I'm the cofounder at Lumina - we're building a modern webcam designed to solve some of these problems.
There's really been a lack of innovation in the entire home office space, with the webcam being particularly bad. It sucks that a decade-old product (Logitech C920) is still the bestselling product today -- that would be like if Apple stopped releasing new phones after the iPhone 4S (launched 2012), and it remained the bestselling phone through now.
A few thoughts to add to the article:
- On why webcams aren't seeing innovation, I'd disagree that the market is too small. There's enough gross margin to produce a $B company just by selling webcams [0], especially if you can actually get customers excited about the product.
- A big reason there hasn't been innovation is that the space doesn't attract entrepreneurs (because hardware is viewed as hard) or investors (because hardware is viewed as hard).
- Size isn't everything. As the iPhone shows, you can get very good image quality from a tiny sensor and lens if you have the right tech supporting it. (At Lumina, most of our eng effort is on the software layer)
I would've loved to see Lumina in his comparison. We launched a few months ago and are seeing many reviewers prefer us over the Brio (Logitech's flaghip) [1]. Personally, I'd guess we're 60% of where we can be in terms of quality and think we can achieve a quality level between an iPhone and a DSLR, hopefully closer to the latter.
> Size isn't everything. As the iPhone shows, you can get very good image quality from a tiny sensor and lens if you have the right tech supporting it. (At Lumina, most of our eng effort is on the software layer)
This is my problem with all the webcam startups. So what if you can mask some of the problems of small sensors and lenses using machine learning that adds a whole new set of problems? You could have done that without even making hardware at all. We have plenty of crappy hardware out there already, and if yours is only a minor improvement with the "magic" in software then it mostly amounts to a hardware dongle to enforce your software license. No thanks!
If you're going to bother making hardware, you should make good hardware. That means a big sensor and a big lens. Start there, and sure go crazy with the machine learning afterward, you'll get much better results with less effort when you start with better input! And you'll have no competition because there's literally nobody else out there putting decent lenses on webcams.
I bought a Lumina in December. It still doesn't do automatic tuning of the video. Everything requires manual adjustment. I can't just have it...work. It requires tons of adjustments. It even ships with a color card, which I assume is to automatically tune things, but it fails miserably. I have tried tuning it a dozen times, but maybe I can get it right until the light changes (I am by windows). Finally, after about 5-6 months of giving leeway, I gave up and uninstalled everything, put it in a box in my attic, and went with a 5 year old webcam that doesn't look amazing but doesn't look bad.
I have noticed you keep shipping a bunch of random features. I could be wrong, but my recommendation is to try and get it to automatically work right for 99% of cases without manual user input.
Does Lumina work on Linux? I can't really find anything about it (there is also a Lumina Desktop Environment for Linux it seems), and while it says "Lumina is compatible with Windows and Macintosh machine" this can mean "we don't directly support Linux, but it should work" (like Logitech), or it can mean "we have specialized drivers/software that only work on Windows and macOS".
I purchased and returned a Lumina in January. I was hoping it was "good enough" to replace my current setup (Fujifilm X100f with a battery blank and Elgato camlink) and free up my family camera to do family camera stuff again.
It was better than the built-in camera on my gaming laptop, but nowhere close to what I was expecting (even moreso because I was on Windows). More "okay-to-good webcam" than just "good" quality without pairing that word with "webcam." I'm on the waitlist for the Opal C1 and will give that a shot, but honestly might spring for the next-gen Fuji and turn mine into a permanent webcam (too bad my first generation X100 isn't supported by their webcam software update).
1. If you're saying that it's mostly software, then you shouldn't have created hardware. You should release and sell software to run in tandem with existing cheap webcams. Not a low-quality webcam with some magic software.
2. Saying the iPhone is proof that you can make good, small cameras is bunk. The iPhone has an enormous amount of horsepower at its disposal. And an enormous team of software engineers (in addition to hardware engineers). A small startup with a couple of engineers isn't going to replicate Apple's camera team. Plus, are you aware just how incredibly powerful Apple's SoC is? To replicate it, in addition to the world-class engineering team, you'd either need to offload all that to the host CPU (which won't have dedicated hardware for it), or build it in, which you can't for the price-point you'd need.
