[modeless]

> 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.

[Guest19023892]

I agree. It's a little strange to complain about a lack of progress in webcams the past decade, and then ship similar quality hardware to decade old webcams.

Why does everyone focus on a small form factor for webcams? Look at the size of microphones being sold today. The Blue Yeti is one of the most popular microphones and it's almost 30cm (12") in height. You might say, if you don't mind a large form factor, then go buy a DSLR or mirrorless camera. The problem there is they're not designed to be webcams. I watched one of the Lumina videos, and they were complaining the $2,000 Sony camera took forever to setup and configure for their demo. That's a problem. Someone solve it. Give me a large high quality camera that is designed to be a webcam first. I have lots of room on my desk, it doesn't need to fit in my pocket.

[iamacyborg]

> I watched one of the Lumina videos, and they were complaining the $2,000 Sony camera took forever to setup and configure for their demo

Is that even a real problem? I started using my fuji mirrorless camera as a webcam during the pandemic and it was almost trivial to setup. All I needed to do was download some official software, plug the camera in and switch it on for it to start working as a webcam.

[underlines]

Same here: Used my Sony A7III with USB and their software as an excellent webcam and since I bought the new Sony A7IV, all my client always ask in video calls, what Webcam that is. At my new employer I had several coworkers asking me how the heck I did the insane background blur. (They didn't know it was a mirrorless)

If you have an old DSLR or a modern camera, you can use a 20USD Chinese HDMI Capture stick and get the best webcam on the planet.

[aksss]

Old DSLR - I think there’s an issue with latency that you’ll find on many older DSLRs - converting out to HDMI in real-time - that makes them impractical for use as webcams. Make sure you record yourself in a test conference first and verify.

[httpsterio]

I dunno what you count as old but my 8 year old Sony A6000 has basically no latency at all. You just have to look up some reviews beforehand and make sure that the camera you're looking at supports a clean HDMI output, combined with a decent capture card you can get rather great image quality for a reasonable price.

My Sony A6000 with a 35mm f3.5 lens was 350 euros second hand. Elgato capture card was 99 euros, a mini-hdmi to hdmi cable 8 euros and a dummy battery wall charger was 25 euros. All in all I get a 60 fps 1080p crispy image with great bokeh for under 500 euros.

There's always the Opal C1 that comes at around 300 dollars but imo the image is pretty terrible in comparison.

[aksss]

DSLRs can be pretty old - I have a Canon EOS on on the shelf that outputs a clean 1080 picture, looks great, and is over 15 years old. Looks great, but the latency in the video signal sucks. Probably same Elgato capture card you have.

You'd think that any DSLR from, let's say, last ten years would be just fine, but it all just comes down to the internals of the cam in question. I'm just saying it's wise to check the experience on the other end before putting an old DSLR into production. Out of sync audio is more distracting than lower quality video.

Speaking of cheap cameras - don't count out older camcorders either. An older (but quality) camcorder will get you drastically better image quality and control capabilities than a webcam too, same process as hooking up an older DSLR (capture card, etc). Same challenges to be aware of with latency, and maybe moreso. I've seen a camcorder produced in last two years that had too much latency in HDMI signal to be worth the trouble - it was lower end, but just illustrates the point that component quality varies and has an impact on your use case.

[whoopsie]

Except it cannot handle exposure changes at all, whether from a cloud or just moving around in the frame. So you AE lock and babysit. It’s just easier to link up your phone.

[iamacyborg]

This has not been my experience at all

[achow]

..plus add a good speaker and multiple mic (all available at commodity price).

[adrusi]

Smartphone cameras are small and far better sensors than what you get in webcams. They rely on software to produce images of the quality we're used to seeing, especially with less-than-ideal lighting, but the lenses and sensor are still far better than the Logitech C920.

A webcam doesn't need the latest and greatest video hardware. Give it a camera module from a midrange 2017 smartphone and use the latest image processing tricks, and you'll blow almost any webcam on the market today.

[modeless]

> Give it a camera module from a midrange 2017 smartphone and use the latest image processing tricks, and you'll blow almost any webcam on the market today.

