Why webcams SUCK
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 มี.ค. 2019
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Today, let's discuss why webcams SUCK and what your options are. Why are there no good webcams? Why are they bad?
Sub2r www.sub2r.com/
Logitech webcam case rig: www.kurokesu.com/shop/cameras
Referenced blog: www.techtravels.org/modifying...
Sub2r footage courtesy of Naaackers: / naaackers
► Dear webcam companies... [An open letter] - Why do webcams suck?! -- • Dear webcam companies....
► Exploring CROP FACTOR Confusion with Gerald Undone (Small Space TH-camr's Perspective) -- • Exploring CROP FACTOR ...
Thanks for watching!
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I recently moved up to 5 viewers at once while streaming, so obviously I upgraded to a $4000 camera. Gotta keep up
InstaBlaster...
This sounds like something elgato would make. A $200 web cam that fills in the prosumer/creator market that has camera controls in software and better picture quality.
I keep telling them to. I just don't want it to end up like the Razer Kiyo
I feel like they would be more well fit to make something like this than Razer. With their experience with capture cards and after seeing how much control you could have over the Key Lights with color temperatures and brightness. Even if it was only 1080p 60fps if it had a bigger sensor size, control over the cameras setting like ISO, and a clean capture I would totally be willing to pay $200. They could maybe even get the cost down by not including a crappy built in mic
2 years later
please do a review of the reworked brio! i was thinking about getting it but i cant find any good review about it .
When I wanted to start livestreaming(which is how I found your channel months ago), I looked for a webcam, but found out i could use my SL2(USB), then realized I could use 2 cameras and added my action cam, but wasn't happy... I borrowed a 6300 for a while, but my a6400 arrived last friday(29th), so I get to use that now... Thanks for all the content... Take it easy...
I really love the look of your set. Could you do a video sometime showing your lighting setup? Thanks!
I can still select RGB in obs for my Logitech C920. The image is then turned upside down, but you can easily fix that. Does it still feed the data in MJPEG even tho, you can definetly select the other modes in OBS?
the reason you have a bad time with the exposure of the webcam is because you're in high contrast environment (lit face dark background) it tries to compensate/expose for the background. it meters the whole frame as suppose to your face itself. try to use different metering to make it expose to your face (but again you move a lot as everyone would) so webcam are not necessarily suitable for high contrast lighting such as yours. unless there's manual exposure setting on the webcam so to speak
This was just an extreme example, obviously my experience with them goes far beyond this specific lighting setup :P
With the Logitech brio mod does it keep windows hello functionality? Would love to see results from that one
Hey man, I have the new Elgato Cam Link 4K, and I need a great camera to go with it (clean hdmi, continuous power capable, maybe autofocus). Can you just tell me the one you'd get if you had a budget of about $600?
great vid!! what's the wallpaper you used in the background of the vid? It's amazing!
Nice video, thanks for making it!
I happen to have a C910 and a BRIO 4K and I completely agree that the software is ... interesting. Just because of this video I switched my C910 from MJPEG to XRGB. Looks like I need less CPU now.
The problem with webcams is that manufacturers (not the engineers but the managers) are doing it completely wrong. In a smartphone you need computational power because there is nothing else that can process the video signal. You also need a power source because who wants a super thin smartphone but has to have to permanently connected to a power bank?! Webcams on the other side are always connected to (compared to smartphones) extremely powerful computers. Even a 10 year old PC is more powerful than a Pixel 3 XL or Galaxy S10+.
If you take a high-end smartphone and remove the battery as well as the display you could fit the whole thing into the BRIO 4K body with ease. Sure, the PCB has to be redesigned but based on "required volume" it would fit nicely. You even could remove the hardware for WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, LTE, Display driver, etc. resulting in a much smaller footprint. Price-wise you'd end up at around $150 - $250 but the quality would be at least twice as good as the BRIO 4K. You not only get a much better image, you also would get eg. 4K60 or 1080p120 and with the later you could use the light of two frames for a single frame, resulting in 1080p60 with great low-light quality.
