Why can’t you buy a good webcam?
vsevolod.net
vsevolod.net
The lazy conglomerates who sell these peripherals often don’t actually produce the parts in them. They simply rebrand commodity cameras and IPS panels in a crap plastic housing and slap their logo on it.
Then they give the product a hilariously user-hostile product name, like “PQS GRT46782-WT” as an extra f-you to the user.
They don’t care about you because they have no ongoing relationship with you, and their executives mistakenly see their own products as commodities.
Combine this with the fact that most home users don’t care about good quality or even know what it is, and you have the current situation.
A friend once described the peripheral market as “Assholes selling crap to idiots.”
Companies like Eizo typically have agreements where they will take the cream-of-the-crop panels though.
Make what you will of this, but it's not just a panel per se, it's also how it's integrated and used in the whole product.
Thing is, people complaim about there not being high quality gear, but when someone then makes it, they balk at the price. Yes people, a great laptop will cost you $3000.
27 4k a bad size & resolution for the current computer market. Windows scaling looks like crap, and MacOS has to do more resource intensive 1.5 scaling (as opposed to native or pixel doubling mode) to look okay on these.
M1 might make this a mute point going forward, but the fact is at 27 inches, 5k is the only monitor that will look as good as the screen on your laptop while actually giving you more real estate.
But...that is 4K. It's what 4K is defined as, exactly 2x 1080p resolution in each dimension.
> Windows scaling looks like crap
I don't understand. 2x each dimension (so 1 pixel in the old resolution is 4 in the new) is, like, the easiest possible scenario when it comes to scaling in software.
200% (2 times each direction) scaling on 4K is the equivalent of 1080p. A 1080p 27 inch monitor has huuuge pixels for the normal viewing distance of a desktop monitor. 1080p is common on 23-24 inch displays. Therefore you are forced to use fractional scaling which is less then perfect.
Two groups have competing definitions. One isn't inherently correct.
I say this as someone who was "that guy" when it came to HD Radio: "It's not High Definition, it's Hybrid Digital!" even though that's exactly the confusion they were trying to encourage.
Arguing that this is misleading is a fool's errand, and only plays into things if you assume that the primary purpose of a "4K" screen somehow is inherently "to play back cinematic content", which... it's not.
DCI is relevant for movie industry professionals only, as these are the dimensions used for projection devices and (potentially) their content.
That's irrelevant though, except if we're talking about consuming movies fullscreen.
For a monitor I don't want 4K, I want insivible pixels at viewing distances, so hi-dpi.
I would also prefer no scaling for assets that are bitmap in nature. This ideally means pixel doubling (less cpu/gpu demanding and less fuzzy than fractional scaling).
This, for 27" and more, means higher resolution that 4K. I don't want to restrict myself to pixel-doubled 1920x1080 on my 27" or 32" monitor.
You do get nice DPI, but needlessly large buttons and other assets (compared to something closer to 5K).
I'm so confused by your comment.
That would be relevant is my problem was false promises or misleading advertising.
But my problem is not
(a) "Monitors say they are 4K and they are not"
but:
(b) "Most monitors out there are BS-4K, but for the best quality/viewing comfort at their 27" and above diagonal they should rather be 5K, but most manufactures like Dell aren't bothered to produce at such a resolution and the few that do have prices to the skies".
>There are 5K monitors out there, maybe even 8K? Or just get a 4K one but in a smaller size?
Perhaps you've skiped through the thread?
My comment responds to (and agrees with) the sub-thread started by a parent commenter writing:
"Dell used to have good offerings, but all they seem to push now is the same 27” not-quite-4K 3,840 x 2,160 panels everybody else does.".
That's what we say too. 27" 4K monitor is too small at 100% scaling, while too small at 50% scaling (pixel-doubling hi-dpi mode).
That's why the idea is to have a 5K at 50% scaling (so everything is pixel-doubled on each axis, and a pixel becomes 4 pixels, doubling the detail you see).
It's not just about "not seeing any pixels", and "barely see any pixels" is not the same as enjoying hi-res typography and fine detail.
27-inch 1440p monitor is about 108 ppi. That's hardly better from what we used in the 90s and 00s, dpi-wise. Sure, if you haven't used to hi-dpi it looks ok. But try using a 5K/27-inch monitor for a while and then go back to 1440p/27-inch to see the difference you miss.
Now, 4K hi-dpi (pixel doubled) on 27" is 1920x1080.
This makes pixels just fine and detail is great, but everything too large and cuts off screen space, as it's 33% less area than 1440p (which, I presume, you don't use pixel-doubled)
The solution is either 5K/27" (which gives you back the 1440p kind of screen space and UI control size PLUS hi-dpi), or using a non-doubled, fractional resolution, to overcome, (which is not optimal, looks fuzzier, and wastes cpu).
What matters for perception is angular resolution, not DPI. And 27" display covers more visual field that 17" from 90s, so you can and should sit further away from it. Once angle of perceived pixel is smaller than angular resolution of your eye, reducing pixel size only adds to the resolutions of shades you can show to the user in that area (closer to bpp increase, than dpi increase, because you can't see pixels anymore, but still can perceive irregularities of brightness on edges).
The whole point of this thread is people complaining that, outside of LG's fragile Apple collab, there aren't any 5k options widely available.
Go on amazon and search for 5k 27. There's the Apple collab LG UltraFine, and then nothing.
Ditto for 22" 4k, which would provide the same DPI as your laptop screen for that given size.
On the other hand, HDMI 2.1 can now support 8K@60hz, so maybe this is not an issue anymore.
Not to the upthread specific claim that the resolution was “not quite 4K”, which is what the comment you are responding to addressed.
On the bigger issue, I don't really see the complaint. I have pretty good vision (corrected—to 20/15 or so—uncorrected is crap but I'm not coding without glasses/contacts) and honestly my 34” ultrawide at 3440x1440 is excellent for coding, and pretty much any other use. Now, would I prefer whatever resolution a 5K 16:9 would be when extended to 21:9? Or better a 4320p at the same aspect ratio? Sure, more pixels are always better. But does the sub-4K display look like crap or force bad sizes for controls? No.
Sure, I can work with a 3440x1440 34". Heck, I've worked with CGA monitors back in the day, and black and white (!) SUN Sparkstation monitors.
But, as you said, it's about looking better. "Doesn't look like crap" is a pretty low bar, no? For 2020, and after 10 years of hi-dpi phones and laptops, I expected better from monitor companies...
That's cool I guess, I was just objecting to calling the 4K "Not quite 4K".
Huh? I'm using LG's 27 inch 4k and scaling looks good. It can bug and force you to relaunch app but that's not something you encounter often.
The point of using a High-DPI display is that you can use scaling without losing the screen real-estate. With 5K @ 27" you can get what looks like 1440p in physical UI element size, but with an increase in clarity, readability, and quality.
Unfortunately, you must select carefully any monitor that you purchase, and the cheapest models are unlikely to be good choices.
I am using 2 good Dell 4k monitors. One is 1-year old (U2720Q), but the other (UP2414Q) is more than 5-year old and it works as well as in the first day.
I say this because it's unwise to hear that Dell has pretty good gear, then go to their site and buy the cheap stuff. It isn't necessarily any worse cheap stuff than anybody else, but it's not what people mean when they say Dell can have pretty good gear.
You have to choose between ghosting or proper colours, higher refresh rate IPS panels are better in this metric but still suck compared to TNs.
That is also a strategy to prevent product comparisons and unbiased reviews. They quickly cycle through product names and sell a certain product no. only in a limited geographical area.
Doesn't matter if a consumer org/magazine/someone on reddit/your friend/etc. does a review. The product will be out of market by the time you read it, or will not be sold in your country. The similar looking product you find on the shelf might be the same, or it might have something completely different inside.
Now, companies can of course lie about this, in theory, but that's a bit like car manufacturers lying w.r.t. emission tests - possible, but you tend to get caught (cf. the recent Volkswagen case) so it's probably not worth it.
If you're making some device (for example, washing machine) which has a power cord and a knob for some mode selection with writing on it, then for the exact same internals you need different models where the power cords are different (USA, UK, Germany and Japan each require different plugs) and the writing on the device is printed in different language and with customizations such as Celsius vs Fahrenheit. You can't sell the exact same laptop model in every market because the keyboard layouts are different. Etc.
The IEC 60320 connectors were specified for exactly that reason. Honestly, I don't get why these were not made mandatory for all kinds of appliances. There are even locking variants available if vibration is of concern.
I'm not sure what you mean by the second sentence but you can't use most appliances made for Europe in America and vice versa. Most electronic appliances depend on the input voltage and supplying 240V can easily cause a fire. That is true for almost all electronic appliances (water heater, fan, washing machine, etc) but not true most "computer related devices" such as a monitor, PSU, charger. Since those devices already operate on a much lower DC Voltage, they often have transformers (not sure if that's the right word), that can scale down the current from either 120 or 240. [0]
That being said, a mandatory IEC connector (and it's variances) would help a lot to cut down unnecessary e-waste. Instead of throwing away a device because the cable is damaged, you can easily order a replacement that is around $2 and high quality, instead of relying third party cords that might have bad wiring from a non reputable brand. The reason they are not mandatory, though, is that most companies like to have their own connectors so that you either overpay for it or just buy a new device.
[0]: You should still always read the specs on the input current for the device though. It is dangerous to rely on the fact that similar devices can operate at 120V/240V because yours might not. You can usually see the specs on the website/packaging or usually near the input plug.
The biggest problem might be the amount of power a device can draw. Half the voltage gives you half the power, which is the reason why e.g. kettles are much less useful in the US.
That ofc makes electric kettles much less useful in countries with 110V grid. It also keeps stovetop kettles relevant in these counties, since stoves don't suffer power limitations.
Here in America "electronic appliances" would imply the tech/gadget category like TVs or computers where "electrical appliances" would be the big household equipment. Just to clarify in case that confuses anyone else like it did me, it kind of reverses the meaning of what you're trying to say.
Anyways, at least with relatively modern gear you can generally assume that anything with batteries or USB ports runs off a switch-mode power supply, and all but the cheapest of those will happily accept pretty much anything resembling residential power.
Anything with a large motor or any kind of resistive element (lighting, heating) on the other hand is almost certainly built for a specific variety of electrical service and will likely require modification to accept anything else without releasing the magic smoke.
The stuff in between those categories, well, RTFLabel. Outside of audio and ham radio gear I'd imagine most DC stuff runs on switch mode power supplies these days.
Even if that's the case, the appliances should be easy to repair for a competent person and if necessary allow the cable be replaced.
That should only affec the power brick, and hence the overall SKU, not the notebook itself.
> the writing on the device is printed in different language and with customizations such as Celsius vs Fahrenheit.
What writing is there on notebooks except for keyboard labeling and the product name? The certification label on the back already shows all labels for all countries.
> You can't sell the exact same laptop model in every market because the keyboard layouts are different.
Keyboard layouts are somewhat orthogonal to regions. I'm German, but use US-layout keyboards.
When looking for a nice display a couple of years ago I clearly remember reading about some that were promising yet getting confoundingly variable reports, until some tore their hardware apart and revealed that the internals were different.
Now compare that to buying a model from Dell or Lenovo, where the current product lineup is already 2-3x the size, the models are sometimes discontinued, sometimes changed significantly between refreshes, often refreshed annually, oftentimes configurable in a meaningful way (1080p non-glossy vs. 1080p privacy screen vs. 4k glossy vs. 4k touch screen), sometimes just available in certain geographical locations and they exhibit more intra-generation manufacturing differences. The chances of finding other folks with your exact same permutation (and same day of the week it was manufactured) of these options are much smaller, so you stand less of a chance of getting something recognized as a fundamental manufacturing issue which should be covered for free by the vendor. Plus, even if you can get repair/replacement for free, you still fear that your specific model has a flaw, so you might only get lucky after having it replaced 2-3 times.
