If you go this route, please make sure your system is robust and ready to go before meetings.

We had to ask one employee to go back to his reliable built-in webcam because every other meeting started with 2 minutes of him getting his camera turned on, messing with audio inputs, getting his microphone boom in place, and fighting other quirks. He also had a tendency to drop out of long meetings when his camera overheated, at which point it was another 1-2 minutes of messing around with the camera setup.

If you're going to do this, it must be reliable and ready to go before meetings. Don't be the person fighting with expensive equipment all the time just to get a marginally better image for your highly compressed Zoom video stream. This isn't a Twitch stream. We just want to talk and get down to business.

Protip: if your goal is to use your smartphone as a webcam, check out this: https://vdo.ninja

Written by some guy named Steve, it’s an incredible piece of web software that uses WebRTC to stream phone audio and video as an OBS input. OBS then features a virtual webcam capability to take that stream and make it a webcam. I can then also use OBS to do whatever processing I want, e.g. making my webcam also contain a screen share or whatever else.

It’s trivial to then load up multiple instances for multi-angle scenes in OBS, then cut between the two. For example, you could have one ‘face’ camera and one ‘page’ camera showing paper on your desk and make a 2nd scene with the ‘page’ camera as the primary and a small PIP view of your face.

It goes much farther than just being an input for OBS, though. For example, it can create video chatrooms of multiple participants with URL parameter configuration and without touching OBS (indeed that’s now one of its primary use cases).

I use it to stream applications/webpages with my partner when we’re apart so we can watch a movie together by creating a high res vid/stereo audio input with no noise cancelling as the movie, then have her and I connect as lower quality, mono+noise cancelling participants. Each of us receives the video and audio of the movie, but only the audio of each other.

There’s heaps of parameters to control video and audio quality, buffering, etc. - just about anything you need.

I stumbled across it when I was trying to get my iPhone to be a webcam early on in the pandemic. There’s multiple apps for that purpose - many paid - but this was so easy and worked so well that it blew them out of the water from a capability perspective.

I know I sound like a shill but honestly I’m just a huge fanboy. It’s one of those web apps that does a job really bloody well, with heaps of flexibility and extensibility. I’m genuinely impressed with it and all the hard work Steve’s clearly put in.

The docs explain a lot of its capability: https://docs.vdo.ninja/

Flick through the how it works and use cases pages, they’ll explain it far better than me.

Guides that show sown of the advanced capability: https://docs.vdo.ninja/guides

I have an alternative approach that I discovered recently while building a microscope with a webcam driven by linux.

Nearly all modern cheap webcams are UVC-compatible and they work with linux. Different models expose different functionalities, but I ended up with this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R489K8L

It does 1600x1200 25FPS YUYV (as well as a wide range of other resolutions and FPS) uses the C/CS-mount lens standard (easy to buy a wide range of high quality lenses). It doesn't have a microphone but you should be using an independent mike anyway. Has software control of exposure color temp, and gain, which is great for various lighting conditions.

You read the data through USB, not HDMI. The one thing I haven't managed to do is autofocus, but imho, for webcams you want to set a fixed focus around your head anyway.

Works with all video conference programs, and OBS studio (I actually import the video in OBS and then create a virtual camera).

One thing that I’ve been trying to educate my colleagues about (including the A/V folks!) is that one can bypass the need to fiddle with drivers by using a generic hardware HDMI -> USB video conversion stick utilizing the mirrorless/DSLR’s HDMI output. It’ll mount as a generic video input that Zoom/Teams/OBS can use. You can find these for $40-$100 and it allows one to switch out hardware brands at will without installing drivers. And don’t forget that it opens up a world of filmmaking mics to complete the package, and sends it all on one cable!

I’ve used Fujifilm, Sony, Canon, Panasonic, and I think even a gopro once successfully using this method.

Edit - added mic suggestion

Also: this works for me on Win/Mac, but I’ve not tried Linux yet.

I hate to say this but it’s almost entirely not worth it.

The image quality only shows up here because they’re uploading images that they took from the camera locally. Trying doing it with Zoom.

The compression is absolutely terrible. You’re gonna find that you spent a lot of time and money only to see a decent quality image on your side. Everyone else is gonna see the same muddy mess that they always saw.

The image is always bad due to the compression. If you’re a twitch steamer or something where you’re doing a 50mbps bitrate then whatever. But for most folks - there is little to no improvement. Your best way to improve image quality would be to improve lighting. Even a good camera will have a bad image with bad lighting.

Only tangentially related but if you already have a popular Logitech webcam (like the C920) chances are you can find a kit to mount C/CS/D-mount lenses on it, like with this one: https://www.kurokesu.com/shop/C920_REWORK_KIT2

C/CS/D mounts are for CCTV camera so you can find new and used lens for cheap. They will not fix a cheap/bad sensor, but they will definitely get you extra flexibility in what kind of framing/shot you can do.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned using a teleprompter yet. You can pick one up for around $100 and when combined with a little 7" monitor (another $100) attached to your computer, creates a nice setup for zoom calls where you can look directly at your partner. Also doubles as a great talking head setup for video production.