The expensive stuff in a smartphone is (beside from the engineering of squeezing everything into a tiny formfactor) the display and the battery directly followed by the various chips for WiFi/Bluetooth/LTE. The camera sensor itself is not expensive, maybe $20 for those with OIS, etc. but no need for that and if you buy ten-thousands of these price drops massively.
The Sub2r is a great example of why webcams suck. There may be a market for the hardware specs of the Sub2r (10 Gbps Ethernet, Onboard processing, etc.) but nobody needs any of that in "cheap" webcams. I assume a smartphone camera module hooked up to a Rasperry hooked up to a computer would result in a MUCH better quality than any webcam could do - at half the price. Sure, no way to compete with $25 or $50 webcams but these are a complete different topic.
A bit offtopic: NewTek created an Android App (pricey) that will use your smartphone webcam and send out the signal as NDI. It's not of great functionality and quality. I'd consider it as a tech demo but taken the price into account I hope much more to come.
Yeah NDI on Android is... awful
How do you mix your vocals? Sounds extra compressed, sounds great. What plugins do you use?
If a Google Pixel 3 costs $800 and the camera in it is only 5% of what it can do than there is absolutely NO EXCUSE for Logitech not to make a really decent 4k webcam that has similar quality and low light performance for $150 bucks... It's just bupkis
Remember you have to factor in research and development into the price of the product.
Yeah camera is still a big cost of the phone. And as I explained in the video, the sensor on phones directly feeds the very expensive high-end CPU. This is not possible in webcams (and if it were, webcams would cost way more to include android processors), and thus cost works VERY differently.
They could buy 3 year old Snapdragon 820 cpus and make a webcam that runs on android. there are android phones that sell for 90dollars that shoot 4k footage. if you want to find a phone like that try a leeco phone.
I have a C920 for my plans to start a Lets Play/Streaming channel but have had to put it on hold. Would love to see more on the modded webcams for when I do go live.
Love your content as always and keep up the great work.
You know what, don't put it on hold. Just use the C920 for now, given that you already have one.
Because you know what's important? Entertainment value. Personality. That you know how to work the audience. Sure you don't want the first impression to be bad, you probably don't want to stream with a $2 480p webcam at 7 frames per second covered in purple blotches, but C920 really isn't that horrible if you have decent light. To an extent good hardware is important, but there's a lot of mileage you can get out of mediocre, standard level stuff. Make a list of your favourite streamers, what do you like about them, and how many of them actually run anything better than a Logitech HD webcam? If you feel you can add value to your performance with a better camera, you can always do it later, but there's a lot more to do: lighting, talking to audience, discovering what audience wants, overlays, inserts and compositing, possibly greenscreen, etc etc.
@@SianaGearz - Thanks for taking the time for your input. Yes I completely agree with you but I've only put this on hold as I landed my dream job in a big UK tech company and had to focus 100% on it. When I complete my 12 month probation period (currently 9 months in) I'll be a lot more difficult to sack and I can then properly start up my content creation hobby.
Prior to getting my job I researched and did a lot of test footage focusing on developing my style, both on camera and during editing. But now I'm getting a much better wage than before, I feel it doesn't hurt to also consider modding an upgrade for my webcam because even IF nothing else, it makes a nice geeky weekend project :-)
Could someone please tell me if the Logitech C925E is really the same as the C922? It is considerably cheaper here in my country, so I'm thinking about getting one...
I would love to see a review on brio rework and c920 rework. Atm I'm looking to get a new webcam or camera for my stream and something like this really does intrigue me, but the real questions is it worth the money?
Great video. Would love to see more content about webcam and camcorder/DSLR comparisons.
I just saw raspberry cams with c and cs mounts . Lens goes separate. Is that something?
Love watching these videos, made me much more interested in video production tech! Also inspired me to start streaming/recording aswell.
Awesome!
Funny you should bring that guy up. I actually stumbled upon that the other day while just trying to see if there was an existing way to add a lens onto a C910/C920 camera. There were also some options for 3D printed mounts on Maker and stuff, but ultimately I wasn't sure if it would actually be worth the time and effort until I saw one of these in action to get a comparison.