I recently bought the elgato FaceCam, and honestly it's pretty good for $150. Much better than Logitech. It has a pretty large sensor and good software (and no autofocus!), but there's nothing magic about it.
What sucks most is that Logitech, which used to be a proud name (back when "Feels good / Feels better") has gone totally to shit. Even their mice are designed to fail in a year. (Spill on the desk, the mouse that only got damp on the bottom is dead, dead, dead. That can't be accidental.)
A full article on what went wrong at Logitech corporate could be enlightening, if not helpful.
> that would be like if Apple stopped releasing new phones after the iPhone 4S (launched 2012), and it remained the bestselling phone through now.
If I can be a bit cheeky - this sounds like exactly the kind of frankly ridiculous comparison a founder would make about their product alright.
The reality is - nobody really cares that much. Whatever image you record is going to be gigga-smashed by whatever application you squeeze it through. I switch between the rubbish builtin on my laptop over wifi, and a gopro tuned to the highest res and framerate the cable will take, with colour and exposure tuning etc.
Not once person has ever mentioned webcam quality in either case. As long as you can vaguely see _most_ of someone's face in _somewhat_ balanced light - that's good enough. For 99% of people in 99% of cases. Even job interviews where image is everything, it's irrelevant.
The problem that needs solving is audio. That actually matters.
I tried ping.gg recently which boasts high quality video and audio feeds (for a high price) and even then - meh. Video was entirely unimportant.
The only people who really care about live video feed quality are content creators with high powered static systems, like streamers. Even then, they can just hook up a dslr and smash it out of the park with little to no effort.
I don't see this as a real problem anyone bar a select few care about - and that select few has already solved the problem anyway.
> and think we can achieve a quality level between an iPhone and a DSLR
Good luck, but I think you're filling a spectrum nobody is concerned about.
What even is an "AI powered" camera? You mean a device that will become useless when your company goes out of business in a few years, or shifts focus, or that only ever works on specific versions of Windows/macOS due to some required software?
No, what people want is a decent modern UVC webcam that adheres to USB standards.
I have the Lumina! I think the hardware has been pretty good from the very start when I got it about a year ago. The software originally was... not very good, but you guys have improved it by leaps and bounds over time. I still have to manually adjust the exposure (which is fine), and fiddle with settings to get the colors right, but it works better than any webcam I have so far. Keep up the good work.
I think mics and webcams suffer a simple problem: the person who enjoys the benefit of higher quality is not the operator. Indeed, the operator may never experience how they look or sound.
Appreciate the effort. I think one thing that hinders innovation is that, as soon as anyone makes a decent camera that sells well, a company like Logitech will just try a little harder and bring a better camera to market at a lower price point. It's not like this is rocket science, Logitech just doesn't have much incentive to try very hard right now.
There is a reason that for hundreds of years painters and (later) photographers have preferred working in spaces with North-facing windows[0], and that is because it's a simple way of ensuring neutral, even light. My home office is (by design) in a room with one North-facing window.
I use a Logitech C920. Many people have told me how good my webcam feed is. I don't think it's that the C920 is particularly brilliant, it's that if you know even a little about photography, you can do an awful lot to help ensure a good picture.
[0] assuming they were in the Northern Hemisphere, of course
You can use you phone's camera as a webcam with Reincubate's Camo App. This required a wired connection iirc.
You can also use OBS Studio along with a virtual camera plugin to use any device which can output directly to your computer.
But most of these solutions do not work on Safari or FaceTime unless you manually modify the app.
Now, Apple is going to soon introduce their "It Just Works" solution with the next release of macOS and iOS. You will be able to use your iPhone's camera as a webcam wirelessly with your Mac by just sticking your phone on the back (Apple is partnering with Belkin[0] for this stand) [1]
I personally don't care about the camera as much as I care about the sound quality.