I've seen it happen with Dell and Lenovo where folks sent back brand-new units repeatedly because the first one had overheating issues with the SSD, the second one had really noisy capacitors and the third one had a display cable that wasn't seated correctly. At least with Apple I know that if I'm getting screwed, I'm in the same boat with everyone else ;)
My 7 year old macbook has "A1465" written in perfectly legible text on the bottom. "About this mac" has the serial number two clicks away, which is convertable online to exact specifications.
Fortunately that hasn't been my experience with the recent Dell, Asus, Lenovo and HP laptops I've purchased. Each have been without any issues at all.
But my point here is that... it sounds like you're arguing against consumer choice. You can have your Model T in any color as long as it is black. And this is Apple's model. You can have your product in any configuration as long as it's the one configuration Apple offers. Apple tried this, actually, for a long time. The iPhone started out with extremely limited configurations and only more recently branched out beyond 2. In a way, I agree with the confusion, because I know now I can't just say "Macbook" because there is at least one Macbook without suffix, at least one Air, and the Macbook Pro has a myriad of configurations - different sizes, with or without touch bar, etc.
Why did Apple start offering more options? Because that's what consumers want. Dell exists exactly because they were the first big PC manufacturer to accept configuration orders, and then (relatively) quickly manufacturer and deliver those custom configurations to users. Consumers want this. As Apple's share of the market grows, they will have to meet the consumers where they are - or their market share will be limited by the limitations they place upon themselves.
Now, I agree that, for example, the variety of models between different geographic locations is - if nothing else - annoying. Especially when nicer options aren't offered in your location! But I don't agree with the offered example of getting bad replacements. Maybe buying one laptop a year isn't enough to experience these issues.
If the choice is between "you can know about it" xor "you can buy it", there's no real choice.
This really complicates the already limited attempts to run Linux distros on the Mac hardware as users simply can't reliably tell if their hardware will be compatible beforehand.
On the MacOS side they likely paper over the differences, quirks and bugs in firmware and drivers, so the user does not native anything and they can change the hardware underneath as needed.
and revamping the US highway system with assisted driving beacons/lines etc - because they're the only ones with enough money to do so.
On other hand Lenovo X1 carbon is a pretty solid high end laptop along with LG gram. Former specifically is far more customizable, repairable, upgradable and also around 30% cheap while being more powerful.
It also works the other way round. Find a panel that is good enough for your eyes, then see if there's a mass marketed display with that panel. If you are adventurous, you can grab "DIY" or "assembled" monitors with the panels on Chinese e-Commerce sites.
I remember getting a 27-inch 1440p display from a Chinese manufacturer for really cheap back in high school. It should've been the exact same panel as was in Apple's iMacs. However, the were some quality issues with it long term and it's definitely suffering from burn-in that I don't think the iMacs suffer from.
https://techreport.com/review/23291/those-27-inch-ips-displa...
But overall, they were a great purchase quality/performance/cost wise.
Now, if you were a professional, that quality control and warranty (not to mention better ergonomics, etc.) were easily worth the added cost, but for just "some dude who liked playing video games and doing some photo/video editing", it was a great bang for the buck.
I still use this as my main monitor and haven't noticed any dead pixels (if there are any, they're so hard to see that they may as well not be there). It's not the best monitor out there and you can probably get a better 2560x1440 display for less now, but at the time it was a big improvement over the cheap 1920x1080 display that quickly got demoted to secondary (and has now been loaned indefinitely to a teacher friend who needed a second monitor to plug into her laptop for online classes).
I could (and probably should) investigate fixing it but it was easier to buy a 2160p Philips for $240. Only issue with the Philips is it doesn't have a VESA mount and it would be difficult to make some sort of jury-rigging work.
I run them attached to a Mac Mini and use the DisplayPort on the monitor. At one point I believe HDMI (or maybe just the Mac) wouldn't do 1440p. I'm copying stuff from an Intel Mac mini to an M1 and I'm able to toggle back and forth using HDMI for the Intel just fine.
Google iMac or LG ultrafine “image retention” or “ghosting.” I have no idea what percent of displays are affected, but there’s enough threads about it on Reddit and macrumors to make me think it’s pretty common.
There's a Chinese panel manufacturer called BOE that makes products competitive with some of the lower-end Samsung / LG panels.
I got one 15.6" 2160p external display with a BOE panel that offers 100% sRGB coverage. I can see a huge difference compared to my Dell Latitude laptop display.
Now if anyone can find a source of 55" 4K OLED panels, that would be the one ultimate display. Combine it with a VBO driver board and it becomes better than any smart TVs.
And outside of a few occupations that might actually require pixel-perfect colour, what does this matter? Is this like the audiophile world, where people argue about seemingly subjective things that no else cares about?
The customer interprets colours differently than you, the customer sees colours differently than you, and the customer is using a monitor that almost assuredly displays the colours differently than yours. And the world continues to turn.
Having a setup with multiple cheap monitors is imho really underrated for design and development. Moving something between screens and seeing clear contrast disappear, or see pleasing color choices turn ugly can be eye opening.
I am considering my next purchase on the basis of at least 5 years of service and that is a long time to be looking at something "not quite right".
CD quality audio is less than 1 megabit per second per channel, uncompressed. HDR (10 bits per component) 4K60fps 4:2:2 video is around 10Gbit per second of data.
Of course data bandwidth is only a small part of the problem of correctly reproducing an analog signal, but it gives you the orders of magnitude we're dealing with.
I currently use a cheap ASUS 4K display. It's more good enough for coding, but I wouldn't trust it for any sort of graphical work. The viewing angle is pretty bad, so depending on what part of the screen I'm looking at I see colors differently, and some gradients become more or less visible depending on which part of the screen they're on. Contrast is pretty bad, making even some videogame display poorly: depending on the location and time of day contrast seems always too high or too low.
You can buy a good sub $100 pair of earphones and a sub $50 DAAC and they'll be good enough to do 99% of any audiophile work you could ever want to do reliably. If you want to do serious graphics work without having to constantly adjust for your display you'll have to go for something a lot more expensive than an entry-level monitor.
I'm a color blind person and even I can see a color difference between cheap displays that I have at work and an old EIZO one that I bought years ago at home.
I can more accurately diffrentiate between different colors/shades on my EIZO panel.
I just unboxed the new monitor 2 days ago. The richer color was immediately noticeable, and when I looked at some random photos I took with my phone recently I was blown away by just how red and green and yellow/blue things were. Like a completely new realm of color.
It's one of those things that you can't appreciate until you experience it (same going from the original 72% to 99% sRGB).
The Dell was $450 for 4k, 2.5 years ago. The new LG was $800, but you can find 60fps P3 4k monitors for around $500 these days iirc. If you're on Hacker News you probably use your computer a lot. Unless you're running low on cash, upgrading to a great monitor is worth it.
I love them for my photo editing.
(This is on my 2019 Mac Pro)
...which bought Korean manufacturer Hydis (was originally part of SK Hynix), so you'll often see panels marked "BOE-Hydis".
When it comes to assembled monitors, the highest failure rate is in the power supply. The components used and the cooling/ventilation play a big part in that.
What sites are you finding these "assembled" monitors?
Battle Angel Sorry, not sure why I didn't share previously. So, I believe this is caused by using a non-HDMI cable with the audio out turned on. Either turn the audio in the display off completely in the settings, or use a new HDMI cable. The alarm is a result of the display trying to send an audio signal through a Displayport cable. Are those of you getting this alarm using Displayport cables? They do not pair audio with video, as HDMI does. I hope this fixes your problem.
https://www.amazon.com/LG-27GL83A-B-Ultragear-Compatible-Mon...
I guess I understand where they're coming from, when most potential customers would likely glaze over and click away if presented with a long list of specs and product numbers.
Still, it's always nice when they at least have a "show all products" link that takes me to exactly that. I want a full list that can be narrowed down with filters.
Although I have to admit that I was equally frustrated when I wanted a good retina screen with 200-ish dpi to pair up with the mac mini I wanted to buy, only to conclude getting the 5K iMac instead was the most sensible option.
Apple is the most valuable company on earth right now, entirely due to their thesis that people will pay for quality hardware.
The “creator” market is much more profitable than the gamer market where kids only have as much as mom will allow them to spend (vs The tech workers, coders, designers, youtubers, etc that need high quality displays to make a living).
It’s why Apple is able to get insane 50% margins in many products. It’s crazy to me that the big Asian manufacturers don’t see the market opportunity in catering to this crowd.
In their minds you’re either an office drone using excel or a gamer who wants neon lights. Both of which are market segments with terrible margins.
It doesn’t matter how much money you throw at the problem, nobody is making 27” 5k displays right now.
Basically, the ideal PPI of mac displays is a multiple of 110 PPI. So, for retina quality you need a display of roughly 220 PPI, which is what you get from 5K at 27 inch. A 27 inch 4K display is around 160 PPI. If you use that in 2x mode, things will appear too large. If you set it to scaled mode to make things appear the proper size, there are display artifacts (like shimmering when scrolling). In fairness, it's not super obvious unless you know what to look for. But if you're already spending money on a high end screen, why should you have to compromise?
So clearly, Apple could sell a monitor for about $1600, that would be perfectly compatible with Mac Pros, mac mini and as a secondary monitor for all the various MacBooks.
This is a common misunderstanding of the gaming market due to stereotyping. The biggest age category in gaming is 18-34 by far. They generally also slant strongly to people with both more than average disposable income and higher likelihood to spend that same on gaming and related electronic toys. This makes gaming a 100 billion dollar market atm which is still growing rapidly.
> Both of which are market segments with terrible margins.
Not even close to accurate. Gaming related hardware is generally quite high margin. There's a reason ASUS et all use their gaming imprints as the place to introduce new high end parts. It's also a highly concentrated and networked market, making it very efficient to advertise to.
Sadly, it’s not available anymore. I have one in my office but needed another one for home. Ended up buying an LG with the funny name of something 27UKi6716263 that looked similar on amazon. It’s so different... what a shame
EDIT: it’a not available in Germany
I've got one and really like it although it doesn't seem to support HDCP.
The 22" LG Ultrafine used to have a 4069 x 2304 resolution. So in pixel doubling mode you actually got more screen real estate than newer 24" 4k models (which are only 3840 × 2160)!
The problem is better described here: https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/2/20678597/lg-ultrafine-4k-2...
They will hit local, isps or teleconferencing bandwidth cap well before sending all the bits a webcam captures, with subsequent recompression to crap quality.
Why would they bother then?
27" 5k or 22" 4k (4069 x 2304, like the first LG ultrafine was) are the unicorns I am seeking.
Unfortunately the LG ultrafine suffers from image retention/ghosting. So there's ultimately no great displays for Mac outside of the wildly expensive Pro Display XDR.
This means the 27” 4K monitors that are the industry standard now for some reason at 3,840 x 2,160 are almost twice the size, yet have barely more resolution than the MacBook true retina screen.
MacOS can do scaling to adjust for this, but it uses the least amount of resources in native or pixel doubled mode. Any display that is between the resolutions I mentioned (like 27 4K) requires fractional scaling.
This is more resource intensive, and doesn’t look as good as pure retina.
Here’s a better explanation: https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/
I am talking about good quality display with bearable price. Not display for $6,299.00 Example: https://www.amazon.de/EV3285-BK-Monitor-DisplayPort-Reaktion...
Recently, I bought two 27GN950, which is a 27" 4k@144Hz gaming monitor with good colors. So far the worst part is the fan and in the long run the absence of HDMI 2.1 might be disappointing, but overall I have the impression of a good product.
Yes, it doesn't have the same PPI as smartphones, but I am not sure if we are going to see that happen ever.
I've noticed over decades that high quality stuff comes out of the checks-and-balances of experts specifying and purchasing stuff.
Examples I remember are sun monitors based on sony trinitron tubes, sun/sgi hard drives that were always checked - and sometimes returned by he container - so were actually enterprise grade, not consumer grade. Lots and lots of OEM stuff like that.