Also, Epos, I was wondering if you could make a video series covering some of the cheapest options for improving our streams. For instance, what might be the cheapest way to get a DSLR/CamLink style webcam up and running, and would you recommend that method? What is the cheapest 1080/60 capture card, and what do you lose in going with the cheapest option? What is the cheapest XLR Condenser/interface combo and how does it compare to a Blue Snowball or Blue Yeti? I'm curious about these things personally, because I've made-do with entry-level gear, and soon my streams are going to support re-investing into new gear, and it's hard to decide when to take the plunge into new gear, versus how long to save up, you know?
Thanks for the great content, as always. :)
Awesome and helpful info :D as always
You should cover the Brio lens thing. It would be neat to see how "good" a webcam can be. At this point, I'm using the C920 and I'm _fairly_ happy with it, but it is kind of soft and lower quality then I'd ultimately like.
I have a Canon 5d mk2 with a 24-70mmL lens sitting doing nothing. I have a 2 PC streaming setup, the streaming PC has an Avermedia 4k PCI-e card, so it looks like I'd need a USB capture device to get my camera into OBS. Any recommendations for a capture device for my camera?
Elgato Cam Link or a used HD60 S probably the cheapest/easiest options.
Worth noting that the 5D MK II (much like the vast majority of Canon DSLRs) doesn't have clean HDMI out - it gives a 3:2 video feed w/ the bounding box and overlays, etc. You can crop it off, but that gives you a small feed. Magic Lantern custom firmware MAY take that off on your cam, not sure. But either way you're not getting a normal clean 1080p feed out of it. :/
@@EposVox Thanks so much for the info. I'll check how Magic Lantern is these days. I also have a GoPro Hero 5 laying around, not sure if anything can be done to put that to use? I can't imagine it's be any better than my old 920 or even if it can be used for this purpose. Thanks again
the shots on the Logitech webcam looks massively overexposed, like it's metering for the background and not the face. so the exposure can't be changed for the camera, it's all just post effects?, if not than maybe an old 2nd hand iphone or budget andriod phone could be hooked up to the pc for a camera?...................btw if you get the a7sii camera you can install the "eoshd color" profile wich provides much nicer colours out of the camera (in my opinion) without needing grading
I have a Logitech brio and all the setting are adjustable but the auto settings are pretty bad. When adjusting those settings for your area you can make it look much better then what was shown in the video. Not amazing but better.
Any thoughts on pairing a Yi Action Cam (~$60 with HDMI Port) with a Cam Link as a web cam alternative? Would be about the same as the Brio in cost.
Yi cameras do not have live hdmi ports. They are only playback /review ports.
If you're creating youtube video content, not livestreaming, which of the three is best: iphone, logitech webcam, or surface book 2 rear facing camera?
great vid, couldn't wrap my head around this topic
Can you do a video on using an older cellphone or even a newer cellphone over NDI as a webcam?
Yes, though I don't think the results are good enough compared to a webcam for most people.
@@EposVox thanks because I have tried using other ip cam software, and I could never get it right. Always blurry, or the framerates were low.
I've seen a lot of your videos, you always explain a lot of useful things and i apreciate it. But i think after your explanations your should give examples of what to do. Like, if you don't wanna use webcam you guys should get this elgato blabla this camera, price/performance and so on. It would help newbie people like me to make quick decisions, and not read forums 2 weeks trying to see how we can connect a camera to a pc to make the encoding live without lag, etc. I'm not native english so sorry if i sound without good vibes. Love your content!
Insightful video. Great work!
Thanks for watching!
This is important topic, thanks for bringing it up
I currently use a webcam instead of my actual videocamera because the video camera is so huge it doesn't fit anywhere where it would make sense for my streams (only on my right side).
I am pretty sure the Gain setting in Logitech C920 is an analog sensor control, as otherwise it'd be just redundant for brightness setting (which is applied in post and it's crap).
Were you ever able to get 4K in OBS? I haven't been able to do it yet.
Like... in general? I've been recording 4K in OBS since 2015
This was great video, please do a video on the rework brio. Thanks again for this video.
Yea I want to use a better cam but the web cam just works with comp no problem while using the (hdcapture + RealCamera) i have to delay video to match audio. Or deal with other delay issues
Loved the video! I'm not that into camera's, but I AM into electronics and have a bit of experience (read torture) with computer vision for an university project. And I thought I'd explain a bit more what you mention at 9:10 .