Webcams are good enough for their purpose which is video conferencing and calls. In the end your video is likely going to be encoded in like 360p low bitrate. I personally prefer not being in razor sharp detail on calls anyway.
Image quality is top notch and the ability to Zoom in/out using the zoom lense is nice. You also get some nice background blur, depending on your used lens. For power there are modified "batteries" allowing to plug the camera into AC for power.
I had a Logitech C920 that died a couple years ago and when I went to find a better replacement I ended up buying a... Logitech C920. I couldn't find anything that seemed significantly better that wasn't a lot more money. I regret the purchase, but I'm glad I didn't just spend 3 times as much on a still-not-that-great webcam. I was thinking of finding a second-hand digital camera on eBay, but maybe instead I'll see if a friend has an old iPhone.
Though you'd think with the WFH revolution there would be at least one company out there making a high-quality purpose-built webcam.
I wish webcam manufacturers would focus on sensors and optics instead of rubbing lipstick all over low quality hardware with an undeniable porcine quality.
Fixing it with AI is nonsense. Fashionable nonsense but still nonsense.
I have spent lots of money on various webcams. Including cameras that promise “AI”. The truth is not even my $1000 “AI” webcam gets close to my aging iPhone 7. As a video conferencing camera it is an over-priced, over hyped-piece of junk. The damn thing can’t even do basic white balance and has no control to set it because “it is an AI camera”. I either look like I’m about to die or as if I have a sunburn. And after countless firmware upgrades, it is still horrible. The expensive camera has one thing going for it though: it has decent microphones. That’s actually more important than good video.
To anyone who makes AI webcams: please give me manual controls and focus on image quality instead of marketing. Don’t be clever. Hire someone who obsesses over image quality and is a decent photographer to judge the visuals. And put a good microphone system in the thing.
Totally with you on the microphones. I use a really decent mic for video calls now, and everyone says I sound like an NPR announcer. This is a good thing. It's really draining to try and listen to people who have awful sound quality when they're talking. I wish everyone would invest in a decent mic. Just a basic podcast mic is a million times better than using your earpods or something similar.
I upgraded my video and audio setup during the pandemic since I figured even at up to $1k it was cheaper than the office space it was replacing.
After about a month of research I was surprised to find how difficult it was to evaluate options and how few of those options were plug-and-play.
I had assumed the explosion in livestreaming over the last few years would mean best practices would be easy to find and great high quality cameras purpose built for streaming would exist, but didn't find that to be the case at all.
Ultimately I took a chance on a heavily discounted open box ZV1 but it wasn't until I married it with a 4k capture card (USB streaming was meh), a key light (lighting matters so much!), a mic (& arm to hold it), AND an ali-express battery-to-dc connector (so it could run all day) that I finally hit the sweet spot of "clearly better" and "easy to use all day".
This is my exact experience, except with an A6000 that I already owned. I wouldn’t recommend it for most people since like you said there’s a lot of accessories required to get a good result, but for people like me who enjoy iterating on their home office setup it’s a fun project.
My favorite feature of DSLR/MILC webcams is the depth of field effect. It’s pretty subtle, but adds an air of professionalism vs the default zoom background blur feature.
I’ll probably get key lights at some point but in the mean time I’m using regular floor lamps with Hue bulbs, which does let me do things like play with the light color. I’ve found a very slight purple hue in the background really makes the foreground pop.
The logitech C920 can put out incredible video, if you have access to every setting. For some reason logitech puts the training wheels on and doesn't let you adjust every single setting like gain. There was an incredible app called "webcam settings" for mac that let you refine that webcam like putting a dslr into manual mode. I was able to get it so dialed in you thought it was a top of the line webcam. That software unfortunately is gone but sometimes it's not the hardware, it's the software. That said I refuse to pay monthly or yearly for software to use my phone as a webcam.
On linux you can use v4l2-ctl to fine tune the webcam settings (focus, gain, white balance, etc).
The C920 has really poor firmware, none of the auto settings work well. Auto focus is particularly bad.
