Comment by xyzzy_plugh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xyzzy_plugh | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

This made me laugh.

> Using an iPhone as a webcam is easily the best option without dropping an excess of $1,000 for professional camera gear. Using the iPhone you already own, or a recent hand-me-down, a moderate investment in lighting, and Reincubate Camo, you can get excellent results and none of the frustration and hassle that accompanies standalone webcams.

I don't have an iPhone. So if I want to buy one that is better than any of the webcams reviewed, I'm spending a couple hundred bucks at least. Then I need to spend $50/year or so on their Camo software.

For a couple hundred bucks I can get a used Sony Alpha, OBS is free. And arguably with effort I can make the Sony look much better.

This is a stretch, of course. The average person isn't going to fuck around with OBS.

Let's think of it another way. For <$100 you can have a webcam that works. It's better than nothing. Is an iPhone plus TFA's software better? Yes. Is it better proportional to the cost? Absolutely not. I'm not even convinced it's twice as good. I have some colleagues who use Camo, happily, but as a viewer in a Zoom meeting, I don't care. They're usually the size of a postage stamp on my screen. Most folks can't even upload full resolution streams of their cheap webcams in real-time.

Camo is cool, it's great that you can use your phone as a webcam, I love it, but "Why $90 webcams aren't as good as a $1000+ iPhone" would be a better title.

For what it's worth, with the new macOS 13 and iOS 16 releases, you don't need Camo as it's built into the OS.

Of course the rest of your points still stand. The article does hinge on the user having an iPhone, and the comparison isn't entirely fair.

However I think the point of the article is to say that many people have devices on hand that will give better results than splurging on webcams which won't provide much gain

The simplicity of a normal webcam also has a huge value.

I hate waiting a few extra minutes at the beginning of a meeting while someone tries to get their complex webcam setup working. Some people can plan ahead and make it all work. Some people are always fighting with audio settings or restarting OBS or adjusting their webcam and so on. Wasted time for everyone involved.

I’m not looking forward to the new era of people messing with their iPhone mounts to their laptops to get the camera juuust right as we start every meeting.

Let’s just use the built-in webcams and get on with our meetings. Or if you want to use a fancy setup, you must have it all ready and tested before the meeting starts.

> I don't have an iPhone. So if I want to buy one that is better than any of the webcams reviewed, I'm spending a couple hundred bucks at least. T

To be fair, he reviewed an iPhone so he recommended that. I think the advice is really more like "use the existing high powered camera you have in your pocket".

Unless someone is living under a rock (at least anyone in the use-phone-as-webcam territory), they probably have an Android phone if they don't have an iPhone.

Any decent Android phone should work too. I'm sure there are many apps enabling this. While they probably have worse image quality than iPhone, they'd definitely be much better than those cheapo webcams.

Some of the Android phones are probably pretty decent too? He didn't review them, though.

> $50/year for Camo

LOL what? Is this true?

OBS camera won’t work in many MacOS programs nor will GoPro Webcam. It should be noted that the M1 MacBook Pro has a camera which is noticeably better than it used to be.

With gopro, it depends on the model and how you connect it.

I did use gopro (an older one, hero3) as a webcam, and it did work, to a point. Hero3 has hdmi output (not clean, but it dissapears after few seconds), so connecting it via hdmi capture dongle did work as a standard usb webcam in MacOS. The picture was great, the latency was under 10 frames when doing 60 fps capture. The problem was, that it could not charge and record at the same time, and it didn't give any signs of life when the battery was empty (other than signalling the charging). You could not even leave it powered, so it would charge when empty - it would notice only when you press some button, that it is empty and start charging. It was annoying to make sure the battery is charged enough when needed, so I just got an logitech webcam; the picture is worse, but just works, all the time, without babysitting.

Try using it with Discord and get back to me. GoPro Hero 9 can charge while being used as webcam but it’s not compatible with the apps I care about.

With hero3 it is not a problem, see the very first sentence.

It does not stream over usb. There's no app to simulate webcam on the host operating system. Hero3 outputs hdmi, you use some hdmi-to-usb dongle, which are plain old USB UVC class devices and every operating system out there with usb support knows how to handle them. So if a logitech or whatever webcam works, this one will work too.

However, I see that hero9 has no hdmi out. That's the bummer.

Don't use a sony A6**; they overheat. Use a fujifilm or an A7 series.

A7 is definitely a better pick but I use a A6000 as my webcam and haven’t had any issues with overheating.

My main annoyance with the A6000 is can’t charge and film at the same time so I had to buy a dummy battery pack power adapter which works but looks janky.

I have two A6000, they've never overheated. I've even forgotten them turned on for a solid few days and no issues. YMMV

The other guy said literally the opposite. Maybe you two fight it out, and report the outcome?

Easy solution; use Fujifilm. We both agree they don't overheat. Incidentally, I think they are also much better cameras for most use cases.

But he said anything Fuji won't work.

Which comment are you referring to? I can't find it. Whoever it is is wrong though; fuji stuff works better than anything else I've tried, except for dedicated cine cameras.

Anecdotally, my A6300 rarely overheats, but it has indeed happened.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com