Since then I've been connecting to Zoom twice (from my phone for the video, and my computer for the audio). It's not a great experience but I never really looked into the "random" apps that could create a virtual camera. Well Reincubate is not random to me and it looks like there's a beta version of Camo for Windows, so I don't really have an excuse :)
the article only tangentially touches on depth of field which adds very much to a professionally looking webcam video, when using a DSLR or other digicam with a decent lens. You have the blur in the background so can still see the person in their surrounding but not so much that you can see all the cruft lying around. Focus is on the face and it's much better than any software solution that blows up the computer fan.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 262 ms ] threadEven a highly-optimized “let’s steal a smartphone camera” webcam would never cost under $100, so it would sell extremely little.
In the en I convinced my wife to just use the DSLR (she was hesitant at first because of the extra hassle). A modern DSL had good IQ even ad candlelight, you really almost can't mess it up. Only way to destroy the image is to use different color lights (warm lightbulb on left side and natural light from a window on the right side will look weird on every camera I know of)
And also, not everyone wants to sit in front of a bright light
Nikon offer a free webcam utility [0] that allows recent DSLRs (and mirrorless) to be used as a webcam when plugged into a PC. I tried it with my D850. The advantage is, predictably, awesome optics. The downsides were a) finding a place on my desk for the camera and some sort of mount b) the camera battery gets eaten really quickly.
Interestingly, the webcam utility isn't available for the smallest Nikon cameras - the Coolpix range - so I guess there won't be a dedicated Nikon webcam.
[0] https://downloadcenter.nikonimglib.com/en/products/548/Webca...
This article controls for lighting, showing the results of different types of cameras in different lighting conditions, and showing that even with good lighting, all of the webcams are still poor, and most are terrible. And they’re all distinctly worse than any Apple phones from the last few years (and even the front-facing camera from an Apple phone from five years ago is better than half of them).
Personally, I've been thinking about how to sandblast the lens on my webcam to permanently fog it. Who would even care? I think nobody.
Also, lighting. A couple of 5500 Kelvin Led lights on a clip mount, with good color rendition won't dent the budget but they will make even cheap webcams perform much better - color, frame rate, aperture. A softbox is wonderful but I don't have space for that, so I aim the light at the white wall - good enough substitute !
I wouldn't be surprised if the iphone cameras have had a billion dollars of development invested in them. But a large portion of this is on the software/firmware side which logitech doesn't benefit from.
That said, we all reap the benefits of this because phone camera hardware has been driven down in cost considerably since phones first got cameras. There just needs to be more open software to help out, maybe like machine learning exposure, focus, color and more. Then even low-margin webcam companies will have good performance.
Which is neither here, nor there. There are tons of dirt cheap (often cheaper) compact cameras on the market with better quality that most webcams, and have been for years. Including equally small as webcam options.
There are also tons of dirt cheap Android phones with far better camera quality in an even more constrained space (for the camera module) than a webcam.
There are also embedded laptop cameras with better quality than most $100 and plus webcams.
As a sibling comment said: "I use OBS Studio's output as virtual camera - and among the inputs I use cheap old Android tablets with DroidCam OBS over IP on Wi-Fi... They cost less than a USB webcam and deliver much better image quality."
There's absolutely no reason webcam makers couldn't build a better product using components found in 5+ year old phones...
Even if it was expensive, the problem is there's not even an expensive $300 or $500 webcam with quality compared to a years old Android or iPhone smartphone of equal price, or a compact camera.
Heck, webcams sold as $1000 and $2000 "enterprise" webcams, in bulky enclosures to sit on a desk or large TV, have some more conveniences (to fit the enterpise moniker), but same (crap) image quality.
iphones benefit from: a processor that costs more than the entire webcam. A firmware and software stack with a billion dollars behind it.
Still the camera is great alone, even without "computational photography".
And similar IQ quality can be had in competing Android phones for years -- some costing the same or less than a premium $200 or $300 webcam.
Anyway you slice it or dice it, this is not a "good cameras are expensive" issue.
There seems to be a big class divide between phone cameras and webcams.
Either laptop manufacturers are missing a trick that would help them compete, or people don't really care about picture quality in remote video calls.
A few people enable their camera all the time, but not everyone. In the few meetings I've been in where everyone is asked to turn on their camera so we can see each other (in some sort of team terms) at least one person says they are in a family situation where they cannot.
Cameras are a must when calling grandma. In an office situation they are at best a nice to have.
I've seen apple billboards about ONLY the iphone camera, so apple is investing money in it.
Meanwhile for a laptop, people don't care (as much) if it takes 10 megapixel images and can see in the dark. Personally I would like a laptop without a camera (or with a hardware switch)
(and I've never seen a macbook billboard)
It mentions the product just one time, in passing at the end, and is several pages of well written, well researched, general observations, plus a writeup of the results of actual testing of several cameras.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LogitechG/comments/fox6wy/logitech_...
Lots of points. Big one being that the market is bifurcated into:
1. People who just want the minimum as cheap as possible.
2. People willing to pay enough to buy a mirrorless photo camera and plug it in as a web cam when they need it.
Does it have a name in economics? Are there good ways of preventing this from happening?