Sorry, that's exactly the strategy of these webcam startups, and Apple with the Studio Display, and the results empirically suck. Even if you could get 2017 smartphone quality (which is still apparently an unsolved problem), why should you settle for that in a webcam that doesn't need to fit in your pocket or run on a tiny battery or cost a tiny fraction of the BOM of a much more complex device? We should be doing way better than that. And way better is definitely possible.

[blablabla123]

As stated somewhere else, at the end the video will go through very lossful compression and often be scaled down when used at work. I mean I'm now at my 4th webcam since the pandemic started because the other cams were: too dark, constantly zooming in and out for no reason (MS Cinema Lifecam), poor image. I now sticked with the Logitech C920 because I can manually set brightness/contrast/activate autofocus.

I think that understates how bad the current state of webcams really is. Esp. when you move around a lot while talking/there's an unusual light situation. IMHO first these core problems need to be solved (and then of course it'd be great be build upon that)

[modeless]

Bigger sensors and bigger lenses are exactly what would solve those core problems. Even after video call compression (which is not always extreme) it is trivial to tell whether a video was taken with a big sensor/lens or a small one. Compression is no reason to use a crappy camera. Garbage in, garbage out.

[kylecordes]

This is the answer. Camera and processor from a several-year-old smart phone, which is now quite cheap. Sell it for $500.

So far no one has, there must be a reason no one can.

[drdec]

> So far no one has, there must be a reason no one can.

I am reminded of the story of two economists walking down the street. One spots a $20 bill on the sidewalk points it out to the other, who says "Don't be ridiculous, if there really were a $20 bill on the ground someone would have picked it up by now."

[vjerancrnjak]

I always wondered how IMX377EQH5 sucked in some devices and was incredible in others (Nexus 5X has really good video/picture quality).

Some devices use it for 4K video and it looks like upscaled 480p. Yet 1080p on Nexus 5X looks very sharp.

[smaudet]

Welcome to what camera makers realized a long time ago - film doesn't matter, the processing does.

It's why DSLR was (is?) a thing - if you ever do research on one, you realize they factor in quantum mechanical effects to make your picture better...(in addition to the 20 or so simultaneous images they take in order to parallel process image).

I haven't kept up as much but - the flat sensor craze was all about how we didn't need DSLR anymore and could just get away with large pixel counts and better processing, and yet the processing still matters...far more than the pixel count. I think that was mainly because 100+ mirror systems are a bit expensive compared to a single flat sensor.

But when you think about them as 100+ parallel processing sensors peforming low-power auto-computation _for-free_, well.

That's another thing entirely.

I do wonder why some DSLRs suck at video - I suspect it has to do with whethey the manufacture cheaped out on the compression circuitry or not - some cameras can/could should shoot HD video, a lot did not, leaving that the pricier models.

[Groxx]

At that price point you're competing with a GoPro, which is likely as good or better at a lower price. All (or most?) current GoPros can be used as a webcam.

[june11]

Actually I tried to do exactly this. Except the gopro webcam software straight up doesn't work and they don't plan on fixing it. Its depressing really.

[Groxx]

That would indeed put a dent in that plan :\ I suppose there are always DSLRs, as those are also sometimes in a similar price bracket (many recent ones can act as a webcam as well).

I gather support / fixes / etc have been rolling out rather slowly, have you tried it in the past few months? Or is it currently that unusable? I certainly wouldn't expect the software to be difficult to build, there are quite a few webcam-emulating projects out there... but then again this is a company's software rather than an interested hobbyist.

[codetrotter]

GoPro is too clunky to carry around for use with a laptop.

Meanwhile, sensor and lens from a smartphone camera can fit in a small enough form factor that it makes sense to carry it around alongside your laptop.

[yardstick]

Almost all laptops have a camera already, crappy as they may be, they still work. I don’t think laptop users are a big market for webcams? Isn’t it more for desktops where you have the luxury of space and bulk?

[xxs13]

The latest Gaming Laptops no longer have webcams ...

It's a growing trend ... if you're a gamer who spent 2000$ on a laptop and also want to do some remote work/interviews you need an external webcam...