The quality aspect is obviously important but I'd suggest that the location of the lens is also vital if you don't want to have meetings where everyone seems to be not looking at you.

I cannot wait until cameras work behind the screen and can be positioned right in the center but for now, the only option I found was something called Center Cam that mounts a small lense on a skinny support that can be positioned over the screen, somewhat unobtrusively.

I am a Camo user too and it's incredible but having the phone off to one side in a tripod or mount exacerbates the "here's (not) looking at you" issue.

I started a project that uses Camo and suspends the phone upside down from the top of the screen via a 3D printed mount. Then, an app on the phone, mirrors the portion of the screen that is covered by the phone. Not perfect (or even close) and it means you need to use the lower quality front facing camera but it fun to dabble.

For video, I think this is a waste of time and money. Audio is a different story.

The quality of your audio has an impact both on the intelligibility of what you're saying and on listener's subconscious evaluations of you. Audio software and hardware is also cheaper and much, much easier to deal with than video--I've had no problems with essentially the same setup across Mac, Linux, and Windows.

The cost of entry is somewhere around $50-$100 for USB microphones, although if you're willing to spend closer to $250, you can get a decent USB audio interface ($120) + standard (XLR) microphone ($100) + XLR cable ($10) + stand or boom arm ($20).

I've been in countless online meetings where I'm barely able to hear one or two of the participants.

Every time I've evaluated a better video setup, it's been clear that there are a bunch of things you want to get right in order to have a smooth & reliable experience. You want a camera with clean HDMI output, a capture card, and make sure that your camera can be run continuously for as long as the meetings will last--don't forget back-to-back meetings. If you might be in meetings for three hours in a row every once in a while, do you need a camera that can be run for three hours continuously? Most "proper" cameras just can't do that. If you dig into the specs, some of them will list the maximum amount of time that they'll run before shutting off. Twitch streamers and people who run YouTube channels have done the research and will tell you which cameras are suitable for this kind of work, but at that point, you're often spending like $700 or more just so people can see a clearer picture. I would love it if I could just use my DSLR, which is a very nice prosumer DSLR with some nice lenses, but it's just not designed for streaming video. I would have to buy something new.

High-quality audio for $50-$100 is a much, much better deal.

I'll put Reincubate Camo here as an option too - turns your iPhone in to a webcam.

I was so impressed I bought a used iPhone to use solely as a webcam; the whole setup was cheaper than the Logitech C920 he mentions.

The picture quality is great.

I have a pretty full on setup, with a condenser microphone on a boom, studio lights and softboxes pointed at me, with a full frame mirrorless camera and a high frame rate capture card.

I tried doing meetings with it, but ended up getting a lot of inane comments about it, particularly as the microphone is in frame. Personally, I don't want to draw attention to myself in a meeting, so I've ended up going back to using a terrible webcam for work, like everyone else.

I picked up a new C920 a few years ago on a £30 deal (I think they go for around £50 now) and it is by far the best USB webcam for quality at this price point

I'm am at a loss as to why this guy is comparing said camera to cameras in the region of £600-1300. if they could produce 20x the quality, then it might be a wothwhile comparison, but they evidently cannot

the C920 has inbuilt hardware h264 encoding (for £30!) which the majority of video streaming and conference platforms will thank you for, freeing up your processor to focus on network quality - which is far more important than choice of camera

the C920 also outputs its nicely pre-encoded stream at 1920p, so I'm not sure why this guy is testing at 720p. perhaps he doesn't realise this and is why he is surprised by the wider angle. perhaps his £600-1300 "proper" camera or HDMI-to-USB only outputs at 720p. who knows. maybe if he'd have spent less time faffing around with desmurfification and Moire he'd have noticed this in the settings

I was expecting an article comparing the C920 to an affordable proper camera with some ffmpeg wizardry, but all I got was a wishy-washy amateur photographer with a stable internet connection and lots of money to burn

If you're willing to throw $1000 at a "proper camera" of the sort the author recommends, then sure, it would be very disappointing if it didn't outperform the webcam built in to most laptops or phones.

But is there a "proper camera" for under $100 that can also offer an improvement over a webcam?

We had a surprising result using a "proper" camera instead of a webcam for a task.

We needed to take a picture of a particular thing every 15 seconds over a weekend. Our first though was to get a cheap webcam that has some reasonable interface to retrieve static images.

Then someone remembered that the owner of the company was doing some personal projects that involved photography and he had a bunch of cameras in his office. One of them was a Canon Digital Rebel. That could be controlled by a computer.

The owner always liked to save money, so agreed to let us use the Canon for the weekend. I wrote a script to trigger it every 15 seconds, set it running Friday before I left, and came back Monday to see how it went.