I wrote a quick script which hard locks all of the settings of my C920 to the optimal values for my office conditions.
The low light performance of the C920 hardware is quite bad, but if you have adequate lighting and manually configure the setting you can get a pretty good setup.
There is an industry that packages high quality Sony image sensors in packages with C or Cs mount lense compatibility and native UVC support on Linux/MacOS/Windows. Primary uses seem to be industrial cameras for manufacturing quality inspections, circuit magnification for repairs, installation onto telescopes, etc.
Prices range from $40 to multiple hundreds for extremely high quality sensors.
This sketchy site has comparisons of the sensors by area and signal to noise ratio.
> 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.
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.
Marshall, a company that makes miniature video cameras used in broadcast has a great USB camera that is UVC1.5 compliant, you can change lenses, it's not that big, and has great image quality.
Honestly if I were to buy another webcam beyond the cheapest "yeh that'll do" one I could find, the main thing I'd be looking for is microphone quality and features. Sure, I could and have brought a USB mic, but a webcam is pointed directly at you (like a shotgun mic, which seems ideal for this kind of thing), whereas the bulk of a USB mic can be harder to position in a way that doesn't block your forward monitor. If it had a configurable mute shortcut, with a little light on it to show its mute status, I'd buy one in a second.
In fact, saying all that I don't even think what I want is a webcam, I want a USB webcam-mounted microphone. I do remember seeing one once, but its very old now and has none of that mute functionality. Wish someone would make one again
I don't _want_ a good webcam. There's really no need for my colleagues to be able to count freckles on my nose. All I want others to see is my general contour and expression on my face. In fact I wouldn't use it at all if it weren't mandated by company policy and no one used one until after HR drones started complaining about it. We had one guy join the weekly call with some crystal-clear, HD cam once and entire office started joking about his alleged "online side gig".
Lighting and audio are more important than raw image quality.
Getting an expensive camera to send heavily compressed 320p low bandwidth video doesn’t really improve a whole lot.
Honestly the #1 improvement most people need to work on is speaking clearly and loud enough. #2 would be having literally any light source in front of them rather than being purely backlit.
This is one those markets that clearly doesn't appreciate picture quality enough. I have at least 6 different web cams and have the same experience as the author that they are all crappy in slightly different ways.
It seems the point-and-shoot camera makers have all the parts and technology available to their teams to make a really nice pro-sumer web cam and given they are looking for adjacent markets I'm kind of surprised there aren't any out there. They all seem to have the equivalent of 'camo' (aka software that turns the camera into a web cam) but none of them seem to have packaged a camera specifically for this niche.
One criticism I haven't seen brought up is that while UVC drivers are plug and play on Windows their settings are not persistent across reboots [1]. I would painstakingly manually tune the exposure and white balance of my Brio and get it to be less than terrible and then windows update would reboot over night and I'd fire up a stream in the morning looking purple. I have softboxes and high-CRI lights too so this was particularly enraging.
The flipside is non-UVC driver are less terrible but less compatible: I've switched to an Avermedia PW513 which uses their own drivers -- this works great for OBS when I stream but nothing that uses UVC works without using an OBS Virtual Cam. Just don't run process monitor and watch what their software is doing to your registry every second.
So the driver system, at least on windows, is part of the problem IMO.
[1] After I switched to non-UVC I learned about a UVC driver restoring utility but I've never tried it.
For a REALLY good webcam just get a Pi Zero (v1), Pi HQ camera, a good C-mount lens, and flash this firmware: https://piwebcam.github.io/
which makes the Pi Zero appear as a regular USB webcam when plugged in, and also gives you a telnet thing to control camera parameters.
It's particularly nice because it doesn't mount any filesystems in RW mode, so you can just plug and unplug it as needed.
There are also some enclosures you can 3D print for this combination.
Although this was a fascinating article, the quality of webcams is pretty low on my list of things that could use improvement in the teleconferencing experience.