The main problem with webcams is what you already said: it's video for cheap for people that don't have high demands for said video.
That means a) you can't make it too expensive, or else people complain b) you work with video, which is amazingly annoying to deal with.
I see a lot of people in the comments suggesting that "Well your smartphone can do it, it's smaller and battery powered, so why can't you do it in a webcam?" combined with "But image sensors are cheap? Idk why they can't just put a better sensor in there?". And both arguments definitely make sense on the surface, and carry some valid arguments with them, but there are, as always, some caveats.
And it mainly comes down to... the total package. Image sensors are indeed relatively cheap, and yeah you can just upgrade (well not too much ofcourse, because again, expenses!) but that's not the real killer at low prices. It's the rest of the package and module that's disproportionately expensive. Not the main sensor is the limiting factor at low prices, it's all the electronics around it, and it's a pretty difficult balancing engineering act.
Upgrading the sensor needs extra electronics like you also already mentioned.
So the main problem is that well video is hugggeeeeeee for data, and therefore filesizes and data and yeah. Especially raw format. Jesus that's a lot of data. And worse, image sensors often have a ton of pins, which makes sense since you need a lot of pixels, and you need enough pins to "stream" that data over. But just with your image sensor you're often not there yet, you need to make sure all the noise and other ugly stuff gets filtered out.
Which means you can't just throw a normal processor in it. And with processor I mean here like microcontrollers, which is basically the same as your intel or AMD computer processor but like, lesser bits, less power consumption and lower clock rates. Using such a processor, you.... simply can't handle all that data fast enough.
Which means you need specific silicon to do your task. Making it more expensive to begin with. Not absurdly expensive absolutely speaking, but relatively? A ton. And that's a factor when you try to keep it cheap.
And then there's a question of interconnection. You don't want (a lot of) lag on your image, that doesn't make sense for video calling with your grandma on skype. Which means that, after you processed the image with your expensive dedicated silicon, you still need to package it and send it of to your laptop/PC. You don't have that problem with a phone, it's all on the same PCB. So you then need another chip for your USB connection. Which doesn't sound expensive, but it needs to happen in real time and, well 4K is a ton of data so you already need a usb 3.0 link if you want to stick with USB. Which again, isn't expensive if you have enough budget, but that's again painful at lower prices.
So the easiest thing to do to keep prices low, is a) don't process it too much and too pretty, you're connected to a powerful computing device, it'll figure it out and b) compress the data to make everything go faster and make sure you don't have a lot of lag. Which means you suffer a lot in more professional settings, but that doesn't matter for 99% of the buyers of an already not so big market.
So yeah, there's probably a ton of more difficult stuff going on in the processing of the sensor data and everything else, but with the (granted, limited) knowledge I have is that those are some reasons why they're, and always will be, pretty mediocre at best.
I've been looking into the logitech reworks since I heard about the c920 rework. I was just wondering if the lenses will make THAT much of a difference or if I'm just polishing a turd.
Definitely polishing a turd
What are your thoughts on the Elgato Camlink for using with 'Real Cameras' for that higher quality video feed
That's what I recommend! Here's some recommendations for doing that with - th-cam.com/video/61TcpH7RI_8/w-d-xo.html
My main "webcam" is a Panasonic G7 hooked up this way, and my game streaming cam is the Sony a5100
@@EposVox thank you so much for the quick reply! I'll have a look at that vid!
Thanks for watching!
So I don't have a huge budget, right now I'm running with C920. A cam-link costs $200, what camcorder would you recommend to go with it? Also would you be interested in doing camcorder comparisons for live-streaming?
Cam link costs $130 - current amazon listings are third party price gougers while Amazon is out of stock
@@EposVox Ahh, good to know, what about the camcorder question?
I can't really do comparisons of cameras I don't have - but camcorders are generally a great starting point and I recommend the Canon Vixia R500/600/700/etc. line for budget entry. They need a good strong key light to stay less noisy, but you get manual controls and good autofocus, etc.
i have a brio but the low light sucks so i would like to see more about the pro kit for it
I was like "ooo a video on why webcams suck, nice!" then he holds up my exact same webcam in the first 2 seconds
Oh snap, my Brio has horrendous focus at a distance so that rework kit sounds extremely appealing!