Just kidding, it comes from the same Chinese factory as every other fan but Apple's fans(pun intended) like to believe in magic to justify the price tag.
However, over the day is is barely audible and it only comes to my mind when I am sitting in front of the PC late at night (+ without headphones).
27 inch is perfect for 1440p 100% or 200% (i.e., 5k), but it seems like no one other than Apple has that figured out.
But as this is clearly a software issue, I wouldn't blame the hardware for it ;-)
Windows has multiple GPU-accelerated vector graphics GUI frameworks. Well-written Windows apps look well with non-integer scaling.
> awfully glitchy Windows 10
Here's what you should do with new computers.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 Make an installation USB drive, boot from that drive, remove all partitions from the laptop's SSD, perform clean install. You don't need product keys to reinstall Windows as long as the SKU matches (i.e. if you have Win10 home edition, reinstall the same edition).
Don't just blindly click through the wizard, read messages and you'll get better UX (you don't want cortana, personalized ads, geolocation, etc).
Connect to internet, run windows update.
Open device manager. If some devices are left in "unknown device" state, you might need to manually find their drivers. Make sure to only install drivers and not user-mode utilities.
Awful, but I remember similar issues on Dell and an HP. It’s an issue with the device driver or some “value add” driver control software. :(
> Combine this with the fact that most home users don’t care about good quality or even know what it is, and you have the current situation.
It sounds apt. But... There is an absolutely thriving market for keyboards and mice.
For both, conglomerates like logitech and microsoft are selling both what you describe as 'crap', as well as higher end stuff that tries to care about quality. Possibly not in the way you think is most important, but certainly a Logitech MX Master3 keyboard retailing at >$100 is not a cheap piece of crap. The letters aren't inked on, for example, thus ensuring they don't rub off particularly easily. Not a feature that is advertised or is likely to show up in a review. The kind of quality move that doesn't make sense if the market is just 'assholes selling crap to idiots'.
Keyboards are even more interesting; a lively indie market for custom-built usually mechanical keyboards, supported by parts manufacturers where price isn't particularly important.
I agree, though - the webcam market is quite a mess. So, what's the explanation for that? Why do keyboards and mice not fall under your 'assholes selling crap to idiots' rule?
The problem is that there's only so many companies that truly design and manufacture photographic sensors, lenses and LCD panels. And all the downstream "brands" that assemble this technology into cheap plastic cases to sell to consumers can only do so much to differentiate. Add neon lights for gamers. Make it look dull for business users. Etc. They also sell TVs and have thousands of other SKUs, so they really don't care about any individual product.
Apple is both incentivized (due to their ongoing customer relationships) and able to break out of this mold because they:
a) Produce a tighter number of SKUs
and
b) Do enough volume to control and change what the original equipment manufacturers are producing
You think that complete vertical integration will improve product quality?
The qualities I value however are freedom, security, and privacy.
In that lens, the quality of Apple is very poor.
They cost multiple thousands (or tens of thousands for reference monitors with built-in calibration and Dolby Vision certification).
Grab something like the i1Display Studio to calibrate and it'll be golden for anyone who doesn't need a hardware LUT or built-in calibration.
Meaning the only people buying it are top tier youtubers
I ended up going with a budget option, no local-dimming. It's frustrating how behind, how stagnant, computer displays are. I don't want to sit in front of a 48 inch OLED tv, too big, not high enough dpi, but I feel like I'm throwing money at bad products trying to buy a computer monitor. At least there are some fair budget options (Pixio PX275h 95Hz 4k, $250, doing ok).
I find the video flattering (camera angle/focal length?)
Cisco had some impressive cameras in their older Telepresence products: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/collaboration-endpoint...
But the Cisco TelePresence Precision 60 Camera CTS-P60-K9 ist Ethernet Only and needs prohibitivily expensive hardware to work with.
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/collaborat...
Next up is probably the Logitech PTZ Pro 2 or Rally
https://www.logitech.com/en-roeu/product/rally-ultra-hd-ptz-...
First try to improve lighting and audio.
Any camera will look bad in bad lighting. It is always better to first improve your lighting before you invest in a new camera. Use high CRI lightbulbs and ensure even source color temperature in your room (ie. all lightbulbs should be emitting same color temperature).
Audio is also very important. It is processed by different parts of brain and we don't put so much attention to it but the quality will influence the other person, subconsciously. Also, audio is how the information is being passed.
A better camera will be able to better compensate for bad lighting, but that doesn’t make the lighting good, and good lighting will improve the results of both. That’s why pro mage capturers (photogs and camera crews) spend a lot of time on getting the lighting as good as possible.
Most webcams including the ones in laptop can provide decent quality image if there is ample amount of good light on the subject.
Quantity of light you can make up with higher gain (ISO) and higher available dynamic range also helps, as you mentioned.
Quality of light is determined entirely outside the camera, and better gear does not help much if at all. For photography, the quality matters countless times more than quantity, usually. I would argue the same is true for video/webcam.
This is what people don't get, and so hobbyists end up with $5k in gear, taking terrible photos. It's similar to when videographers don't put effort into their sound.
This makes it a question of how and what to light, not how much. The latter would be a matter of adjusting gain in-camera, in Post-Processing, or simply turning existing lighting up. But the former part is the important, and difficult, one.
If we don't have enough light in a scene, we need to raise ISO for a given camera and that can easily make scene look bad. For other camera with bigger and less noisier sensor, brighter lens there can be enough light and it can look very good. I can imagine that there are cases, where increasing amount of light will only improve picture for a cheap camera.
If the light is plentiful and bad, cheap camera can produce abysmal results with parts of the image completely washed white in one part, and very dark in other parts. Good sensor with high dynamic range will produce much better results. Of course, improving the light will improve both results.
But if you compare good camera in bad lighting and bad camera with good lighting the bad camera will almost always win unless it is really, really shitty.
It is also usually much cheaper to improve lighting. If your face is a shadow while the rest of the room is brightly lit there is only so much that the camera can do, regardless of how much you invest in it.
It takes a lot of work to beat natural light coming from your window. If you have restricted budget and can choose the time when you record, this is a very good option that I always recommend to people I talk to.
On the other hand, when you do remote work you don't choose the time. Also, you will probably have other considerations for your desk placement. In the end it is much more important that you feel comfortable when working at your desk than to have good lighting in your webcam for your coworkers.
So, if you like to sit front to the window then sure, go on. But if that would make you uncomfortable then I don't think it is worth it.
I'm experimenting with moving my desk but the trial and error is a pita.
Did you know that most of people in Canada live at the lattitude of Croatia or south of it?
I think my favorite tidbit is that Rome and Boston are at the same latitude.
The other option would be to not face the window, but then you have bright daylight shining onto your monitors instead.
But yes, in general, I have the same problem. It doesn't matter how well I see you if I can't understand what you are saying.
Also understand that real time compression is different from offline compression. To compress well it requires a huge amount of CPU. Real time compression results in higher bandwidth for the same image quality but more typically less quality for the same bandwidth.
- buy two large sheets of white styrofoam (1m x 0.5m or bigger)
- buy two cheap bright floodlights (the brighter the better)
- get some mounting materials (eg. wood and screws, or cardboard and duct tape)
- Place the two styrofoam plates right and left behind your laptop.
- point the floodlights at the styrofoam, carefully positioning them so they are not in the picture
Enjoy beautiful bright soft light. Optionally add a 3rd floodlight that shines on you from the side/from behind for highlights, and optionally another one to illuminate the background as needed.
Now you'll look amazing even with the cheapest, crappiest webcam.
If you just want soft light, bounce it off anything you have on hand.
When I looked into it a couple of years ago a minimum set of two strobes, mounts and a reflector would have cost more than 300€.
Soft lighting is a result of geometry. You can use very huge source far away from you or smaller but very close.
You also need to pay attention to how the light is scattered and that the direct light is not shining on your face. I have asked my wife to make half a dozen covers for them from a white material. They have a spot in the middle that blocks direct light from the bulb. I use a number of covers on each depending on how much I want to attenuate the lighting.
I also use a very small, cheap 5 watt high CRI, 6400K lightbulb in each. I use same kind of bulbs from same manufacturer for overhead light and for my desk lamp. I have separate desk lamps for 6400K light and 4000K light (which is what I like to use when I work).
The total cost is something on the order of 150 PLN or 40 USD plus a favor to my wife.
Edit: I just read your comment again and realized that you are putting the light really close to your face. I guess that's a way to get away with low power lights.
I am not a model and am not used to have such bright light source so close to my face. I had to attenuate it because then it is just too uncomfortable but also to match light level on my face with that of the background.
And it's so much nicer now! It's amazing what light can do to a room.
I think most homes should have an order of magnitude more light.
Much better alternative - if you have a window, set up your desk so you face towards it. It’s an automatic soft box and you get to look out the window.
But for example, if you are a teacher, or an instructor, or if you have a video meeting with important customers, you may want to put some more effort into presenting yourself. And the best bang for the buck is improving lighting.
Sitting in front of a window is a nice solution for an overcast day, but it doesn't work after sunset (currently around 4PM where I live) or on a sunny day with hard light. Unlike styrofoam boards, it's also hard to control the light because you can't move the window.
I'm not suggesting everyone should do what I said. I was just sharing a possible solution if you want to make good looking video.
I just bought the cheapest, crappiest webcam - a Trust Exis Webcam[1] - and I can assure you that nothing could ever look amazing viewed through that 480p blurry POS no matter what you do.
If you want cheap and crappy, I strongly recommend going for something slightly less cheap and crappy than this one.
[1] https://www.trust.com/en/product/17003-exis-webcam-black-sil...
As a service to the readers who aren't familiar with the term:
"The Color Rendering Index (CRI) measures the ability of a light source to bring out the true colors of an object. Without a high CRI light source, objects can appear faded, dull or inaccurate. "
On your side monitor(s), set a couple of desktops with plain white, pink, and beige backgrounds. When you're on video, switch to the blank backgrounds to use as a soft fill light.
Also, don’t be the person with the overly-complicated webcam setup who ends up delaying every other meeting while they fiddle with cables, tripods, camera batteries, overheating cameras, cameras going into standby and so on. Having crisp images doesn’t matter if your always late or frazzled because you had to tend to your perfect webcam setup.
Easiest thing is using a cheap headset microphone. Advanced noice cancellation algorithms with a great microphone placed far away can't complete with the physics of having a mic close to your month.
Since publishing, I also found Webcam Settings, an app for Mac that lets you adjust specific settings on UVC webcams. I use it to correct the horrible auto white balance on my C920 (naturally looks way too blue).
I just wish Apple would make a new version of their iSight camera. Something with a similar physical shape with a cropped DSLR sensor and a fast lens. Basically, same quality as a mirrorless with a fixed f/2 lens but in a single small package.
1 - https://jonpurdy.com/2020/03/how-to-improve-your-zoomskype-t...
The only cost-viable methods to get 'broadcast quality' imagery for streaming/recording right now is to buy a second hand DLSR or mirrorless camera that has 'clean' HDMI out that works without the camera auto-shutting down after X amount of time. There are a few sites out there that list the preferable models[1]. I've got a couple of old Canon DSLRs (That don't do clean HDMI) and a load of lenses, so I've been watching Ebay for a newer model Canon DSLR that I can afford. The lowest cost Canon DSLR body I've seen with unrestricted clean HDMI or that can take the Magic Lantern[2] firmware is about £150.
However... You also need a HDMI-to-USB dongle. This converts the cameras HDMI output into a standard USB Webcam input. I've already got an Elgato CamLink[3] (bought for a different reason a couple of years ago), but you can get cheap China knockoffs for about £15, I don't know how good they are though. My Camlink cost WAY more than that, so I have my doubts about the knockoff quality.
Finally, you need good audio capture that importantly is in sync with the picture. The HDMI to USB conversion adds a tiny delay to the image which can put your audio out of sync if you are using a standard USB microphone. Good software like OBS[4] can correct for this though.