What I found was a dead camera. The electronics seemed fine, but something mechanical was broken. A bit of poking around on camera forums turned up that something in the mechanics of the Digital Rebel didn't like extended rapid picture taking, and apparently every 15 seconds counted as rapid if you were doing it for more than a few hours.

We then bought an under $100 Logitech webcam that ran a web server on its ethernet interface that made available a URL that when fetched gave you a static image of whatever the camera was currently looking at. It was simple to write a script to hit that URL every 15 seconds and save the result in a file named with the current timestamp. That ran flawlessly over the weekend capturing all the images we needed.

I'd love to see stats on how many people actually still use webcams for online meetings. I rarely do, and I don't care if anyone else turns theirs on. Watching someone act like they aren't hyper-aware of what they look like on camera adds very little value to the conversation. Unless you're in sales, trying to make a good impression, or some kind of introductory meeting, who cares?

A compromise for when you want a high quality webcam without spending money or dealing with the downsides of using an "real" camera is to use your phone. A 3 year old iphone/samsung will have a built in camera that is better than any webcam you could find under 150$. When you are pairing it with a PC, you can use the back camera instead of the front facing one.

They either work through OBS or a dedicated app that you have to start on your pc. I paid for an app (droidcam, 15$ for the "premium" HD version and free for SD+watermark irrc) because I was in a hurry but I know there are good free alternative if you have some time to spend trying them.

Did this out of boredom (and inability to use my photo equipment as intended in the travel restriction years). My setup was a Nikon Z6II with a 50mm f/1.8 glass, plugged via a capture card. It can do a 10hr meeting marathon without overheating while charging via the usb-c. Never crashed but surely a bit of a hassle and costs me a usb c port, since its not reliable when plugged to the dock (go figure).

Agree with the others, it makes no difference. The only people likely to notice are other geeks. I look like a freshly excavated potato when shot with the webcam, and a slightly more favourably lit potato with the Z6Ii, good glass and diffused lighting.

But hey, people have stupid hobbies, thats ok as long as it reliably works.

A cheapish alternative is to use https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ndi-hx-camera/id1477266080 or https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.newtek.ndi... and OBS as a webcam. The back camera on most phones is quite a bit better than any webcam.

Yes the app is $20 but for me it was worth it.

For those of us with less than perfect skin, using a webcam can be a feature.

Also I found out that the difference in image quality between a good webcam and a semi-professional camera is not that big after video compression.

Another reason to not use a DSLR is that many (all?) have timeouts (<30min) in their video mode due to some import tax reason, even when hooked up to a computer. Atleast this is what I found when I tried a canon DSLR with canons webcam software.

What I am surprised about is that nobody has made a high quality UVC camera with a large sensor and great lens, specifically for videoconferencing.

Even the "good" webcams (like the Elgato FaceCam and Logi Brio) have tiny sensors with small lenses. And iPhones (with Reincubate Camo) have bigger but still relatively tiny sensors.

Pair an APS-C sensor with a ~24mm f/2 lens, with no controls; just a USB connection. This would barely be bigger than the lens itself (think double the size of Apple's old iSight).

I'd easily pay $400 or more for this just to avoid messing around with mirrorless cameras and trying to mount them and use their drivers or HDMI capture USB interfaces.

A decent webcam with good off-camera lighting yields most of the benefits and none of the hassle of using complicated camera equipment.

I turn on the lights before teleconferences and turn them off afterwards, everything else is plug and play.

Some camera manufacturers offer software that uses your mirrorless camera to emulate a webcam without requiring a capture card.

For example, Fujifilm's X Webcam software[1] would allow the author to connect his X-S10 to his PC using a USB-C cable, and use it as a webcam. The downside is X Webcam lacks support for Linux.

[1] https://fujifilm-x.com/global/products/software/x-webcam/

Could somebody do an ELI5 on why some phones have very good cameras but for some reason there's no standalone USB version of them?

I disagree with the people here saying that no image is better than a camera feed. As an individual contributor and trainer myself, multiple times, I've found out that looking at someone explaining something in itself adds value. It doesn't need to be a sales pitch, you can discuss something with a colleague with a shared whiteboard, and still I appreciate seeing another one, their expressions, face complexion, mood, even their cats, dogs, etc.

That doesn't subtract to the fact that audio is the stronger medium. A great mic setup is orders of magnitude better than a pretty face via a DSLR. Podcastage has been one of my favorite youtubers on the matter since last year, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEMZa5VN3Zw, and in that video he somewhat proves the point.

For camera recommendations, I agree with the majority that it needs to be a reliable setup. I was not a fan of DSLR with capture cards precisely because of that. I recommend AverMedia line of 4K webcams which have good defaults, amazing glass and have a great resolution and adjustable depth of field. In the past I used an Aver C340 4K which is amazing, but bulky, and now more recently I use a PW513 which is way better than anything Logitech has to offer.