I hate it when they lie about resolution and use a sensor that's nowhere near what it claims to have. Like my webcam, claims to have 720p and outputs at 720p, but the picture might as well be a 480p video that's been upscaled, it's no better looking than that, I wouldn't be surprised if that's what resoloution it's sensor actually has. The same deal with my camcorder, claims full 1080i video, makes full 1080i files, but again, the sensor is nowhere near that and it's just been up-scaled to 1080i.
I find the best webcam to use is B910 although it is difficult to get Windows 10 to accept it.
Once you get it working it has a much better picture.
They make sense as cheap, highly integrated, convenient, small-form-factor items.
The 6mm diagonal sensor in C920 is actually quite generous in size! There's no way to fit a sensor this big in a smartphone. What smartphone has is for one, high resolution and high retrieval rate, meaning they can actually do quite a bit of post-processing like median cutting, they can throw out quite a bit of bad data to arrive at good data. They have much smaller total area but possibly larger size of individual photosensitive cells, due to BSI technology. In a standard CMOS sensor, most light is lost because the available area that the light is hitting is consumed by wiring and support circuitry, while on BSI, most of the area can be used and the metallisation is on the other side away from the light, but precision polishing step makes it more expensive. The integrated lens of smartphone cameras seems quite remarkable too, but it's a bit of a mystery to me how they make them work.
As to Kurokesu? Would be nice if they set you up with some of their kits! Curious whether a better lens can make a better use out of the Logitech webcams, and how the C1 performs. As to whether it should be the Brio or the C92x mod, i don't know, i'm actually more curious what mileage one could get out of the C92x, how much difference it could make.
nice stuff to understand, my webcam is so noisy in picture... i really wonder if i live somewhere radiated! tho i guess it may just be the sensor. (well i can do a de-noise but it makes the picture blurry or motion blur...) also for the smartphone cams, i hear that they have multiple camera to compensate for the distance and field of view. (tho i do not own a smart phone... wow i am a 33 years old nerd hermit! ;P)
That part about the cropped sensor on mft is only true compared to a 35mm (full frame) sensor camera, but not everyone uses that type of camera, so these kind of comparisons don't give most people a good idea.
the extra long hair on the right side of your face is driving me crazy LOL
i would love to see Logitech Brio modded coz I have it and wonder how much better could it get
Regarding analog gain and ISO: check out the chart in the BMPCC4K manual named "Dual Native ISO" (page 41) This camera is clearly not using analog gain changes for each ISO. Some cameras do, some don't, and some use a combination.
camcorders have even smaller sensors but have much smaller pixel count, around 3,3mpix for FullHD, and only recently had to bump that up for 4K recording to at least 8mpix, so it's not that small sensors can't provide usable low-light footage...
Camcorders do not have smaller sensors than webcams
@@EposVox 1/6" is a small sensor. I guess in a 3CCD array it's like 3 of them for red,green,blue, but still - the pixel count is much smaller than in smartphones or digital cameras.
Video about buffing Brio would be nice as I have one
I wish there was a DSLR that would natively also be a webcam. Just plug it in the USB like any regular webcam, and streaming programs would be able to read it just like any regular webcam. Without capture cards. Natively.
I bought that crappy webcam. Someone told me I was wrong about it. The c930 looks better. I don’t understand why my iPad can shoot 4k60 but most cameras can’t ?
Streaming is a niche market right now, but I think it will only grow in the coming years and demand for this kind of product will rise. I use 2x HD60Pro cards in my streaming rig paired with a Lumix G7 and a Canon Vixia HF M400 as well as a c920. In theory I like the idea that I can take the G7 places and take fancy pictures with it... but it's been sitting on the tripod doing stream duty basically since I bought it aside from taking some family pics over Christmas. When you were talking about image processing, my mind went directly where yours did with the idea of sending the unprocessed data to the computer to then process using your CPU. Hopefully that can be a thing in the future. My main issue with webcams isn't necessarily the image quality (although it's not great) but rather the frame rate. I play the drums to song requests on Twitch and stream at 1080p60. At $626 ($455 Lumix G7 + $171 Elgato HD60Pro) for my current primary camera solution, I'd like to think there can be something made a bit cheaper that has the quality and framerate I desire for stationary use. The main problem here, like you mentioned, is the market for said product. Hopefully I'm right and that market is growing.