My guess is the world's middle class is slowly dieing, so all you have are the poor and the rich.
Or you can get a Sony A6100 and crappier kit lens for 700$
These cameras have significant strong (e.g. aps-c sensor size) capabilities not found in anything except mirrorless and DSLR cameras. Seems not to be overpriced to me.
Overpriced is like what nvidia does to the quattro cards...
Hell, that DX 18-55 kit lens had, in some ways, better optics than the FX 24-120 that cost more than the entire D3100 kit
The problem is most people have very little understand of quality. And that is why Marketing matters.
In WebCam, most dont cares much about the quality because you rarely use it. It wasn't until pandemic people were forced to use it more often did they realise how crap it was.
Marketing is about educating customers why your product is better, how you should spend more on it. And Apple is an example, they are exceptionally good at it.
> usually severely overpriced
Most of the time I find that to be false. Not because of the market will bear it, but those market also requires constant innovation so profits are being funnel back into R&D. Generally speaking most "market will bear it" type of product disappear within 5 years when a competitor found they could make something better and cheaper.
Sears' niche was in the middle. Everything was good, but not great, quality. Products were durable, came with good warranties, and "We Service What We Sell". Sears sold to the middle class, with middle prices. They went bankrupt with that model.
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-eddie-lampert-set-sears-...
Their own decline was a whoo-corporate example of the described phenomenon, accelerated if not triggered by the execrable Eddie Lampert.
Want a hammer? They've got exactly 3:
1) One that's good enough to get the job done (Cheap, solid for a one-off project.)
2) One that's great (The one you probably want: More expensive, but tradeoffs are balanced for most people.)
3) One that's basically best in class, with a lifetime warranty (Expensive, basically professionals, you could hand it down to your grandkids)
I still think there's a craving for this sort of thing, but online. Extensively curated products divided into 3 tiers.
I know a lot of people who have put tape over their webcam. In fact that is the policy of several departments where I work. Some people use their web cams, but a large number of people I work with never use theirs.
By using a cheap web cam manufactures can cover 1 without having to make a model without a webcam for those who don't want it - this would be more expensive than shipping a piece of tape to cover it just because they would need to design a second case and have a new part number.
Yeap. I feel like this is the way to go.
The webcams tested in TFA go up to $200 though, that's well into low-end smartphone.
The comparison is reasonable in that it compares “the best” webcam (a Logitec c930, according to https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/the-best-webcams/) with an iPhone using their software.
I don't care if this is an “advertorial” or not, I'm going to test this software because my webcam sucks as well.
I'd love to be able to tell the v4l driver for the usb capture card to just not offer the 640*480 resolution. That would fix it in a better way. Anyone have any ideas how to do that?
Regarding the capture card. The aspect ratio mess-up is entirely its fault.
Overall quality of everything is very high. Does it save money? I guess I already had the camera.
Is it a good idea to broadcast myself at that level of quality? Probably not ;)
Most of the sample pics look absolutely fine to me for every day use, i.e., online meetings.
I think if webcams look absolutely fine to you for online meetings it's probably because you have become used to the crappiness. People don't typically show notebooks or pieces of paper in online meetings, because the cameras are crap, and they know they will create an awkward moment trying to focus on the notes and probably failing. For the same reason, people often won't use a whiteboard in an online meeting, etc. These would be totally normal things to do if we had decent webcams.
However, it’s significantly bothersome when people refuse to use earbuds or a headset so audio isn’t constantly clipping during conversation, or they have a massive light source behind them like a window and their face is just a shadow the whole time, or their camera is staring god knows where the whole time.
There’s a lot of low hanging fruit to up the quality of a video chat before you need to get too worried about the quality of the camera.
Obviously this is for everyday video chat. If you’re live-streaming or doing some kind of professional video presentation, then yes it’s frustrating that the market is $100 or $1,500+.
But if you've avoided the $15 Amazon's Choice webcams and purchased the absolute peak of what the webcam industry can produce, wouldn't you expect something better than the mediocrity shown?
What if you're someone who cares about their appearance, and the pallid, unhealthy look of the C920 would have you reaching for your makeup bag if you saw it in the mirror?
What if the pandemic has forced your dating life into zoom calls, for a first date you want to absolutely look your best, and you don't like how the Kiyo makes your forehead look shiny and really adds contrast to your receding hairline?
What if you're slightly into photography and presenting such a shitty image as the best you can do goes against your pride when you can see so much wrong with it?
For the exceptions you are correct, but I believe they are overall exceptions.
I don't know why that is, but even Apple would seemingly rather shave 50 cents off the BOM by speccing a 720p Facetime camera in their $3000 Macbook Pros, and trying to make up the difference with software, like with the new M1 Macs that have better image quality using the same 720p webcam.
For my desktop I've taken to using an action camera, since software that supports using Android phones as webcams seemed to not be so good when I looked. It plugs in via USB, is cheap, has auto-focus and supports a wider angle of view than most webcams. Good for group calls. One can always zoom in with software.