I guess the only reason for me not to try this is how insecure I am about seeing my make-up free face in HD haha Solid write-up though!

For those with no camera, DroidCamX works rather well too!

Early into the pandemic, I was experimenting with an Elgato Cam Link as an alternative to a webcam. However, I never got the setup to work reliably with MacOS and MS Teams (e.g., random disconnects). Has this changed over the years and become a good solution suitable for daily usage? Currently, I'm using a Logitech Brio with two video lights; the quality isn't amazing but at least everything works out of the box.

The key to this is really to find the "good enough" solution. For me that was a Sony RX100 Mk V that I already owned plugged into a £25 USB-HDMI capture card. No software required. There is an option to remove the default overlay just for mini-HDMI output in the camera settings.

The increase in quality compared to even the "high-end" webcams is significant, with only a minor increase in complexity. I think if your solution requires you to start faffing around with proprietary camera software or OBS then you've gone too far.

I also agree with other commenters in that a higher quality microphone is far more important. I personally use a Rode Procaster into a Focusrite Scarlett Solo USB interface, but I also use the microphone for professional use. Even something as simple as an external USB microphone (e.g. AT2020USB+ [1]) is going be a massive improvement to *the people who need to listen to you*.

[1] https://www.audio-technica.com/en-gb/at2020usb

I found my phone's camera together with DroidCam[0] to be good enough for my conferencing needs.

[0]https://www.dev47apps.com/

For me, I look for the opposite solution. What is the poorest quality camera my colleagues in meetings will passably accept? I want as few pixels of my sleepy head in morning meetings being beamed to my colleagues as I can get away with, which for now the crappy MacBook integrated webcam does a reasonable job for.

I second others here in that having a good quality mic is generally far more important. High quality doesn't mean spendy either - the location of the mic is just as critical as the mic you choose, many cheap headset mics sound pretty good because they get to place the mic directly in front of your mouth, not because they are especially great mics.

I fully appreciate my opinion might be different if I worked in a field where being seen clearly mattered, such as guitar teacher in online lessons etc, but I imagine for most of us here this isn't the case.

I use a Sony a6400 with one of those powered "battery" adapters and hdmi out to an Elgato Cam Link 4k.

Works nearly flawlessly. Sometimes Google meet refuses to pick up the video until I unplug but that might have to do more with the handshake between my back and my TB3 dock.

I can't justify the kind of prices being discussed here because the only use I have for a camera setup like this is Family Zoom meetings. I went looking on Amazon and I stumbled on "Vlogging Cameras". There seem to be quite a few of them available for less than $200, with 4K sensors, and either attached microphones, or an input for an external microphone. I have no idea of the quality of the image being produced by these cameras, but they seem like they could be a low cost option, and better than the typical webcams available.

> Most kit lenses are pretty bad

errrr... no they aren't. The 24-85 I have on my Nikon D600 is extremely sharp. The 18-55 on most DX Nikons is also pin sharp. For a webcam it surely doesn't even matter?

I haven't read the whole thread, so maybe I am just repeating a point someone else made.

I draw as a hobby; during the pandemic, lots of people started hosting art posing sessions over Zoom (here is an example of one of my sessions, model was in Mexico - I live in Europe: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cb8WpdEAsOk/?utm_source=ig_web_c...) so I was interested in this article because it looked like something that could make a difference for some of the studios/models I worked with.

Well... it is not really practical. Models do not have large budgets for a start, and are not necessarily tech savvy enough to put together something like this or make it work reliably.

Some places do combined live/online sessions (artists are in the room with the model and there is also a camera for people drawing remotely). I sincerely doubt that this would be of use even for studios.

I believe that online modeling could be a valid use case, but the cost/hassle ratio makes it absolutely impractical for anyone who could be even remotely interested in something like this.

In other words: as the article itself mentions at the start "The market for decent quality webcams seems to be non-existent". Just like "build your AV". It may be an interesting project for a blog post, but it is really improbable that anyone else would try to replicate the endeavor.

Does anyone have a comprehensive guide for Canon DSLRs on MacOS on M1? The Canon drivers to use as a webcam are nightmarish and my friends had a hell of a time trying to get it to work.

Having done exactly this, my main annoyance is that you have to manually power on and off the camera, which means losing whatever zoom and settings you had configured.

I've been using an A6300 with a Sigma 16mm f1.4 lens (both of which I already had), mounted to the monitors stand using a basic clamp. It works great, looks fantastic [3] and I still get a lot of compliments for how good my video quality is.

One issue I did run into was getting a decent HDMI -> USB capture device that works with Linux. My first choice was a high end (~£200) ClonerAlliance Flint 4KP [1] which worked fine for Hangouts, but had issues with Zoom and actually seemed to get worse as time went on and it eventually became a bit of a joke as I tried to join calls and had to restart my camera, unplug cables, etc. just to get video. Eventually, I swapped it out for a cheap £15 no-name brand from Amazon and have had literally 0 issues since [2].