[+] [-] rlei|3 years ago|reply
There's really been a lack of innovation in the entire home office space, with the webcam being particularly bad. It sucks that a decade-old product (Logitech C920) is still the bestselling product today -- that would be like if Apple stopped releasing new phones after the iPhone 4S (launched 2012), and it remained the bestselling phone through now.
A few thoughts to add to the article:
- On why webcams aren't seeing innovation, I'd disagree that the market is too small. There's enough gross margin to produce a $B company just by selling webcams [0], especially if you can actually get customers excited about the product.
- A big reason there hasn't been innovation is that the space doesn't attract entrepreneurs (because hardware is viewed as hard) or investors (because hardware is viewed as hard).
- Size isn't everything. As the iPhone shows, you can get very good image quality from a tiny sensor and lens if you have the right tech supporting it. (At Lumina, most of our eng effort is on the software layer)
I would've loved to see Lumina in his comparison. We launched a few months ago and are seeing many reviewers prefer us over the Brio (Logitech's flaghip) [1]. Personally, I'd guess we're 60% of where we can be in terms of quality and think we can achieve a quality level between an iPhone and a DSLR, hopefully closer to the latter.
[0] https://s1.q4cdn.com/104539020/files/doc_financials/2022/q4/...
[1] https://www.windowscentral.com/lumina-ai-webcam-review
[+] [-] modeless|3 years ago|reply
This is my problem with all the webcam startups. So what if you can mask some of the problems of small sensors and lenses using machine learning that adds a whole new set of problems? You could have done that without even making hardware at all. We have plenty of crappy hardware out there already, and if yours is only a minor improvement with the "magic" in software then it mostly amounts to a hardware dongle to enforce your software license. No thanks!
If you're going to bother making hardware, you should make good hardware. That means a big sensor and a big lens. Start there, and sure go crazy with the machine learning afterward, you'll get much better results with less effort when you start with better input! And you'll have no competition because there's literally nobody else out there putting decent lenses on webcams.
[+] [-] mchusma|3 years ago|reply
I have noticed you keep shipping a bunch of random features. I could be wrong, but my recommendation is to try and get it to automatically work right for 99% of cases without manual user input.
(Note I'm on M1 MBA)
[+] [-] Beltalowda|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hgomersall|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SimianLogic|3 years ago|reply
It was better than the built-in camera on my gaming laptop, but nowhere close to what I was expecting (even moreso because I was on Windows). More "okay-to-good webcam" than just "good" quality without pairing that word with "webcam." I'm on the waitlist for the Opal C1 and will give that a shot, but honestly might spring for the next-gen Fuji and turn mine into a permanent webcam (too bad my first generation X100 isn't supported by their webcam software update).
[+] [-] awill|3 years ago|reply
1. If you're saying that it's mostly software, then you shouldn't have created hardware. You should release and sell software to run in tandem with existing cheap webcams. Not a low-quality webcam with some magic software.
2. Saying the iPhone is proof that you can make good, small cameras is bunk. The iPhone has an enormous amount of horsepower at its disposal. And an enormous team of software engineers (in addition to hardware engineers). A small startup with a couple of engineers isn't going to replicate Apple's camera team. Plus, are you aware just how incredibly powerful Apple's SoC is? To replicate it, in addition to the world-class engineering team, you'd either need to offload all that to the host CPU (which won't have dedicated hardware for it), or build it in, which you can't for the price-point you'd need.
I recently bought the elgato FaceCam, and honestly it's pretty good for $150. Much better than Logitech. It has a pretty large sensor and good software (and no autofocus!), but there's nothing magic about it.
[+] [-] ncmncm|3 years ago|reply
A full article on what went wrong at Logitech corporate could be enlightening, if not helpful.
[+] [-] theelous3|3 years ago|reply
If I can be a bit cheeky - this sounds like exactly the kind of frankly ridiculous comparison a founder would make about their product alright.
The reality is - nobody really cares that much. Whatever image you record is going to be gigga-smashed by whatever application you squeeze it through. I switch between the rubbish builtin on my laptop over wifi, and a gopro tuned to the highest res and framerate the cable will take, with colour and exposure tuning etc.