I freaking hate my brio....adds 20% of CPU usage right off the bat in obs
Our Boy @NackersTV highlighted here :D
Just fou d your channel PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE COVER THE CAM MODS. I think I'm going to have to engineer a motion capture webcam. That website is very inspiring. Thanjs
Ahhh! Thank you for using a Better Nut on that mic! My co-invention!
I LOVE IT. I scuffed it up with my pliers installing it, but it's a life-saver. Wanna get the Better Bands eventually.
@@EposVox best bet is some masking tape around it while you install... That said a scuffed Better Nut is better than a perfect brass nut from EV. Email me at shawn@better-bands.com and I'll shoot you bands.
Well thank you :)
Which is your mic?
ElectroVoice RE20 connected to a DBX 286s
I think it has to do with the limits of the USB connection. There's only so much bandwidth it can handle.
good. That is the same that i get also 3 weeks ago, as you know. New drivers are in place but is not always persistent. the ghub does a good work. BUut does not look the same on camera (windows 10) or obs, even does not look the same on the logicapture. And i check also, gets hot. on 1080/60 and less on 30 frames. I wish Logi check. since LOOK fantastic on logi ghub. but is a struggle on other. when use windows 10 camera app is so bad that you can send it to the trash. maybe, as you say there has to be a fix that can be persist. But when ise it look good and make some back light that improve a lot.
You're getting the focal length the lens has regardless of the sensor size :P To be technical.
Which is why I said "equivalent."
I am shocked that we still dont have webcams with big sensors.
yes cover more!
why dont they use the sensors from cell phones in webcams?
I touched on that :)
Oh yes! explore the subject of customized webcams!
Worth covering!
You hit the right points, webcams suck since the processing power required on the webcam is limited as is the interface bandwidth to the computer. Also lack of interest of webcam companies, to improve or extract the maximum image quality by providing any sort of control over the exposure triangle does not help. Also Windows 10 has tried to block direct access to the camera.
While it is possible to create a webcam with decent quality at 200$-250$ and mop up the webcam market with one sweep, it will depend on the market size and other market dynamics for such a product.With smartphone cameras improving so much, any last generation smartphone one has lying around is much better in quality than any of the webcams available. It is now certainly easy to use them as a webcam with the right apps.
If one wants better quality than webcams but, not quite ready for the full setup of a modern mirrorless camera plus a capture card which can easily go north of 600$, one can choose a cheaper alternative which is to buy an used hdv camcorder and a firewire card (IEEE 1394) for video capture both of which together can be had easily for under 100$. There are videos on TH-cam that show you how to use it. This will not get you 4K though since HDV is limited to 1080i 30fps MPEG2 codec.
Would action cameras be a good alternative for webcams?
No.
Too wide angle lens
I love you videos, but I can't stop staring at the hair on the left side of the screen (Right side of your face) is it a really long facial hair, or head hair? I HAVE to know!?
Good video. I take exception to the comments about camcorders though. They've come a long way. For folks considering stepping up from a webcam and think they need a DSLR/Mirrorless because that's what everyone else is using, I urge you to do some research before you break out the credit card. When looking at feature parity, understand that some settings/features go by different names in the video world (E.g. ISO.)
Examples of camcorders at three price points:
Sony FDR-AX53 4K (~$900)
Sony FDR-AX700 4K (~$1900)
Sony PXW-Z150 (~$2900)
Before balking at the price, consider that a typical DSLR/mirrorless setup will run you $2000-3000+ by the time you get all of the components on top of the camera body.
I highly recommend watching the TH-cam video by _Basic Filmmaker_ called "Shopping for a New DSLR? You might want to consider THIS!" (No affiliation.) I thought I needed a DSLR also until that video opened my eyes to camcorders.