The biggest drawback to this sort of setup is that if you're using a camera you already own, it can be a pain to switch between using it as a camera and using it as a web cam, so I've essentially got an expensive camera that I don't get to use as a camera very often. The advantage of course is that even on a dark, rainy evening with nothing more than a small lamp hidden behind my monitor, the image still comes out looking great [3].

[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07YY52YP6/

[2] https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09955PYSH/

[3] https://i.imgur.com/ReHStnV.png

Just a note - I had a Nokia D90 dslr that would overheat if left in video mode for too long (over 5 minutes). Check for any "max video recording length" mentions on the camera's spec sheet as a early sign that this might be the case.

A "yesteryear" smartphone that is collecting dust is also an excellent alternative, as they have surprisingly high quality cameras and lenses (on the rear side, anyway). I use a cracked-screen-not-worth-repairing Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 (about 5 years old now) placed in an amazon ring light (that conveniently has a phone-sized clamp-style mount in the middle). There is an android app that turns the phone into a network-accessible webcam, and a windows app to receive it and map it as a system camera input.

Quality (resolution, field-of-view, focus and light levels even with very bright background) is miles ahead of my logitech brio 4k webcam - to the point I resold the brio after only a few days. I can actually stream in 2160p from the device at a pretty respectable framerate.

Probably not on par with a modern DSLR but for something that most people I think have laying around - highly worth trying first.

>Mirrorless cameras are smaller and lighter and have almost entirely replaced DSLRs.

I haven't paid attention to cameras in a while. Did I miss this happening?

If you are going that route (I have), keep in mind that streaming from your mirrorless/DSLR HDMI port usually means h.264 live encoding, which might not work smoothly with older machine, there are very few HDMI to USB capture cards that perform the encoding.

Since I'm still mostly using my old Macbook (late 2014) and a Sony A7II + (Sony FE 55mm f/1.8), I soon realized that with a basic USB capture device (a UVC device that exposes an uncompressed video as webcam) I couldn't get anywhere past 360p with 24fps, and even then, CPU was skyrocketing.

Next I tried to utilize an Raspberry Pi that I have to stream the video, but using VLC as well as FFMpeg and few other streaming products, all did not do well when it came to resolution, fps and latency.

At the same time, I researched some existing USB capture devices, and while Elgato seems like the popular choice, non of their USB capture devices perform hardware h.264 encoding, so the bottleneck remains the host machine.

The only two hardware brands that I found at the time (around a year ago) that made USB capture devices with on-board h.264 encoders were Blackmagic and Magewell.

I went with the Magewell USB Capture Gen 2 which seemed to do exactly what I wanted and no more than that. I was able to find for ~$80 and it has worked perfectly since — no latency or missing frames at 1080p. It also has a very nice management console that let you tweak the (hardware) encoding (enable/disable mirror mode, crop frame and more).

EDIT: another thing that I tried was to use Sony Imaging Edge Webcam — a USB driver that turn Sony cameras into UVC (webcam) device. It works pretty well but has a max resolution of 1024 x 576. Not what I was looking for but still I remember it as being equal or even better than combining a cheap HDMI to USB devices that don't do hardware encoding with OBS for virtual camera.

Is it any wonder that $70 webcam gets out performed by $1200 camera (and that is without a lens!)

My Covid solution was a GoPro 9. Which was like $500, so still way more expensive than the $70 webcam in question, but still way cheaper than any kind of "proper" camera. Sadly the GoPro as a Webcam can only output 1080p even though solo it can record 4K, but since it usually record very wide fish-eye in the webcame mode you can crop to a more sensible "narrow" view that mimics traditional lenses (and since we are cropping 1080 out of 4K the image is still crisp).

Of course I can't recommend buying a GoPro to just be a webcam, but if you are not into traditional photographing as a hobby (I think my iPhone does the job well enough that I can't justify spending thousands on DSLR and lenses) GoPro is a neat gimmick camera you can attach to various other hobby projects and it still works as decent webcam.

Another good option is to use an older flagship smartphone. I have a heavily cracked iPhone 8 that works wonderfully as a webcam.

Lume cube edge desk light (x2). Logitech brio. Røde NT1 mic into an audio interface. Amazing for video calls, and interviews. I feel very professional.

I had the desire to get a Sony mirrorless but all the local Kijiji sellers were flaky. Saved me a couple thousand anyway. No need for it unless I was recording videos (and maybe not even then).

Webcams often simply use cheap, small sensors but I think it's worth mentioning that these "proper" cameras are also not designed to do on-demand video well. It turns out that if you spend $1000 on camera + lens it will look better than your $100 camera + lens, but that's not because the tool is 'better designed' for your use.