Not once person has ever mentioned webcam quality in either case. As long as you can vaguely see _most_ of someone's face in _somewhat_ balanced light - that's good enough. For 99% of people in 99% of cases. Even job interviews where image is everything, it's irrelevant.
The problem that needs solving is audio. That actually matters.
I tried ping.gg recently which boasts high quality video and audio feeds (for a high price) and even then - meh. Video was entirely unimportant.
The only people who really care about live video feed quality are content creators with high powered static systems, like streamers. Even then, they can just hook up a dslr and smash it out of the park with little to no effort.
I don't see this as a real problem anyone bar a select few care about - and that select few has already solved the problem anyway.
> and think we can achieve a quality level between an iPhone and a DSLR
Good luck, but I think you're filling a spectrum nobody is concerned about.
[+] [-] notaplumber1|3 years ago|reply
No, what people want is a decent modern UVC webcam that adheres to USB standards.
[+] [-] pryelluw|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lxe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ip26|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 01100011|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] logifail|3 years ago|reply
I use a Logitech C920. Many people have told me how good my webcam feed is. I don't think it's that the C920 is particularly brilliant, it's that if you know even a little about photography, you can do an awful lot to help ensure a good picture.
[0] assuming they were in the Northern Hemisphere, of course
[+] [-] navanchauhan|3 years ago|reply
You can also use OBS Studio along with a virtual camera plugin to use any device which can output directly to your computer.
But most of these solutions do not work on Safari or FaceTime unless you manually modify the app.
Now, Apple is going to soon introduce their "It Just Works" solution with the next release of macOS and iOS. You will be able to use your iPhone's camera as a webcam wirelessly with your Mac by just sticking your phone on the back (Apple is partnering with Belkin[0] for this stand) [1]
I personally don't care about the camera as much as I care about the sound quality.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/6/23156834/apple-iphone-webc...
[1] https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10018/
[+] [-] kcb|3 years ago|reply
Anyway this is the one I've been using. https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Webcam-Built-Stereo-Micropho... I like the integrated shutter better than the cover thing for the c920.
[+] [-] pintxo|3 years ago|reply
Image quality is top notch and the ability to Zoom in/out using the zoom lense is nice. You also get some nice background blur, depending on your used lens. For power there are modified "batteries" allowing to plug the camera into AC for power.
[+] [-] standardUser|3 years ago|reply
Though you'd think with the WFH revolution there would be at least one company out there making a high-quality purpose-built webcam.
[+] [-] bborud|3 years ago|reply
Fixing it with AI is nonsense. Fashionable nonsense but still nonsense.
I have spent lots of money on various webcams. Including cameras that promise “AI”. The truth is not even my $1000 “AI” webcam gets close to my aging iPhone 7. As a video conferencing camera it is an over-priced, over hyped-piece of junk. The damn thing can’t even do basic white balance and has no control to set it because “it is an AI camera”. I either look like I’m about to die or as if I have a sunburn. And after countless firmware upgrades, it is still horrible. The expensive camera has one thing going for it though: it has decent microphones. That’s actually more important than good video.
To anyone who makes AI webcams: please give me manual controls and focus on image quality instead of marketing. Don’t be clever. Hire someone who obsesses over image quality and is a decent photographer to judge the visuals. And put a good microphone system in the thing.
[+] [-] rootusrootus|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackernewds|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quartz|3 years ago|reply
After about a month of research I was surprised to find how difficult it was to evaluate options and how few of those options were plug-and-play.
I had assumed the explosion in livestreaming over the last few years would mean best practices would be easy to find and great high quality cameras purpose built for streaming would exist, but didn't find that to be the case at all.
Ultimately I took a chance on a heavily discounted open box ZV1 but it wasn't until I married it with a 4k capture card (USB streaming was meh), a key light (lighting matters so much!), a mic (& arm to hold it), AND an ali-express battery-to-dc connector (so it could run all day) that I finally hit the sweet spot of "clearly better" and "easy to use all day".
