This is the answer. Camera and processor from a several-year-old smart phone, which is now quite cheap. Sell it for $500.
So far no one has, there must be a reason no one can.
So far no one has, there must be a reason no one can.
I am reminded of the story of two economists walking down the street. One spots a $20 bill on the sidewalk points it out to the other, who says "Don't be ridiculous, if there really were a $20 bill on the ground someone would have picked it up by now."
Some devices use it for 4K video and it looks like upscaled 480p. Yet 1080p on Nexus 5X looks very sharp.
It's why DSLR was (is?) a thing - if you ever do research on one, you realize they factor in quantum mechanical effects to make your picture better...(in addition to the 20 or so simultaneous images they take in order to parallel process image).
I haven't kept up as much but - the flat sensor craze was all about how we didn't need DSLR anymore and could just get away with large pixel counts and better processing, and yet the processing still matters...far more than the pixel count. I think that was mainly because 100+ mirror systems are a bit expensive compared to a single flat sensor.
But when you think about them as 100+ parallel processing sensors peforming low-power auto-computation _for-free_, well.
That's another thing entirely.
I do wonder why some DSLRs suck at video - I suspect it has to do with whethey the manufacture cheaped out on the compression circuitry or not - some cameras can/could should shoot HD video, a lot did not, leaving that the pricier models.
I gather support / fixes / etc have been rolling out rather slowly, have you tried it in the past few months? Or is it currently that unusable? I certainly wouldn't expect the software to be difficult to build, there are quite a few webcam-emulating projects out there... but then again this is a company's software rather than an interested hobbyist.
Meanwhile, sensor and lens from a smartphone camera can fit in a small enough form factor that it makes sense to carry it around alongside your laptop.
It's a growing trend ... if you're a gamer who spent 2000$ on a laptop and also want to do some remote work/interviews you need an external webcam...
I personally use a 'gaming' laptop as the default work computer (it's over 3.7kg w/o the charger which is another 600g)
I suspect a lot of vloggers, or at least wannabe, can and would easily shell out a measly 500$ for a webcam.
I agree, for a lot of people who just want to webcam mom that's going to be overkill, but if you have money, or do it professionally (I don't mean a remote work job) to the point where you are putting on makeup, investing time, often to the tune of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, its a no-brainer.
Seriously, though, in the context of webcams, the Studio Display is kind of a counterpoint to "just rip a camera module out of a few-year-old smartphone and it'll be terrific". That's pretty much what Apple did here, and it's rather notoriously, ah, not great. (I have one, and I think it's better than some people give it credit for, but I know I'm comparing it to Apple's laptop webcams, which have historically been pretty terrible.)