On the higher end, cameras make different choices around pixel quality, heat fluctuations, etc in still and video cameras. I think the "professionally remote" segment of the market is super under developed but it's the perfect bingo of awful startup challenges: selling specialist (HIGH capital) hardware to end users with a socially-contextualized value proposition. Good luck!

Edit: in case anyone else is confused - it's that you build a sensor differently to best transmit lower-resolution images for extended periods of time.

During the pandemic, I tried something similar since there was little point to go out to take photos:

1. Sony A7II

2. 35mm lens (I tried others and this gives the best results for 2-3 feet)

3. Sony XLR-K2M adapter + Shure condenser microphone (this is absolutely overkill but I like to record myself playing guitar, and it beats timing stuff by hand)

4. Mini-HDMI cable to Elgato CamLink 4K USB dongle (I tried others, this one worked the best)

5. Two cheap LED photographic lights from Amazon - my workspace is very badly lit, so these also help me keep things well illuminated.

The main downside of using a setup like this is white balancing - I found the camera was not doing a good job by itself, so I had to do some trial-and-error. In less controlled environments, like rooms with lots of windows, this becomes even harder over the course of the day.

And yeah, I originally set all this up to stream games. How could you tell?

I agree with the blogger that you should go with a smaller sensor size. In addition to better price points, they have less scanning to do for each image and should work better for this scenario. I've heard reports of some full frame mirrorless cameras overheating when used extensively for video.

I've done some live streams using OBS, a DSLR and a capture card. Definitely not something I'd want to do for every online meeting. When I need a camera, I use a Logitec C920 webcam. Not as good as a DSLR or mirrorless camera, but it's sufficient and works.

I've had to talk myself out of pulling the trigger on this several times. It's such an obvious level-up compared to how horrible most webcams are – but I just don't need it, and I'm unlikely to use the camera for anything else.

I did spring for a nice software-controlled key light[0], and it makes a huge difference. It basically compensates for the fact that my home-office location has the worst lighting conditions, with a bright window directly behind me and another to one side.

[0]https://www.amazon.com/Elgato-Key-Light-Air-app-adjustable/d...

I've had a setup like this since the start of covid and it's what inspired me to seed https://opalcamera.com/ (because they built a pro-sumer webcam for $300)

A cheaper but somewhat more kludgy solution is using an old camcorder with a line out and converting that to USB.

I had an old camcorder laying around (a samsung https://www.samsung.com/ca/support/model/SC-MX20/XAC/ ) with composite out and I also had a composite to hdmi converter and another to convert hdmi to usb. (they also make composite to usb all in converters) I found the box for the samsung camcorder and I still had the RCA output cable. Chained them all together and windows sees it as a usb camera.

Works without a hitch so far.

Latency and audio quality are wayyy more important than video quality.

Optimizing for that would have me downgrade the video resolution being received by the 8-10 people on my calls.

Also what are the folks on the receiving end actually seeing? Certainly not the image he posted.

I don't understand what's wrong with the Logitech C920's output there. He has plenty of light, so it's a decent image. He talks about video calls and not video production (YouTube, etc...). How great do the video calls need to be?

And I get it, to each their own, but it just seems overly complicated.

I think as long as you have good lighting, something like the c920 is good. I have a Razer Kiyo Pro and it's good too. My biggest issue is lighting. I have blackout curtains to keep heat out so my office is dark. I need more front lighting. Even an expensive set up like the article wouldn't help much.

I'd like to have a solution where chroma keying is done in hardware and ideally also something where I can combine my monitor picture and my camera to do "talking head" videos without software running on my main laptop. It should "just" receive the final picture ready to be streamed to Zoom et. al.

I'm probably not explaining very well. In the end I want to rely on OS & Software as little as possible because things keep breaking (on Linux) for me so if I can just get a single video feed to select as the camera source for Zoom, Teams et. al that'd be great.

Extra note here, I've been running my olympus em5 mk-2 with the drivers Olympus released to run it as a web camera and its been working just fine, out of the box. I got an extra dummy battery to power it (cannot be powered though usb) so I have no worries of it dying during a long meeting.

in a remote office world, I'm glad my team leaves their cameras on and I view it as a form of professionalism to present myself as best I can, and if that's not following a dress code and keeping trim in an office, its giving good video quality in online meetings.

Keep in mind that if you're going to be using a fast lens as the author suggests the focus depth will be paper-thin at large apertures. So you're probably not going to get that creamy bokeh in your standup unless you stand perfectly still and move only your mouth muscles.

You can really see this effect when the early mirrorless DSLRs took to market and every youtuber was using one with a fast wide open normal lens. Everything was zoomed in and out of focus resulting in queasy viewers. It took a couple of years for them to get the hang of it though.

I bought a Panasonic Lumix S5 (amazing camera btw - the whole full frame lumix collection blows away everything else I have used and I came from a Sony A7iii) and there is a beta software from panasonic that installs drivers to make it act as a webcam. Actually works quite well and smoothly (it just recognizes like any other webcam - no software to tweak). Unfortunately it is only limited to 720P while the camera can shoot 6K raw video (SSD external required of course) but it works well for Zoom and whatnot.

