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Finally made an account, just to reply to this. With newer Canon DSLR bodies you can use the Canon Webcam Utility[1] to directly get the video feed show up as a webcam, with just a USB cable.

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...

[3] https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/best-shotgun-mic/

I know a couple people who are doing the DSLR or mirrorless to HDMI->USB thing. The results are indeed nice. But, to be honest, I have a Logitech 920 webcam and some decent lighting and that handles even making video recordings pretty well. "Can't buy" seems like a stretch.

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.

If you're using it powered all the time, have you checked out the existing plug in "fake battery" options? Here's one example: https://www.amazon.com/Glorich-Replacement-Adapter-Cameras-F...

What resolution does it produce? My Sony α6100 yields only 1024×576, which is not great, though still better than any laptop webcam at 1920×1080, or mostly even a phone or tablet front-facing camera at 1920×1080.

(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'm not actually sure what resolution gets passed through the USB cable. I would assume it's either native resolution or at least 1080. But to be fair I'm mostly recording in 720p 50fps, since the 4k is cropped with the EOS R and I felt more fps is better for webcam footage (the other modes are capped at 30fps (25?) or have a crop). Besides, people don't need to see my face in more detail.

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.

Latency through a cheap chinese capture card is like a 12-17 ms for me.

To mount a camera on my desk, I'm about to purchase this "Neewer Tabletop Light Stand", and a mini ball head with standard 1/4 inch screw for angle adjustment.

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.

[1] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001657723138.html

You can buy a dummy battery with a/c adapter.

Sony also updated their software in august and now support using their cameras as webcams without a capture card.

Fuji does something similar with their cameras. I can use their webcam software and get clean video output when I connect my Xt3 via usb to my pc or laptop. No need to purchase extra unnecessary dongles.

I was quite excited to try this when Fujifilm first announced it, but then immediately dissapointed when I found out it does not support the x-t30.

Yeah, I ended up trading in my old XT1 and picked up a used XT3 at a great price which helped. It's frustrating that not all models are supported though.

Have you try to use the max aperture, and let other enjoy the bokeh? ;-)

Great comment. Another few things to add to this if you are going for more broadcast quality rather than just Zoom calls:

- 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.

I use a similar setup with a Panasonic GH5 I already had, but I bought one of those €15 Chinese HDMI capture USB UVC cards [1]. These work surprisingly well, and I've had zero issues using them for ~4 hours back-to-back Zoom meetings on my MBP. They've also received some good reviews on YouTube [2].

For audio, I use my Airpods. Great setup for meetings. Latency is good enough IMO.

--

[1]: https://www.amazon.nl/gp/product/B088ZTK56F

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daS5RHVAl2U

Panasonic released a (beta) webcam software this year. It supports the GH5 and works well. Give it a try, it's free.

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.

> you can get cheap china-knockoffs for about £12, I don't know how good they are.

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.

It's converting a digital signal (HDMI) to another digital signal. Why should there be any quality loss even if it's a cheap chinese model?

Well, because they don’t have enough processing power I guess? IDK, it’s hot all the time and image quality is lower than what I can get from a camera SD card.

>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...

https://wiki.apertus.org/index.php/Elgato_CAM_LINK_4K

8 layer pcb with custom fpga hardware, doesnt look all that cheap chinese knockoff to me

You're right, I watched this youtube video on an expensive brand name item vs several chinese knockoffs and they had the same internals -- but it probably wasn't the Camlink then.

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...

I hooked a gopro this way. Their new drivers support using them as Webcams on macos and windows.

Beer Webcam I’ve ever had.

Is this related to newer firmware or so? Because I have a gopro and the usb stream quality is only very low, compared to the HD recording facilities of these devices. If you browse the web for this, you will find (again, as in the threads here) the recommendation to use a HDMI-to-USB converter to capture the high quality HDMI stream a gopro can emit.

> Beer Webcam I’ve ever had. Sounds like you have had quite a couple...

these are trying times, ive had a couple web cans myself

Canon has webcam software for their DSLR's, although I couldn't get 1080p output out of my 750D. Quality was great, though.

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.

I have a 7$ Chinese knockoff HDMI-USB dongle, it works perfectly well even in Linux. Quality is quite good.

Just to add my own experience, I have a friend who had the Elgato Link and it died. He decided to give a $15 amazon one a try and he said it works "just as good" as the Elgato one. So I then bought my own $15 one (having never used Elgato before) and I can also say that it does the job.

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.

The cheap USB-HDMI is perfectly viable for using it as a webcam. Qualitywise you won't notice any difference through a highly compressed Zoom/Teams/Skype video. They can output 1080p30 or 720p60, which is again mostly irrelevant in the webcam situations.

I got the CamLink 4k, for use with a 4K camera (Sony AX33). Unfortunately, the HDMI out is only 1080P. So yeah while it works it doesn't feel like much of an upgrade over my aging Logitech C910.

> 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

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 :).

Any idea if the EOS M is supported for this? Last I checked Magic Lantern had no webcam type functionality but that was ages ago. If it does that's a pretty great webcam for like £100

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 have an EOS M and it works ok. I had to install a different version of Magic Lantern to get it to not auto shut off, and generally a lot of poking around in the menus. You can get battery replacement AC adapters quite cheaply and my cheap HDMI->USB works fairly well. Lag is not a problem but it introduces black bars on the left and right and in Google Meet my feed is horizontally squashed. Other video apps the picture is fine though.

> Manufacturers spouting specs like '4k' are deliberately misleading the public if the sensor and/or the lens aren't also upgraded.

I vaguely remember reading about a video card that had more RAM than it was able to address.

You may be referring to the GeForce GTX 970. It had reduced bandwidth to parts of its RAM.

Maybe the RX480? Many of the 4GB models sold were actually 8GB models with firmware locking them down.

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-radeon-rx-480-4gb-to-8...

> Many of the 4GB models sold were actually 8GB models with firmware locking them down.

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.

I have a similar setup but don't you find the latency to be bad? At least it's not good enough for video calls IMO. It's fine for streaming to an audience or recording.

With random chinese knock-off and GoPro 3, I had a latency of 10-11 frames when doing 60 fps stream.

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).

I tried to use the Elgato Camlink with my Macbook and Sony ala6400. But everytime I use it, the fans would ramp to a noisy level.

Turns out that processing is still being done by the Macbook.

I have the Elgato 4K and the Sony a6400 and my computer (NUC8 running Debian) does not overheat.

Perhaps the NUC handles thermals a lot better than the laptop. I consistently get around 4-5k RPM when connecting with Elgato Camlink.

Rumour has it that the imitation 'Camlink' products overheat and cut out. Probably solvable with the addition of a heatsink if true.

Well I'm cusrious if you're $2k DSLR gives you a better image than a 150$ webcam on zoom, facebook, skype etc... ?

Have you considered machine vision camera in your investigation?