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[1] https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/cam-link/camera-check
It was usable for video calls, but I had problems with reliability (old battery in Gopro, and even if it was permanently connected to power source, it charged only when I turned it on -- which usually was when I wanted to have a call).
They are so-so. Well, they are much-much better than any webcam, of course, but 1080p is almost the same as 720p on them. So as a budget thingie it'll work, but Elgato's adapter is much better, of course.
I saw a video where Elgato Camlink opened up, is just a chinese card repackaged with the Elgato logo, 99% similar internally to the cheap knockoffs.
Can't find it again to link it to...
8 layer pcb with custom fpga hardware, doesnt look all that cheap chinese knockoff to me
Can't find the video atm, or remember what product it did show, but it was posted in the last 2-3 months and it concerned a similarly on-demand item -- and the "repackaging" brand was respected by creators...
- The lens you use if crucial. A nice and fast prime portrait lens (20-50mm f1.4 or something) will make a huge difference with indoor light and give you nice bokeh/blurred background.
- Good quality lighting is essential. El Gato have a good, but again expensive, key light you can use as your primary source of light, but you might need side-lights and back-lights too.
For audio, I use my Airpods. Great setup for meetings. Latency is good enough IMO.
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https://www.panasonic.com/global/consumer/lumix/lumix_webcam...
It's available for Windows and macOS. The Mac version seems to have more issues with various apps than the Windows version at the moment.
Beer Webcam I’ve ever had.
Turns out that processing is still being done by the Macbook.
I've been using the EOS R as my webcam with the RF 35mm F1.8 lens and it's working pretty great. I just hook it up with the USB-C cable and it shows up as a webcam.
The only annoyance that I haven't been able to get around yet is switching batteries. There's a Kickstarter project[2] for a battery that is hot-swappable, but among those features it also allows you to just use the power while plugged in, which I'm eager to try out.
I haven't tested the audio quality of the camera, so I can't say much about that. I've always just used my headset. I would expect it to be somewhere between meh and ok-ish. Of course you could invest in a proper mic plugged into the Camera[3].
I have it set up on a tripod behind my desk. One thing I have been considering is getting some kind of a monitor arm style setup for the Camera, but so far I haven't found such a product.
The setup of course is quite expensive depending on the Camera, but I already had the camera and tripod since I do photography as a hobby, so I was pleasantly surprised when Canon came out with the webcam utility.
Is it worth it? Probably not if you just want something that works all the time. I mostly use the camera to take photos, so I have to re-mount it every time I come back from shooting, and keep the batteries charged, etc. but people do notice and it's fun to see their reactions and getting accused of being a YouTuber every once in a while.
[1] https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/support/se...
[2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/x-tra/the-camera-batter...
And for anything I'm streaming I'm frankly more likely to have issues because my Internet upload sputters than anything to do with the camera. And with the Logitech webcam attached to my monitor, the whole thing "just works." If I had a newer model of Canon, I might have tried it but as it is I'd need to buy a converter.
I can't vouch for it yet, but hope it arrives and does the job. There's other similar products in other sizes by other brands.
(The Sony α6100 is also quite happy to run on USB power indefinitely, no fancy battery arrangement needed. I’ve used it thus for multi-hour webcam sessions, and plugged into a wall charger for multi-hour recordings, where its battery would otherwise be depleted after about 100 minutes.)
Another thing to be aware of when using fancy cameras like this is the latency: you’ll get added latency of 100–400ms, which is easily into the disconcerting zone if audio and video are out of sync by that much, so you may need to do things like add a corresponding delay on the audio, if that’s connected to the computer directly (which will give much lower latency). OBS Studio can do this. I don’t yet have an HDMI capture card, so I’m not certain about it, but the impression I’ve received is that latency will be much lower with a decent capture card than the USB/PTP approach, though still probably higher than your webcam.
I haven't seen any noticeable delay in the footage so far, but now that you mention it, I'll definitely keep an eye on that.
The EOS R can draw some power from USB, but it doesn't seem to be nearly enough, or it doesn't work while recording or something.
Sony also updated their software in august and now support using their cameras as webcams without a capture card.
I vaguely remember reading about a video card that had more RAM than it was able to address.
https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-radeon-rx-480-4gb-to-8...
Definitely not that; the concept was that you had a large amount of RAM you could advertise on the box, but the card was unable to use the RAM. You're describing the opposite, the card has a large amount of RAM that is advertised as a smaller amount.
You can also just use your phone's main camera, the quality is up there with rather expensive webcams (even for midrange phones these days), add some better lighting and you're set.
RE those chinese knockoff dongles, I got one for £8 off ebay, use it for Pi Zero stuff occasionally and the lag isn't bad at all tbh. I'd guess somewhere between 250ms and 500ms but it maybe gets worse at larger resolutions.
I don't know how to further qualify it, you expect it to convert HDMI into USB and it does it. The resulting quality is amazing. So it performs its function.
Erm, no. Camo Studio with iPhone XS I am now using has DSLR-awesome picture, above any webcam on the market. And iPhone's BPM for camera sensor and ISP is probably in 10s of dollars. I want to buy this from kickstarter yesterday :).
You can’t buy a good webcam because the number of people willing to pay a lot of money for a high end webcam is very small.
At the lower end, people are satisfied with their built in laptop parts or a cheap webcam that sits on top of their monitor.
At the high end, people go down the rabbit hole of buying a do-everything mirrorless camera that they can use for so much more than just a webcam.
A high end webcam would have to be cheap enough that the first group doesn’t mind spending a bit more, but not so expensive that the enthusiast target audience just decides to buy a full-featured mirror less camera instead.
Granted, there is a lot of room for improvement in that budgetary middle ground, but how many people actually care? Common webcams actually perform decently when given proper lighting conditions. We’re not streaming high-bitrate 1080p H.265 on our 5-person Zoom calls. After compression and denoising the extra sharpness and low noise of a high end camera doesn’t add much benefit.
Enthusiasts are a difficult group to market to because they have extremely high expectations. They’d also rather spend weeks scouring the Internet for the perfect deal on a used mirrorless camera than to spend a dollar more than necessary to buy a high-end webcam.
This was my experience exactly after testing different setups. I still use my Lumix GX8 for photography and home videos, but it wasn't even close to worth the trouble of maintaining the setup compared to a ~$100 Logitech option that I leave on top the monitor with good lighting and plug in via usb hub as needed.
Disclaimer: I am that brother referred in the article. :)
I bought one of these for using with my lab microscope since the alternatives from thorlabs was 10x more expensive for no reason. It worked fine for a year then it stopped working. Maybe I spillled something on it? Who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Are you playing with it in a garage or in an academic / industrial setting?
I'm not yet ready to start but my goal is to try and set up an actually productive garage lab - maybe use some neighbouring univ core facility on occasion but not to set up a lab there. Not a fan of academia in general and hope to not contribute money/ideology towards perpetuating that ponzi scheme!
I'd say that for most real scientists, it makes more sense to raise the funding to buy a professional scope because a lot of the dumbness is engineered out so scientists can just sit down and be productive.
Most of these [machine vision] cameras will communicate using genicam, so you can use libraries like Aravis and maybe there's a way of getting that to talk to V4L.
If you already own one, then it might be an option. But buying a GoPro to get a better webcam doesn't really make sense.
Plus for many cameras you need to capture their video output, i.e. USB is not enough (through that currently changes). So you need a capture chip with low latency or else things are bad for "life" usage. This is often another 60-130€ for something decent if brought anew.
Plus they don't have a monitor clip so you need buy an additional stand.
Sure you can buy used parts but then you also need to compare it with used part prices for webcams which normally (i.e. non Covid19) are also lower.
I mean a Sony a5100 with usable objective currently sells new for ~US$700 but you can probably get it new for that price with capture card and stand if you buy clever and we ignore Covid19 for fairness.
(And even used you are still far above 250€ for any recent decently usable mirror less camera with objective in my experience.)
It has great linux support and works great with OBS (and its chroma key filter)
I tried it with my phone and latencies made it unusable for video-conference usages. Given that this is my main usage reasonable low latenzies are for me much more important then super good image quality. So when I had to buy one recently I ended up with a ~70€ not super good but not bad webcam. I thing normally I might have bought something like a C920 but prices-return ratio was just madness when I bought (sight, Covid19 madness ;=) )
I've never seen a <$300 Moto phone match a $100 Logitech webcam.
https://www.amazon.com/BLU-Studio-GSM-Unlocked-Smartphone/dp...
There is one for $70 on amazon that might be a contender. I'm sure if I searched aliexpress or something I could find something better for even cheaper.
Main thing real cameras are better at is bokeh, but you won’t get that in a webcam. And software can passably fake it these days.
[1]: app that gives nice clean hdmi output, and has decent color/brightness controls
The number of people willing to pay significant money for a high end webcam was very small. Now my parents and their friends are talking about better lighting and camera angles.
It seems like this industry is unusually ripe for a "better webcam" that "just works"
It's rather mind-blowing that back then its 640×480-pixel VGA resolution was considered good.
And while there is certainly room for improvement with typical webcams: the problem is in many cases not the camera, but the conditions under which it operates. Low light, shooting against the light, smeared laptop lenses, weird angles (not eye level), weird perspective framing, bad combination of light and framerates, mixed light temperatures, low CRI lighting, etc. If you take an 40k€ Arri and a 20k€ Zeiss Prime and do all of the above the result will still look more or less crappy.
Making a good looking image that feels natural is work, and while the camera is an important cog in the machine, it alone won't do wonders. The whole physical space around the motive needs to be arranged the right way, light fixtures that can cost a ton as well are set up, a whole truckload of grip is placed etc.
IMO we will get photorealistic realtime avatars with cinematic lighting before we will get cameras that create better pictures on their own. Or the crappy webcam pictures are filtered in ways that make them look acceptable etc.
Making a good picture involves realising how somebody looks and how they want to be seen and get them closer to that goal, it is not something where one size fits all.
All this is true, yet the difference between a bad laptop webcam and a high-end phone front camera is huge.
The Surface machines from Microsoft actually stand out in this regard. Because the brains of the machine are in the same section as the screen and camera, they are a lot thicker and can put in pretty decent camera modules.
Keeping in mind this is for a feature that most people actually don't care about.
Take that $15 and apply to 8 other things. The memory. The speaker. The keyboard. Your $500 laptop is now $600. Your competitor is still $500. You lose.
There's probably a good opportunity for home office external displays to incorporate smartphone cameras, studio mikes, and maybe even lighting elements to help people look good while working from home.
companies that are crushed by demand for existing products, and dealing with covid-related supply chain issues, and long-term uncertainty about demand aren't going to have a lot of luck getting a new high-end product out in <9 months.
among other reasons, getting these sorts of things made usually requires some travel by the engineers to the manufacturing/assembly facility to sort out problems.
it might need a mount to be properly positionned, but that would be the only IRL hurdle. On the software front I don’t know how good the current options are, but fixing bugs should be doable.
Personally I don't think they'll even take half of this market - it means you can't fiddle with your phone while on a call.
- You need to fiddle with your phone (which is probably mounted to a monitor?) any time you want to turn on your webcam
- There's a perceptible lag on the final video, not ideal
- Phone needs an external power source, charging-over-USB usually isn't enough to power a phone with an always-on camera
- The phone will get hot, as it's not designed to run camera constantly
- For Android, your best option is to stream video over USB, which means enabling ADB and developer settings, which is inherently insecure. It also makes the charging problem above trickier, as phones usually only have the one port.
Honestly the best phone-based solution right now is to join the meeting twice - once on your personal phone for sending video, and once on your computer for sending/receiving audio/screenshares.
I Skype with family a couple of times a week. I'd gladly pay another $100-200 for a better integrated webcam.
Now with everyone working remotely I could see a quality demand happening but no where near the interest in phone cams.