Off topic, but does anyone know which monitor that is? Looks beautiful.

It's been mentioned in this thread already but the Canon EOS webcam software is kind of cool and it allows you to use fairly high end SLR cameras as a web cam. I bought a battery adapter and tried it with a Canon 5DmIV not too long ago and it worked pretty well.

If I were doing some serious webcamming I'd probably go with something smaller and less expensive, there are whole youtube series on what best cameras to use when streaming or recording. I forget which one seemed to lead the pack. A panasonic maybe?

I do landscape photography and I've repurposed my (fairly dated) DSLR for work meetings. I have a Nikon D600 with Elgato Cam Link 4K capture card and AF-S 70-200mm lens. The lens gives a nice bokeh in the background. It's been great for meetings but the camera does tend to run hot if I leave it on for several hours and shut off, which is expected considering how old the body is. Still love how crisp the image is and do recommend DSLRs for this use if you have one laying around.

Not sure about the autofocus advice; I'm pretty happy with manual focus. It requires static camera placement, and fixed distance to the person, but isn't this happening anyways? Are people really walking around the room or moving camera between calls?

Manual means there are less failure modes - slow autofocus, autofocus trying to refocus, focusing on a wrong thing, etc.

It also means the hardware can be cheaper - camera doesn't need to have good autofocus (some old DSLR is fine), you can also use manual lenses.

I’m using a Sony A6300 with 35mm F/1.8 lens and I get a lot of comments about my “webcam”.

I’ve put it next to my monitor and put my meeting on the side of the screen so I look “into” the camera.

Agreed. Using an SLR with a capture card and proper three-point lighting makes you look amazing in online meetings. Very easy to set up as well. Will cost about $700 to get going with, but it's a one-time cost that will work on any computer for a long time.

Not every camera has clean HDMI output, though. It's hard to find a single list of cameras that have this feature, so you have to Google around. Cameras without clean HDMI out will show icons and focus windows when you stream from them.

I had a similar setup, and it was a pain. It was flaky and clunky.

I switched to a Logitech Brio, and have been very happy. It's almost just as good, with no hassle. Highly recommend for anyone looking for an upgrade without wanting to go all-in.

https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/webcams/brio-4k-hdr-...

I use this webcam and I'm pretty happy with the quality: https://getlumina.com/

I’ve done this for two years with an A6400 (that is sadly discontinued and now sells for 2x the price with a kit) and a CamLink 4K, and I’m very happy with the results but for the usual web meeting, it’s overkill to spend $1100 on your setup (before lighting).

I record a lot of video in my office so it’s a different thing, but I think the new Opal camera ($300, I got one last week) is pretty great. It’s going to be my new travel camera setup.

I use an X-T4 that way, exposed to V4L2 like this it works well (but with a ridiculous 1024x768 resolution which is apparently the best one can get out of its USB...):

     gphoto2 --stdout --capture-movie | ffmpeg -i - -vcodec rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p -threads 0 -f v4l2 /dev/video1 

I use my GoPro and it's pretty excellent. The logitech C920 is amazing when using the software "webcam settings" unfortunately the app no longer works. You could adjust the gain, exposure, every setting that logitech for some reason does not let you adjust. I could get incredible quality out of that thing with that software, but since I can't use it on my M1 it's garbage.

I would like to have the ease of use of a webcam (plug it in via usb and it works), and the quality of a dedicated camera. And a possibility to make some presets (focus, zoom, crop, white balance), that are on by default and can be switched easily.

It doesn’t have to be perfect, just better than a standard Logitech Webcam. If it would be in the quality range of an iPhone camera, I would be super happy.

Any ideas what to buy?

"Wow, karaterobot, your ultra compressed, stuttery video signal has such a great color gamut and and brightness. The 2-inch square your face lives in on my monitor looks amazing, except for the compression and stuttering. Did you get a new camera? ... What's that? Can't hear you... your audio is... yeah you sound like a robot... oops, looked like we lost him."

Maybe it's a bit overkill, but I use a Fuji X-T4 + Fuji 10-24mm lens as a webcam. At around $2500 definitely not cheap but it gets the job done magnificently. Additionally, the Fuji X Webcam software allows me to switch between Fuji's film simulations, adjust color temperature and exposure on the fly. The cam is mounted on a Manfrotto ballhead tripod behind my monitor.

Sony a7iii + Elgato camlink have been working flawlessly for me for several years now, on all platforms (windows, linux and even chromeos)

To be honest this is a very expensive route to go.

I started recently using an alternative using droidcam on an old Iphone 5 I had laying around, with a battery that could not hold charge.

If your are in Mac you have to use virtual camera in ops, but works great with linux and windows. I still use a headset mic, but provides great image quality with the benefit of being wireless.

