I use Reincubate Camo with an iPhone and haven’t looked back. so much better than either my old 2017 imac’s camera or the logitech I bought thinking I was getting a better picture.
Apple recently “Sherlocked” these guys by offering “iphone as webcam” functionality directly in MacOS, which probably means there’s about to be a whole bunch of new, differentiating features to come from this setup as well (as well as new hardware mounts).
The biggest issue I have is my daily-use phone is now my webcam. but it uses the rear cameras, which are eons ahead of any webcam camera, so it’s a fair tradeoff.
I picked up an old Google Pixel 4 a while back to use exclusively as a webcam. I use the developer interface to remote control it from the PC, so I never have to unmount it. I don’t like the picture quality as much as I did on my old iPhone X, and it’s finicky (crashes sometimes). I keep my mic just out of frame, though, so not having to unmount/remount the phone all the time is a huge plus.
I wonder why he didn’t include his MacBook camera in the comparison.
While the iPhone is clearly better in many dimensions, especially exposure, I don’t agree that it has the best white balance. Given the description of the room and lighting setups, the iPhone shots seem consistently too warm (orange/red) compared to the Brio or Razer. I’ve got the Brio, and while it does tend to overexpose (which causes some desaturation of color), the hues seems more accurate.
I’m also surprised by the unacceptable latency of using the Brio in 4K. On my Windows box, I’m able to switch it to 4K without using the Logitech software. In OBS, for example, I can select the higher resolutions as long as I also switch the video encoding format. I don’t see any extra latency when I do so.
That said, I do wish the web cams could do as well as the iPhone with exposure and autofocus speed. At some point, I think I’ll have to invest in a decent DSLR.
I used my phone as a webcam at the start of the pandemic. Picture quality looked nice (at least from my end), but setting it up is always a hit or miss. You either have to unplug/replug several times, or you have to get a spare to leave it plugged all the time, and even then, I’m sure the connection will be reset eventually and you’ll run into the same issue.
I started using a Logitech (c9xx, don’t remember the exact model) and it is ok. Initially I was not impressed, but I installed their app and played with the settings until I got it decent.
What I don’t know is how to check what the “other participants” see. I know how I look in my local preview window, but I would like to see what others see as well, so I can adjust accordingly.
I wouldn’t expect a DSLR to excel in video compared to a cell phone which has spent several generations improving. Now, take the same setup and compare a picture with each. The DSLR won’t be night and day difference better, but it will have better sharpness, detail, and contrast. Also iPhone cameras are great hardware but options like auto and always on HDR make pictures unrealistic. New cell phones come out every year and at a production scale that the DSLR market probably couldn’t touch in a decade.
As a Kiyo user, I can confirm the ring light is not tremendously useful for actual lighting. What it IS good for is serving as a screaming bright indicator that the camera is on.
Imagine my surprise when it briefly winked on during a work Teams call without me enabling it…
apple’s built in camera is just so painfully terrible most of the time: im usually a dark blob in otherwise happily visibly lit room. and while i think it’s a software issue… apple doesn’t expose any settings to let you tweak things.
so… i have a cheap webcamera for my expensive laptop. sigh
from the op:
“Apple’s research and development budget over six months is more than Logitech’s gross yearly revenue”
That’s a great encapsulation of the challenges faced by small companies making hardware in general. Between the tooling costs and inability to source parts at mere 1000’s qty’s - the electronics mfg. world is not friendly to the not-yet-giant would-be contenders.
The other part of this really comes to optical physics - which generally speaking is irreducibly volumetric. (until you start getting into metasurfaces which are only starting to exist). The main important differences between small phone and dedicated camera sensors+optics tend to scale with the third power and the economics do too.
I used an old Moto for a webcam with DroidCam. It was great with zoom in and out and even the mic was great. Then something happened, like an update to the app or to Android. I don’t know what but suddenly it wouldn’t stay on and would go out in the middle of a meeting.
I had no idea webcams were so lousy when I bought my first one which went out quickly. My second one works but doesn’t zoom in and out and of course I have to use an exterior mic.
Any ideas about what might have happened to make the old Moto with DroidCam start working. It was old so it was an old version of Android, maybe like 7 or 8.
I know you’re joking but with the Canon G7 X III I use as a webcam when I can bother to put it up I have full control over how I look. Together with proper lighting via a bounce light and colour grading via LUTs, it still doesn’t make me a supermodel but it actually gives me a lot of confidence in video calls because I know I look better than everyone else on the call, just because I bothered to put some thought into my setup.