The reason I've heard is that the macbook display assembly simply doesn't have the depth to house a decent camera. The camera bump in phones exists for a reason - and phones are already way fatter than macbook displays.
I have no idea if thats true though.
Also this doesn't answer the question of why USB webcams are so terrible. They have tons of room.
I could imagine a bump towards the front that would sink into the body when closed, but doing it in a way that looks and feels good also seems rather hard - but also harder to avoid should they want to implement things such as face id.
Honestly though, I think the real reason webcams on laptops suck is that until recently 95% of people didn't use them 99% of the time.
A good lens is more difficult to fit in the Z-dimension but that doesn't constrain the resolution of the sensor. A small bump in the bezel and a corresponding recess in the base would allow a better design of lens.
Also Apple: We can't give you a better camera because we gave you the thinnest laptop evar!
"We think you're gonna love it!"
I think apple deserves criticism for a lot of things they do, but their battery life is fantastic. (Well, unless you've got half a dozen electron apps running. But thats not apple's problem to solve.)
Laptop cameras are typically used only for the occasional video chat, with so much compression on the line that the image looks like crap anyways. And before 2020, I'm quite sure most laptops didn't see their webcam used even once.
Maybe for the following years, now that people realized that their laptop webcam is not just a place to put a sticker on, manufacturers will put on something better.
Well, some people do. My kids were in the youth orchestra, and they had to issue a rule that parents are not allowed to hold an iPad up in the air for the entire duration of the concert.
I stream the video over adb myself, to make sure I don't drain the battery too much and to keep everything wired.
[1]: https://www.dev47apps.com/
If you only join from your phone, you can't really see other participants (unless you use your front cam, and in that case your screen is obviously still very small) and you won't be able to screen share.
If you join on both, you will be in the meeting twice (which can look weird to other people). In my case, I want to use a dedicated microphone, not my phone's microphone that might be blocked by the arm that is holding it in place. That results in a weird AV delay since the audio is coming from a different user in the call (and it means your video is not highlighted when you speak).
In short - my current setup hides the implementation details and makes it all work transparently without bothering people I'm in a call with.
[1]: https://reincubate.com/camo/
My old iMacPro has the best camera of a computer I know.
If you're using a Mac, this article is the best I've found, though the CamTwist Studio setup is a bit slow if you don't have a Macbook Pro with 16GB RAM or more: https://www.nicksherlock.com/2020/04/using-a-canon-dslr-as-a.... I plan on writing a more comprehensive article for Mac users in the future.
All the steps are free! No paid software or hardware needed.
I've taken to doing this, and while the setup is a bit tedious, people are always super impressed with the bokeh and all-around nice quality of my "webcam." I haven't told anyone it's really a DSLR yet.
With my camera quality, I feel like Bill Gates with his camera setup (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyFT8qXcOrM).
Any of the Canon xxD or M series from the same era would be sufficient at a fraction of the cost.
What real value would much better image quality bring? Most of the time you are just small box on other participant’s screen. Of courae totally different thing if you are producing video content.
In order of importance for me 1) Get sound right. Use headset if needed. 2) Try to get good light for your face (check on Youtube three point light setup videos to get the rough idea, then improvise). 3) Try to arrange boring and simple background.
...compared to phone cameras, where people actually want (and are willing to pay more) for a good camera, especially for one that works better in shitty lighting conditions.
I think until recently enterprise IT hasn't cared about laptop camera quality because the understanding was that proper video conferencing would be done from a conference room with a $2k camera setup. The pandemic has flipped that on its head.
* Good auto-focus, depth of field, "natural" color, high resolution.
So I keep mine on. I think video presentation is going to become the new "dress for the job you want" over the next decade or so, so it's worth it to put a little bit of effort in. Now that remote is becoming normalized, do you want to be the person on Zoom with a video that's grainy from trying to compensate for the lack of light, or the person with lights that make them look like they just came from the spa all the time?
It shouldn't make a difference, but it does.
Best $8 I've spent on a phone app. Works with pretty much everything (including OBS too)
I wish this to be "Sherlock"d by Apple, hopefully on the next OS release.
It was a fun place to work with nerf guns and rubber balls to throw at each other. You learnt to keep your computer locked the "fun" way. We always went for a team lunch on Fridays - something that I've missed ever since. I enjoyed coming into work every day because of the people.
The favourite highlight of my entire career was there, back in 2015. The whole team of engineers (~6ish) worked together to figure out how to decrypt iOS 9 beta backups as Apple had changed the encryption system. Everyone contributed in some way and I delved into using a disassembler, IDA Pro, from zero prior experience armed with a textbook. It took a whole week from the beta being released, and I believe we were the first (public) company to do it.
The values of the company, as described on the website, have changed, but what they say now still matches up with my time there.
Switching to something more relevant to this article. I was looking for a webcam a couple of months ago for quite a while before it also hit me that my iPhone camera was actually damn good. Since then I've been connecting to Zoom twice (from my phone for the video, and my computer for the audio). It's not a great experience but I never really looked into the "random" apps that could create a virtual camera. Well Reincubate is not random to me and it looks like there's a beta version of Camo for Windows, so I don't really have an excuse :)