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Comment by jammmety | Hacker News Reader

Why not use Canon's own EOS Webcam Utility?

https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/about/news...

Fujifilm has also released their own native webcam utility for X and G series cameras. I think it only happened a week or two ago.

https://fujifilm-x.com/en-us/webcam-support/

When I read this I ran to get my camera and my computer!

First downer: My X-T20 is not supported :(

Second downer: Windows only?

So sad right now :(

Camera Live works with non-canon models as well, there is at least partial support for some Fuji and nikon in the alpha releases and it looks like the maintainer intends to increase support even further. The heavy lifting appears to be done in libgphoto2 which supports a ton of different models.

In terms of “why don’t you just use ____”, I have scoured the web for any way to use a Nikon as a webcam on macOS (over usb, so without dropping $120 on a camlink which is sold out everywhere now anyway), and the only other thing that exists is an app called ecamm live which costs $20/month forever. For windows and even Linux there are other more affordable or open source options.

> I have scoured the web for any way to use a Nikon as a webcam on macOS (over usb, so without dropping $120 on a camlink which is sold out everywhere now anyway)

check out https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23409540

I misplaced the usb cable that came with my nikon d5000 but I was able to find a replacement on amazon yesterday that should arrive later today.

In my experience Canon's app is way better, both on Windows and Mac

This is a recent release, eh?

I bought a elgato camlink 4K just recently because I wasn’t so happy with Camera Live but now I wish I hadn’t.

It looks like they only support newer DSLRs

Despite that list, it actually works against much older devices. I've ran it with a T2i, for example, which is like three generations older than they officially support.

How do you download the app? They require a serial number.

Here's a direct link: http://downloads.canon.com/webcam/EOSWebcamUtilityBeta-WIN0....

Copy/paste the link to avoid the error after clicking.

That’s great because I have a T2i with magic lantern. Will have to give it a try.

Thanks -- I've been really bummed that they left 6D Mk. 1 owners out in the cold on this one.

Does anyone know of a similar linux app that works over USB rather than HDMI?

6D Mk 1 works great with Canon Webcam Utility Beta on macOS! I'm using it now.

I've been using a 6D mk.1 with the Windows version of the Canon Webcam Utility Beta for a couple weeks now. No issues with running it, so far.

I've been using gphoto2 and ffmpeg on linux to use my 6D MkII as a webcam. I did test it with my old old rebel XSI and it did work as well

here is the command

  sudo modprobe v4l2loopback exclusive_caps=1 max_buffers=2
  gphoto2 --stdout --capture-movie | ffmpeg -i - -vcodec rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p -an -threads 0 -r 24 -f v4l2 /dev/video2

I did wrap in a shell script to test if the module is already loaded.

Awesome -- I'll have to give it a try :)!

Works on the 6D. Thank you!

I'm only getting ~4 fps, with substantial latency. Is that your experience?

Image quality on the first lens I had at hand (40mm f/2.8) blows my Logitech 920 away. Field of view on the 920 is equivalent to a ~26mm on full-frame.

Super excited to see if my slightly-broken EOS M will do the trick, too.

Aha, nice tip. I have a 1DX I was hoping to try it out on, has stacks of ports but I didn’t understand why it was too old. I’ll give it a shot.

Canon's app only supports Windows

There’s a beta for Mac released about a week ago

They just released the Mac version of EOS Webcam Utility. https://petapixel.com/2020/05/27/canon-unveils-free-webcam-s...

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