[thayne]

If I'm paying $500 for a webcam, it's going to be staying on my desk.

[thayne]

At $500 you're approaching the price point of low end mirrorless cameras, which will probably have higher quality than a small, old smartphone camera.

[kenneth]

A low end mirrorless camera is a fantastic webcam -- the only problem is it's clunky to set up that way especially on the software end. If you made one that's plug and play I would buy it.

[prmoustache]

Nobody wants to spend that amount of money on a webcam. People would buy second hand Sony RX0 for that kind of thing if that was the case.

[smaudet]

Depends on who you are. "Nobody" would spend 1k+ on a desk mic, except unless you are upping e.g. your podcasting game.

I suspect a lot of vloggers, or at least wannabe, can and would easily shell out a measly 500$ for a webcam.

I agree, for a lot of people who just want to webcam mom that's going to be overkill, but if you have money, or do it professionally (I don't mean a remote work job) to the point where you are putting on makeup, investing time, often to the tune of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, its a no-brainer.

[sephamorr]

Ironically, the Apple Studio Display has a A13 processor inside it for camera and other processing. Misses your $500 price point by a long way though!

[chipotle_coyote]

The Studio Display does have a 27" 5K P3-color monitor attached to it, which drives up the price a bit...

Seriously, though, in the context of webcams, the Studio Display is kind of a counterpoint to "just rip a camera module out of a few-year-old smartphone and it'll be terrific". That's pretty much what Apple did here, and it's rather notoriously, ah, not great. (I have one, and I think it's better than some people give it credit for, but I know I'm comparing it to Apple's laptop webcams, which have historically been pretty terrible.)

[Miraste]

Sadly, Apple's laptop webcams are still way better than the ones in competitors. I used an HP Spectre from 2020 or so and it had literally the worst digital camera I have ever seen, including the 90s. It's pinhole sized, and it made a brightly lit room look like a closet at midnight while being grainier than off-brand film. They might as well not have bothered.

[stock_toaster]

elgato facecam is fairly decent.

[Firmwarrior]

yeah, at that point you can just get EpocCam from Elgato, a mount from AliExpress/Amazon/Elgato, and have your 2022 phone's camera quality for ~$30

[newsclues]

The physics of optics are still a hard problem and laptop screens have less room which is why the suck.

[grishka]

There's no such limitation with a dedicated webcam, the kind you mount on top of your monitor. Yet these also are noticeably worse than what you'd find in a 5-year-old phone.

[newsclues]

I think the webcam industry probably doesn’t develop it’s own parts and just picks cellphone parts off the shelf.

Economy of scale and good enough.

[bborud]

...and yet, my macbook pro camera produces a better image than my external webcam even though it is lower resolution.

[1123581321]

You probably have a 1080p which required a notch in the screen to make room. The 720p Mac webcams do not look as good as a Logitech 920 or 922.

[bborud]

Resolution is just one factor. What processing you do to an image can easily make a lower resolution image look better than a high resolution image with horrible colors, bad contrast, poor tone curves etc. I'd describe the output on Macs as "unoffensive". It isn't great, but it also isn't bad.

Most people who dabble in photography and shoot raw will have some idea of this. The (untreated) images that come out of my professional DSLR don't look as pleasant as those that come out of my iPhone. Even if they have 4 times the pixels, and each pixel has much more dynamic range. How the raw sensor input is interpreted, influenced by intent, and then rendered, can be the difference between something you would hang on your wall and something you'd delete.

I have half a dozen macs with cameras, including the 16" notched M1 Mac Pro. None of them produce a great image, but they won't stand out as bad in a video conference. My $1000 camera does stand out because of its poor image processing, especially in low light conditions. It is a bit sharper, but the colors look distinctly off.

[sudosysgen]

Doesn't it have a notch?

[GekkePrutser]

True but this argument doesn't work for desktop webcams which have as much space as they want (even a lot more than in a phone)

[DiggyJohnson]

For what it’s worth, I agreed with the cynical view of GP until I read this comment. A very convincing defense of the prioritization of the software layer.