I've had success using my iPhone for video capture via OBS. The setup was a bit fiddly, but still only took an hour-ish to try this approach by downloading and installing OBS, figuring out I needed a virtualcam plugin, finding it and fiddling w config, creating a dirt-simple "scene", and enabling it for use in Zoom. This is on an iPhone X (iOS 14.2), and Catalina (macOS 10.15.7).
Incidentally the same is true for audio: You can get what easily passes as "studio level" audio quality out of a 20$ microphone and free processing plugins these days – as long as someone or something is making the right operational choices during recording and processing.
Making good choices in absence of right answers is the hard thing about creative work.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_puller#:~:text=A%20foc....
Short answer is you're wrong, even the latest dslrs are miles and miles from those high end solution in nearly all scenarios (discounting ultra ISO lightless shooting that no one does for anything beyond Vimeo demo reels). DSLR footage looks similar to the untrained eye but falls apart in even moderately difficult situations even when shot with off camera recorders costing thousands to clean video videos, which invalidates your point anyway.
The same is true for the mid tier solutions like blackmagic pocket or ursa. I can get the footage to cut seamlessly with an Alexa, but it's much more work to make it look good and has deal breaker technical issues in many more pressing scenarios.
For literally anything else you might be concerned about - i.e.: what most people will care about when shooting, the image out of a DSLR is infinitely better. I'm not addressing better to grade, since obviously it's both compressed and stored at much lower bit depth and file size (these are all good things in a home context). I'm talking about sharpness, autofocus, and low light performance (including colour accuracy in extreme low light). These are inarguably better on DSLR. For heavens sake you can get reasonable footage out of an A7Siii at 12,800 ISO.
You're looking through the wrong end of the telescope here - i.e.: accuracy and manipulability in a situation with a post budget and crew. I'm speaking to appropriateness for real time streaming and home recording with zero post. You literally can't get HDMI out of an ARRI. It's completely inappropriate for this purpose.
So to make a crude example - even if you could set up the Arri for this purpose - streaming in Fuji Eterna or Sony S-Cinetone from home will look infinitely better than unprocessed Rec.9 from the Arri, for 99% of purposes.
We're talking about completely different things. You're like an F1 driver mocking the suspension and ABS on a family saloon. No one should ever drive your F1 on the road, whatever its obvious benefits for the specific situations it's perfect in. For one thing it costs multiple times the price of the best possible family car. For another it requires a trained crew. And so on...
But since nobody cares that actor's aren't wearing makeup at home right now, they could just do the safe thing and not do any of that and the actor can do the interview the way they normally appear in real life. Indeed, it may actually be worse PR to have the actor have a professional studio setup in their home, because then people may ask why the studio risked the health of so many people for something so unnecessary.
TV stations did have crew set up home studios for anchors and weatherpeeps, complete with remote links to the studios video in-feed, but the difference is that anchors and weatherpeeps will be on the air almost every day, for hours at a time.
A agree with your observations. Is photography 101: you need good light and clean gear.
I was one of 16 people on a videoconference yesterday. We all have the same MacBook Pros, so all the same cameras. Some people looked awesome. Some people looked awful.
For me though its the audio. I hate listening to people on speaker so much. Get a headset or at least a good mic, it isn't expensive.
"It's the lens stupid"... is often true for bad images. More pixels (or even larger film) won't gain you that much, but more light will help with focus, contrast, saturation, noise etc.
Really, you could also say, "it's the lighting stupid"... but better lighting is a bit harder to set up than a larger lens. The cost can be moderate to make it really good. On the other hand making it just suck less, it usually pretty cheap. Thus the ring light you see suggested everywhere.
What amazes me is how good our eye is so that we don't notice terrible lighting.
I really, really wish I could get the calibre of A/V hardware in my high end phone as a separate device to plug into my computer. I did buy a nice microphone so I'm halfway there, but the webcam problem remains.
Some examples are EpoCam, Camo, NDI Camera, etc.
The real problem I'm trying to solve is being able to use my phone while running a zoom, though!
I recently started taking Zoom calls in my office on my desktop, and didn’t have a webcam at all. I found EpocCam and used it on my iPhone X, but quickly pulled out my wife’s retired Galaxy S7 to use for this purpose.
At this point you can get a used S7 on eBay for ~$60. That’s cheaper than a webcam with similar image quality, and you can use the phone for other projects if that’s your thing.
I might try to pick up a spare phone for cheap somewhere as you suggest.
But having a camera that takes in more light, everything else equal, can make a big difference all by itself.
A better camera would be way down the list for me.
Top of the list would be a light panel and some rudimentary adjustable grip for it. Lighting changes, so over powering ambient light a bit with a strong diffuse light source is going to make the cameras life easier
A better-quality camera for my laptop would turn my Zoom quality from "garbage" to "satisfactory". Yes, if I wanted to go from there to "movie quality" I'd have to invest in better lighting and other things, but that's not important enough to me to go to that bother. A better-quality camera (built into my laptop; I don't want to have yet another peripheral with yet another cable) would be something I'd happily pay for.
However, even with some minimal effort on lighting (turning off lights behind me, keeping an overhead light and a light somewhat in front of me), my Zoom calls still look like shit (as do most of my co-workers', who are mostly using Macs).
Now, Google has put a lot of work into my phone's camera, work that I doubt Dell has put into the little built-in webcam on my laptop. But I doubt the camera in my phone is a significant part of the phone's BOM cost (though maybe I'm wrong about this). Would my laptop cost that much more if some more attention was paid to its integrated webcam?
And then Zoom is compressing the hell out of the video and is likely destroying quality in several places in the pipeline.
I agree that lighting is important, but I don't think it explains all that much of the issue we're talking about here. The camera hardware sucks, and the software pipeline is optimized for reliable delivery, not quality.
I'm pretty sure the situation is the same on ChromeOS and Macs. And I've seen that webcams these days also tend to be pretty plug-and-play on Windows.
These are already serving the Youtuber market, the same way that podcasters enjoy Blue Yetis. Which makes me wonder, what cameras are Youtubers using?
I got the LG Meetup for my living room at the start of Covid and it's mostly an overpriced disappointment. I also had to get the external mic because the built in one doesn't have the range advertised (they actually advertise two different numbers).
I wanted something I could just plug into my TV PC to use for video chat. The Rally setup has the PTZ camera I wanted, but requires two external boxes which (as far as I can tell) serve no necessary purpose other than bad design.
In hindsight the PTZ rally camera with an unrelated third party mic would probably have been the best bet. I would have thought El Gato would come out with some high quality webcam eventually.
iPads are taking over. You can get pretty amazing image quality with a new iPad Air or Pro. You can even get rigs with gimbals, lighting, and external mics for almost any budget.
I looked all over for one and it doesn’t exist. The mirrorless camera solution sucks because there’s not an obvious winner there either (and you usually need a capture card/camlink to convert the output from the camera).
The room scale ones like the LG meetup are overpriced and generally awful, the PTZ versions from them are even more expensive, use proprietary connectors for the mics and require a host of unnecessary external boxes.
The Facebook portal TV is a great product for most people, but I just want something like that I can plug into a PC.
There’s a vacuum in this market. The current options are either low quality, overpriced enterprise stuff or dealing with the hassle of a mirror less cam setup.
Early on in the pandemic the major mirrorless camera providers (I believe at least Sony[1], Fujifilm[2], Canon[3], and Nikon[4]) all released software that lets you use any of their relatively recent cameras as webcams with the regular USB transfer/charging cable. A separate capture card is no longer a necessity.
[1] https://imagingedge.sony.net/en-us/ie-webcam.html
[2] https://fujifilm-x.com/global/products/software/x-webcam/
[3] https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/support/se...
[4] https://downloadcenter.nikonimglib.com/en/products/548/Webca...
The obvious solution is a camera mode in which it presents itself over USB as a webcam… As far as I know no "real" camera at any price does this.
I solve the problem with a Camlink, but it really should not be necessary.
Now, I'm not sure it's a great idea to actually present myself in such find detail ;). But it was fun to set up.
There are! Fujifilm X-A7, Fujifilm X-T200, and Sigma fp are three mirrorless cameras that support UVC. And if you classify action cameras as "real" cameras too, the Insta360 ONE R also supports this.
Note that you may have to update the firmware and put the camera in webcam mode to get this to work.
That’s it - the software options today are bad.
It sets facts that there is no product in the market, there is A: "I do not care about anything, so I will buy a webcam" and B: "i care a little so i will spend $1000 instead of $300 on a phone with a integrated good camera" and C: "i will spend $10k on a DSLR and use as a webcam"
Then it measures the market size for A and ignores B and C, which are the actual market they will sell to!
- most work applications don’t benefit from the quality
- most people use smartphones and tablets as daily drivers
- photo/video enthusiasts already own cameras that can be put into service.
With (1) a virus that's going to keep mutating and require regular vaccine updates, (2) the current vaccines with two separated shots and unpleasant side effects, and (3) people ditching their masks even more now that vaccines are in the picture, I'm guessing there's enough uncertainty that people and companies with the money to buy down risk will still be interested for quite some time.
Though it'll still be competing with better lighting setups and recommendations for people to just videoconference from their cell phones. I wouldn't want to risk my capital on it, even though I'm pretty frustrated with my webcams' low quality.
If the front-facing camera on their laptop or tablet doesn't cut it, they should use the rear-facing camera on their phone, and put the rest of their effort into lighting and setup.
And the subset that is not easily fooled by proclaimed premium versions of the same cheap junk is even smaller.
I finally found a decent one on wayfair for 60.
I am pretty sure we could easily get 4k recording with decent, artificial depth-of-field (LIDAR & all) under decent lighting conditions (which is why this can be done cheap) at a price point of 100 to 200$. Just nobody seems to be doing it.
And yeah we definitely do stream 1080p over meetings and most people are always like "Oh wow, what kind of webcam are you using". That's for my years old logitech... The bitrates are pretty low, even for 4k. You can definitely have a couple of those over almost any current internet connection without issues.
My main gripe is depth-of-field. Add some LIDAR and I am happy. Apple webcam anyone?
And hence the problem. Now you have a camera is dependent on custom drivers deeply entwined with your OS that are a security risk. It also isn't likely to have usable drivers five years down the line.
I can see the argument that the market for mid-range webcams must be pretty small, as the ~$100 range is ok for most people
No, they don't: https://www.adorama.com/ifjxt200sk.html
And that's a new, relatively expensive model.
Generally, this means "a long time". I've been waiting 6 months for a recommended underwater camera, still nada.
You would think there would be a secondary market for all of the fancy phone cameras now being made, but sticking one in a box with a USB connector hanging out the bottom (or Bluetooth) seems like too much of an ask when you can just put an absolute garbage 720p sensor in the same box and save a few bucks.
I get microphones have a lot of design/testing that might justify it. But all the interfacing gear seems ridiculous.
If the market won’t bear the price then people or companies able or willing to bear the development risk will shrink, or in this case maybe never develop.
As for audio interfaces: if you don't want one, don't buy one, get the same mix as USB version instead of XLR, and done.
Right, even on my higher end webcam, on a connection with 200mbps up, Zoom shows my video (set to HD), as 720p15.
Or use a Pi HQ camera which is an IMX477 (an excellent sensor at its price point) and turn it into a USB webcam with a Pi Zero:
They are still targetting industrial and medical applications in their marketing but it's such an untapped potential. Many manufacturers, huge choice of models.
But for the most part, most streamers don't care about their little picture in the bottom 1/4 to 1/8 of the screen. Good lighting in the filming room is much more important than the camera anyway.
I’m not sure I get people’s use cases here. Ok, if you’re creating/streaming video, I get that you need a good webcam.
But for your teams’ standups, refinements etc...is video quality really an issue?
Usually I’m in a call with 5-10 others. One will be sharing a screen or we will be collaborating on a whiteboard. Other people’s webcam feeds are stamp-sized somewhere in the periphery of my vision. Most people want to hide their surroundings and will use a lame backdrop or a blur filter.
So we’re talking about spending hundreds of dollars to make your 100x100 pixel face that no one is looking at anyway a bit sharper?