I’ve been using a Sony ZV-1 as my webcam. With a low end laptop (Intel core i3 8th gen running Ubuntu) I had a lot of problems with using zoom. But I switched to a beefier machine with a Xeon processor and a Qadro 6000 graphics card which I use for simulation work and it all worked fine. The camera itself had no problems even with 4 hour sessions.

I use a Sony A6000 with an Elgato CamLink 4K USB adapter. Works great in Windows and Pop_OS 22.04. Slack, Discord, etc all work and I didn't have to fiddle with any configuration since the CamLink shows up as a generic webcam.

I set up howdy (facial recognition login) in Pop_OS and was pleasantly surprised at how relatively simple it was to get working.

Since I don't have a "webcam", I've been using my A7R2 as my meeting camera since covid. I use a 40mm manual lens, and adjust exp comp as needed. No overheating or other issues whatsoever. I'm surprised that so many people seem to have problem with their setup.

I use a GoPro Hero 9 Black and always get compliments on my image quality. GoPro's software is lacking so I stream straight to my computer and do post-processing there with great results. It's a good little device for those not wanting to spend $1000+ on a "nice" camera

I repurposed my old Fujifilm X100F as webcam with the Elgato cam link 4k and dummy battery during the pandemic-- video quality received heavy compliments on Zoom. The setup was working fine until I upgraded my desktop rig. Seems Cam link doesn't play nice with the new Mac Studios.

Using this way for last 1 year without any issue. My setup has canon d5200 with 18-55 lens. Camera is powered by dedicated plugged in power supply. For audio I use a separate headset. OS is ubuntu. Longest I have used is 5 hours continuous without any problems.

How does this compare to using something like the Raspberry Pi HQ camera and a decent c mount lens?

I don't want a camera as a webcam. I don't want a device that only works sometimes and has to be setup before use. I don't want a camera that is so good all of my pores are in view. A small amount of blurriness is a feature, not a bug.

Does using a professional camera (DSLR/Mirrorless) damage the sensor over time and lower the lifetime of your camera? Usually shutter count is a good indicator of health of a used camera - would this not have a similarly huge impact?

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Why does my Go Pro Hero 9 Black not work as a webcam with anything other than Cisco WebEx on MacOS? I can't get it to work with OBS or Discord on Mac, and I can't get any video from it on Windows. It's a fucking mess.

I used my Fuji XT-20 with a CamLink for a couple of days early in the pandemic. It was great from a quality perspective and everyone envied the quality, but it was unreliable so I eventually just picked up a Logitech Brio.

I use a Sony a6600 with Sigma 16mm f/1.4 lens as a webcam and people love it.

"...the A6400 seems to be slightly better as a webcam."

Contact me if you want to buy mine! I bought mine at the start of quarantine for streaming live video at my local church but haven't really used it much since.

The problem with all “proper” cameras is that they have multiple frames of latency and latency is by far the most important thing in a call. Has anyone found a “proper” camera pipeline as low latency as a webcam?

I'd rather buy dedicated hardware and have it just work. Currently using portal from facebook, works pretty well but limited to the most used video calling like zoom. No google meet :/

Actually I prefer not to show face during any meeting. So probably won't buy an extra camera just for that. However, could be useful once I'm semi-retired and start streaming retro gaming.

I’m wondering if a setup with an external webcam would make it easier to record yourself while using video chat software that doesn’t support recordings (like Duo).

We used an ATEM mini from Blackmagic Design with a couple of cameras with HDMI out. The mini acts like a USB web cam when you hook it to the computer.

I've been using the 'thecentercam' the last few days, and I get good comments on the "eye contact" that I now have with people

Unfortunately I can't use my Sony A6000 or GoPro as webcams because they need software installed and it's blocked on my work laptop

But isn't running a camera as a Webcam actually bad for the battery, especially if you plan to use that camera also for trips?

Article says mirrorless has basically replaced DSLR, but latest figures actually show SLR sales are up and mirrorless is down.

This is the main reason I own a Sony ZV-1: it supports UVC out of the box.

With a use case as repetitive as jumping on a call, the UX is important.

Top tips.

Wear a headset for a microphone. Avoid the echo cancellation step on each other effect.

If you can't be bothered to do that at least put earbuds in.

I bought an Anker PowerConf C200 for less than 60 bucks; I expected an OK camera, but it's surprisingly good!

I've been using a Sony A7iii and it's been great until I switch to an m1 mac. No compatibility anymore.

Why can’t laptops just get smartphone cameras? Is the BOM impact of a phone camera from 2018 really that high?

I use a Canon 600d with a 50mm 1.4 lens.people say it looks professional

I love it. Where is the startup to fill this gap in the market?

honestly I can't tell the difference. for online meetings both are good enough as long as I am not colsulting a dermatologist for a problem with my skin.

This seems like a lot of effort for little value.

Video muting needs to be normalized

Use Camo and your iPhone FTW!

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