Worth it in the end, but a lot of work.
[+] [-] derekdahmer|3 years ago|reply
My favorite feature of DSLR/MILC webcams is the depth of field effect. It’s pretty subtle, but adds an air of professionalism vs the default zoom background blur feature.
I’ll probably get key lights at some point but in the mean time I’m using regular floor lamps with Hue bulbs, which does let me do things like play with the light color. I’ve found a very slight purple hue in the background really makes the foreground pop.
[+] [-] clan|3 years ago|reply
https://m.youtube.com/c/JulieSchiro/videos
Personally I just wish that people would invest in a cheap $20 or so lavalier microphone.
[+] [-] post_break|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] __turbobrew__|3 years ago|reply
The C920 has really poor firmware, none of the auto settings work well. Auto focus is particularly bad.
I wrote a quick script which hard locks all of the settings of my C920 to the optimal values for my office conditions.
The low light performance of the C920 hardware is quite bad, but if you have adequate lighting and manually configure the setting you can get a pretty good setup.
[+] [-] graupel|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skewbone|3 years ago|reply
Prices range from $40 to multiple hundreds for extremely high quality sensors.
This sketchy site has comparisons of the sensors by area and signal to noise ratio.
https://navinside.ru/tablitsa-sravneniya-sony-snr1s/
I bought a 1080P one with very high SNR and 2-14mm lens using the Sony IMX291 sensor for $79.
Arducam 1080P USB Webcam,... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0991XRFXB?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_shar...
For audio, I bought a Samson Q2U USB/XLR mic for $60. USB has been perfect, and the included stand works fine to the side of my keyboard.
Samson Technologies Q2U USB/XLR... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001R747SG?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_shar...
Altogether, this is a cost effective way to increase audio and video quality for meetings / streaming.
[+] [-] xyzzy_plugh|3 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] dagmx|3 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] PragmaticPulp|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] maccard|3 years ago|reply
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".
[+] [-] can16358p|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] skybrian|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] system2|3 years ago|reply
LOL what? Is this true?
[+] [-] birdyrooster|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] wyager|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mezzman|3 years ago|reply
https://marshall-usa.com/cameras/CV503-U3/
[+] [-] roughly|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] post_break|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bodge5000|3 years ago|reply
In fact, saying all that I don't even think what I want is a webcam, I want a USB webcam-mounted microphone. I do remember seeing one once, but its very old now and has none of that mute functionality. Wish someone would make one again
[+] [-] hbossy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PragmaticPulp|3 years ago|reply
Getting an expensive camera to send heavily compressed 320p low bandwidth video doesn’t really improve a whole lot.
Honestly the #1 improvement most people need to work on is speaking clearly and loud enough. #2 would be having literally any light source in front of them rather than being purely backlit.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|3 years ago|reply
It seems the point-and-shoot camera makers have all the parts and technology available to their teams to make a really nice pro-sumer web cam and given they are looking for adjacent markets I'm kind of surprised there aren't any out there. They all seem to have the equivalent of 'camo' (aka software that turns the camera into a web cam) but none of them seem to have packaged a camera specifically for this niche.
[+] [-] shaggie76|3 years ago|reply
The flipside is non-UVC driver are less terrible but less compatible: I've switched to an Avermedia PW513 which uses their own drivers -- this works great for OBS when I stream but nothing that uses UVC works without using an OBS Virtual Cam. Just don't run process monitor and watch what their software is doing to your registry every second.
So the driver system, at least on windows, is part of the problem IMO.
[1] After I switched to non-UVC I learned about a UVC driver restoring utility but I've never tried it.
[+] [-] pkamb|3 years ago|reply
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/412516/external-is...
Support though has been removed from Apple Silicon Macs :(
Would be a good project for someone to hack support back in.
[+] [-] dheera|3 years ago|reply
It's particularly nice because it doesn't mount any filesystems in RW mode, so you can just plug and unplug it as needed.
There are also some enclosures you can 3D print for this combination.
[+] [-] Stampo00|3 years ago|reply