Another option to consider are conference cameras like PTZOptics ZCams. They're like the PTZ cameras without the pan and tilt. They have H.264 & H.265 encoding, RTMP/NDI support so you don't need a capture card, Power over Ethernet, 1080p60, all at a competitive price point.
Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera is also an attractive option if you want lossless raws (factor a lens into your pricing.)
Woah woah woah your pricing is insane. What kind of price scaling are you chasing?
$350 Panasonic G7 body + $130 cam link + $250 lens + $20 dummy battery gets you super crisp 4K or 1080p60 at a webcam's angle w/ great lowlight.
$350-500 Sony a5100, a6000, etc. + $20 dummy battery gets you great 1080p60, perfectly wide 16mm kit lens, super fast autofocus
At the $2000-3000+ price range you can get a massive full frame camera at 4k and a lens and still have a little room to spare. o____O
@@EposVox -- Fair enough. The setup you mentioned will work as a killer replacement for a webcam.
To answer your question, I was figuring $500-1500 for the camera body and $1000 for a good image stabilizing zoom lens (E.g. Canon EF 24-105 mm f/4L IS USM lens) plus batteries for portable work, ND filters for work in the sun, and so on. I (probably wrongly) made the assumption that someone looking to make the plunge would be contemplating getting more out of their investment.
I guess I was a little bit triggered when you were so dismissive of camcorders and said they'd be inferior in quality to a DSLR/Mirrorless.
Camcorders are competitive in features, quality, and price with the full frame 4k DSLR/Mirrorless cameras. That often have great lenses or even standard removable lens attachments. They don't need dummy batteries. The cameras I mentioned are very competitive with expensive full frame cameras that you mentioned. Rather than jumping to something competitive with a $1500 full frame (e.g. Lumix GH5) and $1000 lens, $100 ND filter, etc. I probably should have chosen examples at lower price points.
oh well I wasn't considering portable work, since that's not how most people utilize webcams in the first place, haha. Stabilization not remotely necessary when it's mounted in one place. None of that is what game streamers are doing, not in the sun, etc. :P
Also choosing a L lens for a webcam o_o
I was just speaking on a budget level if getting as close to webcam pricing as possible, the budget camcorders are going to be pretty noisy (i.e. vixia hf r800 etc.) indoors.
Or you can just buy an older-gen (like gen 5) or just a used GoPro for around the same cost as the c920 and pass the video feed through to your PC...a bit of cropping to get rid of the vignetting around the edges of the image, and voila, a decent looking 4K signal with minimal wiring at the same cost of a decent webcam.
You can always use the iPhone Camera OBS plugin, super nice honestly, and only costs $16 and looks better than all webcams
Broulf I need to test that 😀
What? How?
NexY obs dot camera :-)
obsproject.com/forum/resources/ios-camera-for-obs-studio.651/
Is there an Android version?
@10:58 Yeah, but that is not what you need for webcams as a surveilance option.
Haha I was literally just thinking this today.
I am dumping my C920. I see the limitations of it. It is good if you are just starting out on TH-cam. It is good and cheap. I ordered a Canon SL2 with a 24mm and 50mm lenses. I can't wait to have crisp 1080p videos and have more control over my videos.
You are absolutely right when talking about the difference between a webcam and a real camera... But onestly I do not agree about what you said about smartphones. Any 200€ ($ or £ or whatever comparable currency) smartphone can do better videos than that webcam and they have the disadvantage of having morel pixels. This tells me that the manufacturer wasn't even trying to make a decent product. If you consider how big is a smartphone without battery, screen, storages, sensors (apart form the actual camera) it definetly isn't bigger than a webcam. Consider the saved cost of these unnecessary components and use a sensor with just enough pixels for 4k footage and a decent signal/noise ratio, and you obtain a 200€ webcam that leaves any high end smart phone in the dust.
There is simply not enough USB 2.0 bandwidth for raw uncompressed 1080p30 RGB video. There is bearly enough bandwidth for uncompressed 480p. I bet the camera is still encoding to something like MJPEG and the driver is transparently decoding to RGB.
I would like to seeing that coverage
I like the Microsoft Kinect 2.0 (terminated for XBOX One) as a Webcam for Windows 10.
@EposVox I would like you to test it yourself.