[dj_mc_merlin]

Completely agree, this is the old adage: "Garbage in, garbage out". Improving the data the sensor collects is surely much easier than using ML models to correct after the fact. The people willing to pay a premium for nice big lenses/sensors are the market to go after, everybody else won't care since they already feel their current set up is good enough.

[dharma1]

I expect mobile phone cameras to kill webcams. All the innovation happens there and when people already have something getting closer to dSLR quality each year, why invest in a specialised webcam?

Apple just needs to bake webcam sharing/remote camera control into iOS and come up with a nice attachment for the phone that works with MacBooks and displays so you don’t have to look at the camera at a weird angle.

Maybe some magsafe sticker behind the display so you can snap your phone to the back of the display easily, with the main rear cameras pointing at you above the display

[GekkePrutser]

> Apple just needs to bake webcam sharing/remote camera control into iOS and come up with a nice attachment for the phone that works with MacBooks and displays so you don’t have to look at the camera at a weird angle.

> Maybe some magsafe sticker behind the display so you can snap your phone to the back of the display easily, with the main rear cameras pointing at you above the display

You do realise they just did exactly this, right? :)

But look at it and see why it doesn't really work.. It's an awful contraption, and your phone is tied up for the duration. And I doubt it will work well with every case either.

[dubya]

Something has changed in Monterey so it is possible to use virtual webcams even with Apple apps (Facetime, Safari, etc). See https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/05/06/camo-1-6

So it should work not just for iPhones.

[spockz]

That is nice! Now I can’t wait to have a video conference on the Apple TV.

[joshspankit]

Apple already did this as discussed, but I’m going to make a different point:

This whole idea is against what Apple wants to be and so I think they will kill it (“evolve past it”) as soon as they can. Using an iPhone as a webcam is below Apple’s threshold of sleekness.

Apple would be the kind of person who doesn’t have anything in their pockets because that would “ruin the lines”, and when they need to buy something at a store instead of carrying a credit card they just call their lawyers and tell them to buy the whole thing so they are free to take whatever they want and write it off inventory.

When they interact with someone who is not as sleek, they look down and imply they are poor. “Why would you carry around that big thing (card) when you could simply buy the store? I don’t know if we should associate with each other...”

[atombender]

I frequently use my phone while in a meeting. I can't see how using your phone as a webcam would be productive. Using a phone, like an old iPhone model you have upgraded from, would be neat, though. But there are a bunch of apps that let you do this today, I believe.

[ako]

I would expect most people to be more productive during a meeting if they can't use their phone at the same time...

[adrusi]

They announced just this at WWDC a couple weeks ago.

[numpad0]

That was the goofiest thing happened in Apple presentation in a long time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5D55G7Ejs8&t=5226s

[p1esk]

Link?

[simondotau]

The feature is called “Continuity Camera”.

[drewg123]

This appears to support just photos and document scanning. And also seems to use BT and WiFi.

I have a friend who lives in a high rise with incredibly crowded wifi spectrum. Anything wireless that involves latency sucks in their apartment. They tried to use an old iPhone for VC, but the jitter added by their crappy wifi made that a non-starter. By contrast, this product uses a USB connection, and I'm guessing would perform far better for them (and really anybody with crappy wifi, which is most people).

[simondotau]

> This appears to support just photos and document scanning.

Maybe try Googling again?

https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/6/23156834/apple-iphone-webc...

As for the issue with wifi, that's a legitimate shame for your friend, but isn't a reason for the feature not to exist for anyone.

[sjs7007]

Welp, that feature is basically going to kill this company then.

[harha]

Agree, the flat and tiny webcams aren’t really necessary at home or in the home office and I don’t know anyone who carries even the smaller webcams around.

As long as it doesn’t look too bad, a larger lens and sensor would be perfectly fine (think of the original iSight camera, something like that would totally be acceptable) and I’d rather not have my computer be slowed down even further by the webcam doing some magic in the background.

[Spooky23]

Agreed. Optics aren’t that hard. If you put a good sensor in something with a form factor similar to the old iSight camera, seems to me like it would be a winner.

People seem to have embraced those stupid circle lights everywhere, why is a decent camera a bridge too far?