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Comment by berbec | Hacker News Reader

What is the market for this product? I can't see their being enough people who a. have a laptop without a camera/need a better camera b. are willing to lug this thing around and c. are willing to pay $200.

How is web design this bad acceptable? It's insanely slow, annoying to read and impossible to navigate.

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I've actually been looking for a good webcam (with a big DSLR-like sensor) for the last few years, and this seems like the perfect product. Too bad it waited so long to come out...

Most laptop webcams are terrible. Heck, most desktop ones are too. Even the high-megapixel ones have an image quality comparable to 10 years ago, and the average smartphone will blow them out of the water (hence Apple adding the iPhone as webcam feature, I guess).

It's actually rare to see a webcam with a sensor this big (half inch/12.7mm).

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But yeah, god, that is probably the single worst product page I've ever seen in my life. When I tried to scroll down to the specs section, it locked itself into a giant version of its logo and I couldn't do anything else. Sigh. So annoyed by the website I left, even though the product is of real interest...

The Insta360 Link does a decent job. Hard to beat a mirrorless camera.

(I use both almost daily for my trainings.)

You can get a mirrorless camera and set it to webcam mode (1) or get an HDMI (2) or SDI (3)capture card that will show up a USB webcam interface on your computer and use a camera with the appropriate output format.

(1) https://support.d-imaging.sony.co.jp/app/webcam/en/download/

(2) https://www.elgato.com/us/en/p/cam-link-4k

(3) https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicwebprese...

How do you mount it to the top of your monitor? Also seems like a lot of hassle and expense compared to a webcam...

Not one size fits all, I'd probably look around B&H camera rig section.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/Camcorder-Mounts/ci/13931...

Low-budget streamers or those who end up effectively 'streaming' their web conferences. People who are using Blue Yeti mics and Elgato keylights or (a directly competing product) Elgato Facecam:

https://www.elgato.com/us/en/p/facecam

which is using a 1/1.8" sensor (8.8mm diagonal) at f/2.4 aperture, and this has a 1/1.2” sensor (13.33 mm diagonal) at f/1.2.

In this age of remote work, there are a lot of people who really value making a good impression - for whom the default webcam in their budget business laptop won't cut it - but don't want to have a whole DSLR-on-a-tripod streaming setup.

You're probably better off with a cheap Logitech c920 since most conference software junks the video quality down anyway.

We have some high end 1in cameras with glass zoom lenses and they look about as good even with dedicated encoding hardware.

It’s a small step up from a dated c92x to a brio which handles color and lighting much better reasonably on its own

Anyone who wants use web conference software should invest in an external webcam. Not only is it good for privacy (I don't trust software solutions, peripherals should have hardwired indicator lights and/or a way to hardware disable them when not in use), it's also a game changer when it comes to looking good on camera, because you can angle the webcam at angles that are far more flattering than the typical "looking up your neck" one that gets defaulted with built-in laptop webcams, and the quality difference between "adequate" and "good" is a big differentiator.

Now, I haven't used THIS webcam, but it's definitely the sort of thing I'd be interested in.

Me, right now. At home. I like my camera and mic in meetings to be clear and high quality. Gets dark at 3PM, any all the webcams have atrocious noise in anything less than the brightest rooms.

I was using the Opal C1 for a while on my PC, but gave it away due to lack of official support on Windows, and it constantly losing focus/focus hunting in meetings.

But,

> The Opal Tadpole Was made to go with you. Wrap it around your wrist or put it in its case to keep it safe.

Who the hell is wrong to wrap their webcam around their waist??

> wrap your camera around your wrist as you go from meeting to meeting.

???

$200 is within a typical tech budget spend and there's lots of people working remotely these days. I've spent over $100 on a good mic alone (not portable though).

Reasonably expensable too.

In an ideal world, I'd probably prefer to buy a laptop with no built-in camera and then add a good quality one; this trivially improves the privacy situation (although models with a built-in shutter are also fine), and as others have commented the default cameras tend to have atrocious image quality so there's something to be said for separating it so people can get a good quality option.

Def value a good camera and mic with laptop.

Especially for extended work sessions or presentations.

Appearing clearer and sounding clearer can go a long way to being better received.

I think the visual and web design is fairly great, felt very appealing to me. It's completely smooth and immersive on my 2020 MB Air (but I can see why it might suffer on other devices and screens sizes).

The product is obviously somewhere in the niceties bucket; no one needs this, but I am happy it exists. It gives me the warm and fuzzy feeling only something thoughtfully designed does.

I think it’s a hard sell for people to want to clip and external webcam over the webcam already built into their laptops. It looks nice but it’s a bit baffling why anyone would really need this nowadays. I get lots of pc webcams are crappy but that’s not really a problem on your end.

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