I've never used it, but if you really need microphone arrays, then probably the Avaya CU360 is probably for you. Bonus: it's standalone Android so you can install all the streaming apps on the device instead of on your computer.
And, why not microphone arrays? Because echo cancelling is a nightmare technology that requires real R&D. Somebody always gets the setup wrong on conference calls. The new macs haven't been out long enough for me to trust that Apple actually solved the problem any better.
If any of your employees talk to external clients, I can absolutely see value in getting them set up with a better webcam and internet connection, and I don't think you'd want every sales rep and partner engineer spending a day futzing around with an enthusiast-grade setup.
I frequent the reddit beauty forums and hobbyist non-engineers who have zoom meetings for work are dropping $$ on Diva Lights and video filtering apps etc.
Just today driving to the carwash I passed three strip mall aesthetic places advertising fillers and botox.
I posted a tutorial on how to set up a green screen and diva light and within a week I had three coworkers order them- I joked with DVE Store that I should start getting a commission.
This makes it sound like the two requirements are in contradiction but in both you're asking for the price to be lower.
More kids today want to be “youtubers” than astronauts and almost all YouTube work is done off tower PCs.
Might not be enough a market for all brands to make one but definitely think someone’s missing a trick of being the Go Pro of streaming.
Frankly, hardware problems are hard. The laws of physics are non-negotiable, and doing what we assume to be simple tasks at scale can be crazy difficult. Solving a problem in a lab is not the same as making it at scale. That’s why you keep reading these stories about major lab discoveries that never seem to actually materialize in product.
Us software developers get used to being able to write some code, or license a library, and the problem is solved. Scale isn’t really an issue for us. If we can do it on our laptop, then we can push out our product to millions, almost overnight.
Hardware is quite a different world. We need to tool up factories, train assemblers, set up suppliers and transportation networks, negotiate dozens of contracts; even for simple projects, resolve regulatory issues (which can be quite intimidating, depending on the industry and market), establish distribution channels and create packaging. Some of these are reflected in the software world, but at a much easier-to-manage level.
Also, with software, failure usually doesn’t cost as much as it does with hardware. It’s a lot easier to pick ourselves up, dust off our lapels, and try again. Iteration is relatively easy.
One of my favorite scenes: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YlVDGmjz7eM
, and if you don't already have expertise in the webcam world, there's a good chance your product isn't going to actually be very good.
It can be as high as 100 000. No stock anywhere.
> $30k is pretty cheap from a capital expense if you're just talking about testing a market.
Yep. That's what I thought before contacting SoC vendors.
> It would be easy to spend $100k in billable hours to bring something as complicated as a webcam to market.
I'm not in the USA, engineering hours are much cheaper in my country.
There is always a way to obtain engineering samples/devkits. That's how the products in these 100,000 runs get to be.
> That's what I thought before contacting SoC vendors.
You don't buy from SoC vendors directly unless you're an enormous operation. Farnell, Mouser, DigiKey, Elfa.
Of course there is. But what's the point for me to produce a prototype if I'll have to produce hundreds of thousands of units in production with no way to sell that much?
> You don't buy from SoC vendors directly unless you're an enormous operation. Farnell, Mouser, DigiKey, Elfa.
"Your search returned no results."
BOM reduction can be tricky. Lowering your BOM makes more sense the larger your production runs, but when selecting components I tend to sort by price, then find the cheapest component that satisfies my needs. Of course, a more expensive component may allow you to skip other related circuitry, giving a cheaper overall build, so diving into datasheets is important.
Quantity is the other thing you have some control over, but lower quantity batches have higher per item costs. Setting up a pick and place for a single board takes the same amount of time as setting one up for a larger run. If your quantities are low enough eventually setup fees are likely to start being a bigger percentage. Quantity also effects BOM costs. You can easily pay 2x as much for a component at low volumes, so you may not actually save as much as you think you will.
I agree with you that 30k isn't cheap. But if you look at things historically, we've finally reached a price point for hardware, that you don't need to be a big business to even think about having consumer quality electronics. Apple started with kits 40 years ago and took investor money pretty early if I recall my history correctly. Today I expect it to be easier to bootstrap a hardware company since there's more infrastructure around bootstrapping. I've seen successful products that won't do a production run until they have a certain amount of preorders. But hardware is just always going to be fundamentally more expensive than software
Don't know where you can buy a readymade one. However, if you don't mind DIY, try our free software project showmewebcam. It uses a Pi and its HQ sensor and some software glue to make a USB webcam [1]. You'll have a wide selection of affordable lenses [2] and cases [3] that people cook up for their personal use. It's so much fun experimenting with them for different use cases.
Last time I commented here, there have been criticisms about the quality of the lens that the Pi foundation offer. We have discovered many other decent alternative lenses that help remedy the quality and distortion issue of the stock lenses. An example of a good accumulation of knowledge as we have more users and people paying more attention is the commonlands lens guide [4].
The software is very actively developed and we have a pretty supportive developers community. We try our best to have good software engineering practices so we can maintain this project in the long run. The software is designed to be modularized. It is easy to understand, build, and improve upon. I have a lot of fun building it - in fact I just finished a 5 hours coding session to address comments on the Pull Requests that I started earlier. I hope eventually it's not just another pi project for fun, the firmware has the potential to make this solution more powerful than the best webcam that money can buy, just like how openwrt is for routers.
I still have yet to record a decent demo video to demonstrate the power of the Picam but there is just too many things and too little time to get it done. Oh well...
1. https://github.com/showmewebcam/showmewebcam
2. https://github.com/showmewebcam/showmewebcam/wiki/Lenses
3. https://github.com/showmewebcam/showmewebcam/wiki/Cases
4. https://commonlands.com/blogs/camera-engineering/raspi-video...
¹ It's also over a network with uv4l because the v2 720p 60fps mode isn't supported by the uvc gadget stuff. It's a bit of a shame, but I haven't had problems with the network transfer. The biggest issue with all this is that my Zero will occasionally overheat and the video will start freezing up, and I don't have much of a solution besides "don't put it in any kind of case".
Regarding the lens, I'm using the '6mm 3MP Wide Angle Lens for Raspberry Pi HQ Camera' and I have zero problems with it. I'm hardly moving in the way I use it as a simple webcam so I have no problem with staying in focus and I just don't get what a few people are saying about distortion, I must be blind. I looked up one of the recommended alternatives, the 'Fujinon HF9HA-1B 9mm 1.4', I can only find it pre-owned on ebay shipped from China for £70 (+ a load of tax I am sure). I will happily stick with my regular lens.
>I have no problem with staying in focus and I just don't get what a few people are saying about distortion, I must be blind.
If you point it to a piece of rectangular paper you'll see the distortion. In the commonlands review link above, Max pointed that out with a picture as well.
https://support.d-imaging.sony.co.jp/app/webcam/en/download/
So there's no way to make use of high-end Sony gear for mind-blowing webcam quality, since the software is a huge bottle neck. Very disappointing and a missed opportunity (not to mention Sony was months behind Canikon and others with their software release).
> but his camera can't output a live stream into HDMI
Buy different camera.
Sony a6000/Sigma 1.4 16mm lens plus Camlink looks like this: https://twitter.com/feliciaday/status/1268379532823683072
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/834329198?t=00h09m50s
Pretty much every time new person streams/zooms with Felicia they ask about the setup to replicate it :)
> Buy different camera.
He did :)
As far as I can tell your answer is the only one that makes sense of all the comments.
Most grandparents would pay $ to be able to remote well with grandkids. Most employees would pay $$ to look professional.
But buying a good webcam wouldn't solve their broadband issues.
Our company is issuing MacBooks for workers. Turned out that internal webcam of MacBook is so crappy that even cheap 720p Logitech looks "HD" compared to it. Logi also has quite nice mic.
Another thing was that I made my workplace in the erker, facing windows, so I got plenty of light in the summer. I noticed that I got the best picture in the morning and on the sunset, when light is abundant.
So, the takeout is: get yourself not a great but just a decent webcam, figure out the lighting. And for god's sake, do not buy this clown looking mic to hang in front of you, you don't need it at all.
[0] https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/webcams/c310-hd-webc...
[0] https://www.amazon.de/Logitech-C310-720Pixel-Schwarz-Webcam/...
Post pandemic, however, webcam prices seem to have at least tripled (if not quadrupled). As I type, the C920 is going for £140. I can understand this as a supply/demand thing, but surprised that things haven't started to level out yet.
From all the video calls I had this year, people either used
* their notebook's built-in webcam that's complete garbage
* any other webcam, and their image is clear as day, or at least video quality is limited by lighting or bandwidth.
I use a relatively simple and old Logitech (C720 I believe) as webcam, and when I am in calls, I point my desk light straight at my face from just atop the webcam. This alone increases the image quality by an order of magnitude. If I would do more videoconferencing (currently only an hour or so per day, mostly with my own team) I would probably invest in a better light setup and a microphone, before I would think about upgrading my camera. Most small cheapish sensors do absolutely fine, given enough photons to work with.
I definitely cut my colleagues some slack here since many literally had to set up a home office out of nowhere.
Some had to go to the basement (and CFL lights + webcams = blergh), others just had to cram themselves into whatever corner of the house (thus also badly lit).
My experience was a delay of half a second, making it unusable for live conferencing.
I think the article is missing the obvious solution: if you can't buy a standalone webcam with as good image/sound quality as a phone, then use/make software that lets you use the phone hardware, there's no need to try to build your own camera.
I did not realize that Corsair owns Elgato.
Filmic Pro supports clean HDMI out from the rear facing cameras on iPhones and some Android phones. You do need a capture card, but if you have a Camlink or the no-name $20 USB capture card that EposVox did a positive review on, you're good to go.
On Android (I have a P20 Pro), I use a USB-C HDMI dongle meant for a Nintendo Switch, but it works with my phone plus it lets me charge the phone while using it.
Filmic also has a "remote" app (~$3, iirc) so if you have an extra mobile device, you can control the camera app remotely (since the phone you're using as a camera has its screen is pointing away from you).
Even the worst webcams go from absolutely trash to something usable if you add better lighting to you subject.
And when people start thinking over lighting you can move away from your window so you do not have that as a powerful backlight. Look out the window and the webcam will have much better results.
Reportedly, Huawei P40 Pro has an IMX700 sensor with the 1/1.33" diagonal. I didn't run the numbers for it, but it is big enough that with a bright lens it will produce bokeh.
If you are looking to use an iPhone camera for streaming/Video conferencing camo (https://reincubate.com/camo/) works well.
All of them. Brio is better, but still has much worse quality than any top smartphone.
It is pretty clear that there's no competition in the webcam market, and that the offerings have stagnated for years.
I have literally never seen anyone suggest using your webcams /laptop mic except as a last resort.
Using a laptop / web cam mic is the fourth/fifth best option - its a bit like playing Association Football (Soccer) in League Two
I like the mute button directly on the mic.
Nope. You can get a mirrorless camera set up (with mic and lights) for around $500 to $600. There are plenty of 1" compacts as well in that price range.
If you want better sound, grab the A6600 which can also sport the XLR-K2M microphone adapter.
Regarding HDMI capture: the Blackmagic DeckLink card series works just fine in a Thunderbolt case (at work I run a 2x A6000 system + external HDMI input).
And if you wanna save some cash, any $20-25 hdmi to usb capture card will work just fine. It won't give you uncompressed video, but you won't need it for this use case.
A webcam can be more compact because it does not need half the stuff thats in a mirrorless camera
I found that using my standard zoom lens is fine, the 50mm portrait lens looks better for pictures but that is overkill for a Zoom meeting! Any DSLR camera will blow a webcam out of the water even in low lighting.
Imagine the phones or cameras in the year 2010. I really think the webcam industrie is a cartel (not to say mafia).
I used to have a tiny Canon digital camera in 2003 that had better quality than this.