I mentioned this in my own review of the logitech c920 but of course they suck. Idk where people get the idea that webcams can be more than a convince they aren't built for content creation in mind. Even if they were the market is so niche that it's really hard to justify spending time and resources into them. It's great that they can do 4k and stuff now a days but as long as the sensor is a tiny boi there's only so much that post processing can do! Luckily most of the time people with those webcams for content is for streams where the resolution matters a lot less when it's down scaled to a small box
So why isn't there a $500-600 webcam, that includes the required missing/ better parts? No market for it? I doubt that.
@7:33 Those are flagship smartphones, top-tier smartphones and their cameras still suck compared to a half-way decent digital camera.
You forgot how Logitech has cornered the consumer market at least in Europe and the US. Try to look for webcam review: you'll have probably a 20:1 ratio to any other brand. So like Intel, there isn't any competition pushing them to innovate.
I'm pretty happy with my C920.
when you see how much a camera, lens, and capture card cost you'll be even more happier with that. a camera is $500+, $200+ for lens, and $120 for capture card.
My USB webcam stops working whenever I'm about to do a live stream attempt, so I can agree that webcams sorta sucks @$$.
Well Considering you can get a decent Camcorder for $150-250 That does 4k and have better features and capabilities than that $200 webcam, so I don't see why they can't make better Webcams especially since they've been milking the products for 5-6 year stents per improvement. You'd think the premium laptops would cover that at the least.
I heard the c922x has a shallow depth of field but it is artificial.
Its mostly due to the fact most webcams are USB and most cameras are HDMI the ports themselves have specific speeds they run at with max data limits for how much data the wires can hold. HDMI is like a huge freeway while USB is like a country road. Newer USB specifications (think USB 3) are allowing higher data rates and I would expect webcam quality would rise as this trend catches up to the throughput of HDMI.
Bandwidth affects possible resolution and frame rate options but not quality. Webcams aren't suffering from compression artifacts
Is your hair pink or is it the lighting?
It's purple!
@@EposVox ah ok
I think smart phones have a dedicated chip for dealing with image processing. You can take a photo from your phone and reprocess its compression on a pc and get the same image quality for like half the file size. Smartphone processors get far more hype then they deserve, alot of the fancy computation is likely done via cloud servers to do language image translation and video effects. If smartphones were capable of true general processing like a desktop cpu and not actually just dedicated circuits for doing specific functions only they would be capable of virtual environments and handling all kinds of devices and programming languages and they are not.
The camera upgrades are 100% tied to CPU upgrades in the phones, which is why they all have the same sensor paths when they upgrade to the same CPUs.
webcam is a webcam, not even a low end cheap DLSR lol
For Logitech C920, you can get YUV420p from the camera, you just need to force install proper drivers. I have drivers here: github.com/mjasnikovs/logitechC920-vlc
That has to just be emulating it/converting from MJPEG, USB 2 does not have anywhere near enough bandwidth to transmit 1080p at YUV
@@EposVox It runs 720p*30fps and 1080p*10fps. I use this driver to capture and display without delay. Any camera onboard processing adds a huge delay.
dude, I googled c910 vs c920 and found a video of you on amazon comparing 4 webcams and you look about 12. haha
Been covering webcams for a long time :)
yes do it. I will like to see the brio 4k mod.
Lol @ pocket.
Imo, sony should make a A7 SIII strip down without battery and a rework body that only has a clean HDMI for $1k or less with the same Sony mount, they could only make money out of the camera, but their lenses already out, specially with their low light and focus performance.
Looks like it's cheaper for me to just run speedboosters so far, but man i want a cheap full frame setup or four for webcams.
Why are there no good ways of using a cell phone as a webcam?
Yes, There are a few apps to use your phone as either an IP cam, or VERY Low resolution usb cam.
But why isn't there a way to directly access the full resolution image from an android phone?
My pixel records pretty amazing video in lower light conditions, and I have a spare Moto G5 that actually works FAR better than my Logitech webcam at 1080p.
it just sucks that in order to use the phone, I'd have to record to the phone, then render out a video afterwards.
Yes, there is an NDI Android app, but its $20, uses Wifi, and have no idea if it'll look very good.