Comment by NikolaNovak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NikolaNovak | Hacker News Reader

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Agree 100% - This is why I eventually dropped it. I used to run a photography side gig, so I reused my full frame DSLR, nice portrait lens and lighting + cloth backdrop. But I had cables everywhere and multiple points of failure in the chain. Camera could overheat, software was wonky, something would get unplugged, and there was stress on the CPU at times too due to 3rd party apps required.

Overall it just wasn't worth the effort, especially once I realized nobody cared or even really noticed. Now, absolutely, many projects are worth doing for their own sake and for your own satisfaction :). But while accomplishing it brought that satisfaction, continued use on daily bases just wasn't worth it.

So I looked for a nice webcam with narrowest possible FOV (which is the opposite from what manufacturers are going for, unfortunately), put it on a tripod with ring light, and I get results that are externally undistinguishable (if not better), but FAR superior reliability.

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Note also that photographer in me wanted to do a Portrait shot with zoom in my face. Interestingly, overwhelming feedback once I actually asked real people, is that they PREFERRED a wide shot with my office visible. Made it more human and less stark/intimidating, apparently. So as ever, don't make assumptions of your user base! :)

What camera did you end up with that had a narrow FOV?

I can recommend a full-frame Canon RP ($999) with RF 35mm f1.8 lens ($449) as a relatively inexpensive narrow FOV setup.

Edited to add: Meant Narrow DOF when writing this, but both are true if you sit close to it!

OP here was referring to webcams with narrow FOVs

My bad, I read this as "narrow DOF", in which case a low f-stop helps.. Will leave the recommendation for anyone who wants a nice background blur. But perhaps go for a 50mm f1.8 if you want a narrower FOV.

"relatively inexpensive"

Thats roughly my team's budget for a laptop.

To be honest, 1.5k is a pretty decent budget for any non-gaming laptop. It's definitely a red flag to start at a company and get a bargain bin laptop, but giving out 5k laptops to every new hire is probably just being wasteful with about 3.5k. Chairs & desks are where penny pinching is an even more dreadful flaw.

If you expect someone to sit for 8 hours a day give them a good chair lest they start having back issues after two months of employment.

Amateur photographer looking to learn more here. My initial impression is that a 35mm focal length on a full-frame/35mm film equivalent sensor would have a relatively _wide_ field of view (FOV). Or do I have that backwards?

My other thought is that the suggested lens can stop down to f1.8, which would give a nice narrow depth of field (DOF) and add a pleasant background blur, but it would also be harder to stay in focus during a call. If the person on camera moves forward or backward very much at all when the lens is at f1.8, they would be pretty blurry. So perhaps they could get away with a lens that just stops down to f2.8 or so, albeit with worse low-light performance (smaller aperture, less light coming through).

But take these comments with a grain of salt. It sounds like you have a setup that works well for you.

Yeah, not enough coffee - got my DOF and FOV mixed up.

In any case I find if you sit close to your camera, 35mm is a good FOV that will fit in your head and shoulders. The background blur for f/1.8 works well if you enable Servo Autofocus with Face Detect. It will momentarily get confused if you step out of the frame and back in again, but it can track a face pretty well after that.

Just checked using a camera and you're right; a person right around "conversation distance" from the camera focusing at 35mm looks pretty natural in frame for a video call. It sounds like I underestimated modern continuous autofocus. Great info from you and the sibling comments, thanks.

Not the OP but the GP, FWIW:

On full frame I used 85mm 1.8 to get a a good FOV / DOF / proportions.

But it sat on a tripod 1.5 meters behind my computer and made the room a nightmare to navigate :D

35mm on FF would indeed be mildly wide (just on wide side of "normal" 50mm lens)

Most modern cameras have the ability to do constant autofocus in video mode, to varying degrees of quality and success. Usually they will try to follow anything that looks like a human face, or at least the brightest object in the field of view.

That said, even the greatest autofocus isn't going to be able to keep up with a person who moves around a lot at f/1.8 - so it's reasonable to stop down a bit if that's the case for your subject.

it's also dependent on the lens used.

> If the person on camera moves forward or backward very much at all when the lens is at f1.8, they would be pretty blurry.

The mirrorless EOS camera's (R series) have autofocus with face tracking which works quite well. At f1.8 you get 8cm depth of field at 1m distance so you'd have to stop down the aperture to about f4 if you want your whole head to appear sharp on video.

Hi - I assume your question is which webcam did I use for narrow FOV - for actual camera, it's trivial to pick a lens or zoom :).

I ended up getting Logitech Brio. It's expensive for a webcam, and honestly I'm a bit peeved - I don't feel I am getting my money's worth in terms of image quality. The software is also absolutely atrocious, so I don't really use it. But it is the best compromise of image quality and FOV that I could find.

(if your question was about DOF / bokeh/ blur, no webcam will do that and so far I haven't liked any software options. I just put a black collapsible photography background behind me so nothing but me is in the photo to begin with :)

I find the LogiTune software good enough for managing my Brio webcam. Certainly less buggy and frustrating on Mac than some other official software I tried previously.

https://www.logitech.com/en-us/video-collaboration/software/...

Interesting. The default seems logitech capture which immediately hits all the fans on my laptop. Wonder what the difference is... Thx!

Unfortunately, the C920s resets all its setting when losing power.

I'm using it on my home computer and my work laptop, but don't want to install the software on the work laptop. So I must live with the extremely wide FOV there.

I have a script which runs after login and after resume from sleep. It runs guvcview (Linux tool for managing webcams) and loads a saved profile that has my preferred zoom and focus settings.

Looks like I wasn't the only one confused between Logi Tune, Logitech Capture, Logitech Camera Settings, etc :O

https://www.reddit.com/r/logitech/comments/nw17w1/brio_cam_w...

I have both the 920s and the Brio. The Brio’s image is sharper and more detailed but somehow the 920s’ image is more natural.

I was underwhelmed with the Brio but I eventually got used to it. It’s not the upgrade to the 920s I had imagined it to be but it’s good enough to keep.

And yes, I used Logitune to tune as much as I could. It was horrendous out of box.

Considering Logitech hit a goldmine during pandemic induced lock-downs by selling >10 year old webcams at premium, I don't see any reason for them to innovate or at least improve their products in near term.

Perhaps we've overestimated the need-gap[1] for good quality webcams? Most people seem to be just fine with mediocre webcams for that video call in which their video is anyways going to be compressed and resized to small window if there are multiple participants.

That doesn't mean I didn't waste my time in trying to build a better webcam like others here, I tried to convert a old point-and-shoot into a webcam using CHDK firmware but I couldn't find a way to get the video stream.

[1] 'Make entry level webcam better' - https://needgap.com/problems/185-make-entry-level-webcam-bet... (Disclosure: I run this problem validation forum)

Most people yell at their computer. Preciously few people who spend 6+hrs a day on calls and meetings, get a good headset with a boom microphone. Nobody correlates the "what? Did you say something" and overlaps and garbled voices and muffled noise cancelled uni-directional simplex conversations on them not getting a company-expensed headset. Improving on the built-in laptop video is not even on the radar :D

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