Under Linux, you can use guvcview to play with the settings to your liking. Here's an example command line for Zoom purposes:
v4l2-ctl --set-fmt-video=width=1280,height=720,pixelformat=MJPG --set-parm 30 --set-ctrl=contrast=32 --set-ctrl=sharpness=176 --set-ctrl=zoom_absolute=133 --set-ctrl=tilt_absolute=-36000 -d /dev/v4l/by-id/usb-046d_Logitech_BRIO_*-video-index0
For Windows, you can check out the following video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwXR27wLhoE
For webcams, the only other decent option is the Avermedia PW513, which only came out a month ago.
See also my comment here:
A webcam sitting 2-3 feet from you is not going to sound good, especially not with a dinky microphone that has to fit in a device that's 3 inches wide.
Even $2,000 cameras have poor sound quality and pretty much everyone who does semi-serious recording (Youtube, etc.) will use an external microphone.
Honestly, the classic Logitech c920 is pretty good and it's $60-90 depending on current demand. You can record at 1080p at 30 fps and as long as you have a decent light source ($20 worth of LED lights) the picture quality is quite good.
Or you can go for a Zoom Hx, those work via USB, great inbuilt mics, too.
I, like many people have an old smartphone lying around.
My Samsung S7 has better camera (front and back) and better mic than any webcam I’ve owned.
Getting a nice holder and a reliable app that could spit webcam picture out of that phone would be great.
It sounds janky (and it kinda is) but compared to some of the client/server app pairs I'd messed with earlier, it works more reliably. One plus is that I don't need to install anything on my phone since it just uses WebRTC in the browser to send the cam/mic feeds to OBS.
Of course, even once you get it set up on a tripod and pointed at your face, you will want to turn down screen brightness and keep it plugged in. It works and it works well, but your phone may get warm and drain some battery if you are using it for hours at a time. In the end I consider it a good backup option (used it when I forgot my webcam at another location) but I prefer the ease of a dedicated camera if I have the option.
A more interesting take on this space would be to try and offer the same quality as the mirrorless camera setup in a smaller and cheaper package. Upscale to a 1-inch or APS-C chip and a wide aperture lens, and you could get the blurred out background effect naturally, get an overall higher quality image. Without the need for a display and by offloading autofocusing compute to the computer, you'd be able to reduce the per-unit cost substantially below a standalone camera.
Another interesting product for this space would be a teleprompter-style monitor-camera pair that effectively lets you place the camera behind the screen. This allows the user to naturally maintain eye contact with the camera, which can marginally improve connection and trust with the human on the other side of the call. For, say, sales teams that may have to rely more and more on video calls, compared to in-person meetings, this marginal improvement could be worth a lot of money.
To me this is an obvious thing to do since Apple is so proud of its ecosystem. Especially in the time of corona when all the dslr / mirrorless camera manufacturers are releasing software to do just that.
this is only true if you buy a condenser microphone. a dynamic microphone will work reasonably fine with your onboard soundcard if you have an xlr-->1/8" trs cable.
You can get battery powered condenser mics, though, and output unbalanced XLR to 3.5mm, works fine.
[1] http://www.camera-module.com/product/8mpcameramodule/cmt-4k-...
However, the raw video can sometimes be a bit unflattering.
I would recommend using OBS as an intermediary between the webcam and other applications like Zoom or Skype. OBS has a virtual camera feature so that the output looks like just another webcam.
The reason you would do this is because OBS has powerful video filters you can overlay on top of the video feed, so that you can apply color correction and alter the brightness before sending it out. Even small changes can have a large impact on the quality of the video image quality.
I found this much more preferable to messing around with Logitech's unwieldy software.
Once C920 came back in stock (at non-scalper prices) I did pick one up and it was a modest improvement. Overall performance is just better across the board. Only real annoyance is how I have to reconfigure the video options every time I start OBS since the cam likes to revert back to auto white balance/focus/exposure. Still, it takes less than a minute to set it back to where I want it.
For lighting, I have a couple of those clamp-on utility lights that are sold at just about any hardware store. Each one has a sheet of kitchen parchment paper clipped to the housing to act as a basic diffuser. Between whatever desk lamp or sunlight I have coming in, the two clamp lights let me set up a reasonable 3-point lighting and avoid any weird shadows.
For audio, I have an old Tascam USB audio interface with 1/4" and XLR inputs along with headphone monitor out. Hooked up an old Shure vocal mic on a stand and I get quality and a pickup pattern I just couldn't touch with a headset or desktop condenser mic.
A lot of this was only affordable because I had some of the stuff (mic, USB interface) laying around already, but that was sort of the takeaway. Make use of the best stuff you already own, consider what hacky solutions you might use to fill in some gaps, and only then spend more money on a better camera, lights, etc.
Ehm, sure about that metric? Should a webcam not primarily offer good video? And why not having good audio by means of an external microphone in addition to a decent camera?
If that's the primary metric, the rest of the article is flawed.
IMHO the best setup has a dedicated camera and at least one dedicated microphone (Most people streaming use microphones or headsets, don't they? Same for radio-show/podcast hosts.).
Doesn't mean that a webcam can't have a decent microphone, but if you are going the custom route...
Of course a bigger sensor and a bigger lens (DSLR, Mirrorless, etc.) is something different.
As I've looked now, it seems that they discontinued ones with Zeiss lenses. The ones with Zeiss lenses were both low light and clarity monsters for their size.
Their highest model is Brio Pro with 3D sensing it seems. I need to see its performance. However Logi says it has a real glass lens so it shouldn't be a slouch.
Nevertheless, it's not fair to compare a lentil sized sensor with a Full 35mm, last gen mirrorless.
As to accessory webcams - there is definitely a market for high end webcams. The Logitech 920s or c or whatever was very highly rated and one of the first to disappear from shelves last spring along with their 4K model. I’m not saying it was objectively great equipment, just using it to illustrate that a webcam with high ratings will sell for a premium no problem. I don’t know about the margins for OEMs but I suspect there’s some room there when a $250 webcam is only marginally better than a $90 version.
I would easily pay $400-$700 for a “usb webcam” if it approached my iPhone camera’s quality and allowed me the control and capability of a cheap camcorder (think what a $250 Vixia comes with - manual white balance, optical zoom, adjustable frame rate, physical powered lens cover, IR remote control, tripod mountable, integrated confidence display - especially if you could leverage the USB connection to make the confidence display function as a teleprompter too). No question there’s a market for such a product. It would sell wildly in today’s market.
Relying on the mics built into a webcam seems pretty silly, though.
GoPro Hero Action Cams can be used as a good webcam[1], for instances.
They are definitely NOT cheap though - running $250 - $500 new depending on the models and about $100+ for used models on flea bay.
The latest GoPro models like Hero8 Black or Hero9 Black that doesn't have HDMI output ports but instead having USB-C output ports actually make it easier to connect to computer as a premium webcam because not only those new models don't require a HDMI video capture device to convert signals but also the USB connection is slow charging the GoPro battery! All you need to get it to work is the GoPro camera with latest firmware, the bundled USB-C to USB-A cable and a desktop app (for macOS the app is about 10MB and super easy to use.) Let me tell you the video quality so much better! (1080p instead of 720p on MacBook Pro and the camera sensor is obviously different too).
Audio-only has worked really well for my team for a few years now (my team is all remote all thr time), so it's always jaring when interfacing with the rest of the company and having people pop up with video.
Some will claim it is for charisma --> sorry, no amount of charisma is going to fix a bad cam and bad audio.
Some will claim it is more productive --> I really only need to hear your words or see your screenshare, your face moving in front of my screen is distracting.
Some will claim it is more natural --> Try looking at a whiteboard while everyone stares at you from the front. That's about what happens when you use videochat in important meetings. I don't think that's the way people used to have meetings.
Some will claim it is to read body language --> Don't depend on body language and stop assuming things from audio alone. We're adults. People will tell you when something is up.
The only argument I can't go against is bonding. But if you don't want to bond with your team past business-only, that argument is voided.
And I haven't named the cons yet. One of my pet peeves being people will start calling you over every single thing, make you repeat yourself often, misunderstand or even forget what was said in 10 minutes. You don't have that problem with asynchronous communication, and it also yanks the callee away from their flow.
Control. They want to make sure the silent people in the meeting aren't doing something else or not actually present.
It's probably why it's particularly common with managers who run meetings that are neither effectively timeboxed, limited to the essential personnel as required, nor planned well to handle an agenda that requires a meeting rather than an email or exchange of emails to handle effectively.
Sells sensors or kits to convert existing Logitech cameras, and filters/lenses you can add to them.
It's niche - but sits between an off the shelf webcam, and lashing a 'proper' camera to a USB socket.
At first I used a Panasonic DMC-GH3. There is no official way to stream the image to a PC so I ended up using a HDMI capture box (costs around $50). The image quality with a nice prime lens is fantastic. You get a blurry background and some nice bokeh, something no Logitech camera can give you and it looks great. The camera and the capture box support up to FullHD.
I recently bought a better camera, the Panasonic DC-G9. Panasonic offers a (beta) webcam software for this camera so you can use it as a 1280x720 webcam via USB 3.0. It also looks fantastic. The resolution is high enough! There is no audio though. For now i use a separate microphone.
If you care about your webcam's image quality, here's my main advice:
- Put the camera at eye height (using a small tripod)! This alone makes a big difference
- Put some light sources behind the camera and not behind the user
- If you want to use the virtual background feature of Zoom etc, use a real greenscreen behind you. They are very cheap and the quality of the virtual background with chroma keying is just so much better!
Instead, what if there was a detachable part that was in the base that contained the webcam? Then you could hang it on the top lid (like normal place) or maybe set it on a table or higher up at any angle. I guess the next issue becomes powering it and getting the data there, but maybe just have a USB cable and solve both of them. I guess this would end up to be more like a go pro in the end though.
I have had some pretty good webcams in the past (the 1080p logitechs were pretty good), but they were about $100 then. But I think there won't be something that good in a laptop because the cost will just never be worth it. I wouldn't pay for it, I'd rather spend that money on a camera that won't turn useless in a few years.
Take a few selfies with phone -> reasonable deep fake avatar that commodity 720p sensors can animate. Bonus massive bandwidth savings. I think there was a 2m paper on such research. Isn't Apple already redirecting eye gaze to mimic staring at webcam when staring at screen.
Also get a tripod and use app that turn phone into webcam, feature should be baked into OS.
Are video calls in other companies mandatory? More common than audio-only calls? Even at my previous job at a small tech startup, where the entire company was remote from day one, video chats were rare.
Company size: ~1.2k employees, ~500-600 of those are developers
With still pictures you can expose for longer and/or use multiple low quality sensors to build up enough information for software to construct a higher quality image.
With video you cannot expose for longer, and software building a picture would need to be near real-time.
So problem #1 is light... you need to get a lot more light into the sensor, but the laptop is thin and optics are large (and as glass and light, they cannot be made much smaller).
I have a good set up, but the thing I tell people who want to replicate it: Buy lights before you buy a camera... your built-in cam may be sufficient if you are well lit. Or even cheaper, if you have a desk facing a wall... there's no light source, so turn it around or face a window.
Failing improved lighting fixing it... you need a good sensor and a lens that lets in a lot of light, especially if you are going to be in a poorly lit space.
Sony produced the absolutely perfect form factor for this... https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/interchangeable-lens-came...
It's basically a sensor in a minimal body that you can mount a standard lens on and then place on a tripod (which opens up any mount / arm thing).
Why then is it not popular?
It came too early, and wasn't quite ready for always streaming video... both the software in this older revision and the hardware have issues (cooling the sensor for constant video is the problem here as it wasn't anticipated to be used to stream for 10+ hours per day and struggles beyond 30 minutes as I understand). Additionally it only has a micro-USB connection, no HDMI or USB-C... and it really needs a single USB-C that can both power and handle the video. Things it doesn't need: battery or flash - but I guess keeping them means it plausibly could be a stills camera if needed.
If that format included the equivalent of the Elgato CamLink HDMI to USB-C device and priced around $300 then I think it would be a wild success. The BOM suggests this is possible.
Sony already have a lot of the pro-streaming market along with Panasonic, but if Sony made a specialist product for home streaming then I would buy it instantly... as it would liberate my a7rii from the job.
No, and no. I am testing Reincubate Camo with my iPhone XS, and the image (together with computed portrait blur) is absolutely awesome, and several times better than any webcam tests I see. However, the set up is tedious.
First kickstarter to take an upper midrange smartphone sensor (<$40 BOM) and connect it to at least middling ISP and USB controller wins $100+ of my cash easily, and will be the best thing that happened to webcam market since its conception.
I have no idea how can Logitech sell atrocities like Brio and call them premium webcams.
And I am baffled by everyone who insist that hack from a DSLR, Elgato, and a bag of cables to keep it powered is that only possible solution. To me, this feels like the famous Dropbox comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
So it’s not a linear price scale because it is distorted at the lower end. There is no motivation for our benefactors to subsidise cameras beyond a certain quality so once you go beyond that you are paying full whack and the economics fall apart.
This principle applies pretty much right across the smart tech ecosystem.
The nice thing is though, that the stuff they are using to subsidise the expensive stuff is dirt cheap so if you’ve a little bit of smarts you can build your own gear for about a 10th of the price, but you will have to sacrifice some of the doo-dahs and bells and whistles but if what you’re going for is something that’s purely functional you will be fine. Use the money saved to buy an expensive streaming cam set up. Do the subsidising yourself.
Every webcam use lenses with dSLR equivalent focal distance of 24mm to 12mm, which fits the user's upper torso naturally when placed atop a display, but lens that wide technically isn't suited for portraits. Portraits are usually taken from a distance with lenses with narrower FOV[1], typically 50 to 90mm in 135 equivalents or 45 to 25 degrees in FOV diagonally.
So to make a "good" webcam, the first step is to give it a "longer" lens if I'm going to do it. Trying a cheap clip-on "macro zoom" lens on a existing webcam, etc.
1: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-dona...
Cascable Pro Webcam (works with many brands) https://cascable.se/pro-webcam/
Canon EOS Webcam Utility https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/support/se...
Nikon Webcam Utility https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/webcam-utility...
Sure, you'll need to rig up some kind of stand (like maybe a hands-free mount?) but once you do that you'll have a webcam with a pretty decent camera (Since you can use the rear camera)
The client software can light up the borders to designate which audio streams are active and pop an icon of a hand when someone wants to get attention.
Save the video for chatting with your friends and family.
Following some independent YouTube review this seems currently the best webcam for streaming you can get.
Through it's focused on the streaming use-case and has some design decisions which are quite good for that use-case but make it sub-par (for the price) if used for some other use-cases.
EDIT: And like other people mentioned sub-optimal lighting is often a major problem, so investing in any more expensive webcame doesn't make that much sense if you don't also invest in improving the light situation.
I read/saw some positive reviews including at least one which I don't think was buyable.
Which opens interesting questions, like if the review sample isn't the same as the normally sold version or if I misjudged that person :-(
I designed a prototype of this type of camera and I think there's a market but it's difficult to defend. You end up competing with Logitech or Canon, GoPro & Apple enter the market.
It's more likely that cell-phone quality cameras start being added to laptops and the shallow depth of field is done in software.
The reason they did not back port it to the X-T1 and X-T2, my guess, is that the T1 and T2 use much older (circa 2014) cpu/software, whereas the T3/T4 use the same family of ~2018-2020 CPU/software/sensor and were already rolling out a new major firmware update for the X-T3.
Both the C920[1] and the StreamCam[2] work well.
1 - https://www.logitech.com/en-gb/products/webcams/c920-pro-hd-...
2 - https://www.logitech.com/en-gb/products/webcams/streamcam.96...
My solution was to buy a bunch of used Playstation Eye cameras, developed by Sony for Kinect-like games on the PS3. Sony had designed it from the ground up for low-latency motion-capture, and it performed remarkably well in this application. The PS3 Eye is still popular today with DIY mocap systems [0].
aaaag
My first choice would have been a real camera (my mirrorless is a bit too old for 4k and being usable as a web cam over USB) and a real microphone (this was a good investment) and adding an extra EUR 200+ to such a setup would be nicer than the Brio, but when I travel more I'll be happy to have it.
My only criticist is, if anyone is going to do this, please just focus om the camera. Forget some neural processing chip or microphones - just get the video right. A 4K webcam that does nothing but video has value in and of itself, but if you dont nail that, all the bells and whistles don't matter.
'camera with an ugly protruding lens as a thickest part of the phone'
Never understood this attitude, give me a decent camera, I don't care how much it protrudes unless it stabs people.
I'd buy a higher end webcam if they had adjustable FOV (without software, since the software doesn't work across all OS/programs).
It is competing with environment control on price. If I can change lighting with a $10 lamp or two and clean up the space behind me then why do I need "low light capability" and shallow depth of field?
When this middle ground is marketed, it should be against the convenience of NOT having to arrange your surroundings "Just so".
What we need in high technology is a website to manifest our needs and let companies know about underserved use cases. Yes, it's pathetic that Logitech and Apple don't have compelling products in this field but, sadly, it is what it is.
1. Assume there is one point source of sound which dominates everything else
2. Input two frames of samples, s and t, and compute cross correlation: a measure of how similar they are for a given delay between samples
n(k) := sum(s(i) t(i+k)) / (s•s)(t•t)
4. Do some beamforming to improve the signal to noise ratio. This sounds complicated but basically you just shift t by k samples and average it with s.
I’m not really sure how this works if k changes over time, but I guess something could be done to change it in a more continuous way.
I also don’t really know how it works with more than two microphones or if you know the geometry of the array.
So maybe it's a matter of time until these "good" sensors reach the open market, can be bought in smaller quantities and become commoditised. Then, we may see a good upmarket webcam.
But you have to build a chip to control the damn thing over usb. I coupd not find any USB3 webcam except logitech brio
The price would be around $200 sans good audio, not that it matter anyway since in a conference I always ask for headsets. Also the setup was so good that the RPi would've been recognized as an USB camera by another RPi directly - plug'n'play.
A Pi Zero with the high def camera module is probably a decent shout too, although I've not used it.
Dunno about built in functionality, I used a plugin. MaxMSP has Kinect functionality via a plugin too, which I haven't dabbled in but looks pretty fun. There's a node library for v2 as well I believe.
IDK why the author thinks a "good" webcam should be able to do 4k, just to show one's face??
But yes, lightning is paramount.
I installed custom lightning in front of my desk and with a cheap Logitech webcam I get very good image quality.
Basic photographic lightning kits are cheap; I paid $80 7 years ago for 2 x (stand+light+bulb+umbrella) and it's still working perfectly.
I don't think it's very useful. I think it will be very problematic to sell a webcam for $250-300 that can't do 4k.
Why can't you buy a good frozen dinner? Because frozen dinners are designed to be simple and affordable meals, just like how webcams are designed to be simple and affordable image capture devices.
If you're willing to spend more for a good alternative to a webcam, buy a captured card and a camera with support for live video output. You could even use the primary camera on a smartphone.
I have it placed directly above my web cam. Since it's a line of LEDs, it doesn't cast hard shadows.
The sound would not be great, granted, but that can be easily fixed with a separate microphone connected to the PC or the phone itself, a lavalier microphone with Bluetooth etc.
Unfortunately, this is a rather bad idea from workplace security point of view. You really don't wanna be looking at a screen that's in front of a window (i.e. parallel to the window), unless you like excessive eye strain.
https://www.razer.com/streaming-cameras/razer-kiyo/RZ19-0232...
lens the size of needle tip and example images looking like ass
Wow, it sure does look like quality webcam, the only thing someone might miss is custom lens with fancy bokeh.
Edit: Watched to the end, it does fake 1080@60 by upscaling 720 :( So still a good choice if 1 you dont need 60Hz 2 dont mind being scammed by a Taiwanese company.
In this review, there are issues with the colours and the auto exposure.
https://youtu.be/wO-H3tChhQ4?t=210
Also it is unknown how well it works on Linux.
4K is absolutely not needed. You won't be streaming 4K from your home or average office space anyway. Our pipes are just not that fat yet in upstream direction.
And please, can I add another one for $50? I can easily connect it to my decent-hardware-but-shitty-camera midrange smartphone and use instead of built-in camera.
It seems like all of the professional quality stuff is not amenable to just plugging in at home. I have a Jabra speakermic thing that's passable, but not as good as something in a real conference room.
I, unfortunately, cannot wear something on or in my ears all day, or a high-quality audio setup would be easy.
It has excellent optics, and a piezo zoom. Worth every cent.
https://wyzelabs.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041605111-...
Or they buy a laptop with a decent camera and add a mic.
So your market is the niche between those groups, and those who make do with their laptop.
Not a large enough opportunity to pursue, I don’t think.
I was even thinking of making something like a teleprompter with a semi mirror but it becomes too bulky :)
Its 200€(pre lockdown) and is just a webcam on steroids.
Now I'm glad I didn't sold it. Almost anyone comments on the image quality - especially when I turned on my 4000lm daylight Phillip's Tornado
The classic Logitech C920 ($80) is an excellent true 1080p webcam. [1] It's been around for years.
Who needs better than 1080p from a webcam?
You can manually adjust focus, exposure, color temperature, shutter speed, zoom, everything you need.
Once you've got that, everything else is lighting. Most people drastically underestimate how much of photo/video quality is actually about lighting, as opposed to the camera or lens.
As for audio, if you're investing in the higher quality of an external webcam anyways, then you'll never want a microphone in the webcam. The placement is inherently bad.
You'll want either a lapel mic for normal interviews or meetings, or a podcasting mic on a desk tripod for more serious stuff. A mounted shotgun mic is a kind of in-between option too if you don't want it visible.
[1] https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/webcams/c920-pro-hd-...
Granted, the positioning is a bit annoying. If I did it more often, I'd get a tripod.
Beyond that, the best is to use a stand for a recent phone rear camera (you can use a separate account and invite the phone to your meeting).
Use an old phone for your webcam. The quality is terrific, up to 4k. You just need a phone stand.
The license subscription is more than I'd prefer to pay, but considering every passable webcam has been sold out since April, it's much cheaper than some disposable USB webcam with horrible quality.
XLR does not imply need for phantom power. Some XLR microphones do, some don't. There are XLR equipped audio cards for as little as $80.
I got a decent one for $40. The more expensive ones generally have more in/outputs and such, they're not better in sound quality.
Sure canon released an usb support for it, but all the usb cameras I've tried end up using a lot of cpu. With the capture card 0 problems.
I use Logitech BRIO Ultra HD Webcam[1] along with Headphones and very very happy for all my needs. From calls to recording training sessions and demos.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-BRIO-Conferencing-Recording-...
I wonder how easy it is to get OS to treat a GoPro as a webcam?
Instead we have clueless VCs investing their money and founders spending excessive time convincing VCs and risking their money. There's no more skin in the game.
Save yourself some time - the titular question is answered (with the obvious, unsurprising answer) in the penultimate sentence: "you can't buy a good webcam because existing players seemingly don't think it's a good opportunity, and for newcomers the market is hard to enter."
Not sure why you would want to buy a webcam
I now use a Sony ZV1 as a webcam.
bonus question: Why do you recommend that particular model?
Instead there are a billion "here's a list of things that we can get affiliate dollars for from Amazon, and we'll pretend we reviewed them" listings.
This problem has hit a lot of markets. Without a financial support for capable, credible, honest reviewers, the backbone of an industry falls apart. It becomes all about gimmicks.
So if you want a webcam the real options now are an SLR (many of them support that use) or even a video camera. In those markets there remains an extreme qualitative review system, so that new Nikon, Canon or Sony SLR or video camera had to shine.
Wirecutter?
They don't do any careful tests or write up details.
This way you save money, time and a blog post (:
He talks about phone-connected webcams using an app.