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Comment by aikinai | Hacker News Reader

I use a nice mirrorless camera as my webcam. Every single person I meet with first comments on the image quality before we get into the meeting. It absolutely makes a difference.

And I haven’t done anything about my lighting which is pretty terrible. At least I can set the exposure for my face regardless of whether the background ends up solid white or black.

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Which one?

I’ve spent a few hours trying to pick one and there’s no standout obvious choice.

LUMIX GH5? Kind of old and likely to be replaced soon.

LUMIX G100? New, but video record limit and bad autofocus.

Sony ZV1? Good autofocus, but no interchangeable lens and smaller sensor

It’s really hard to find something that is clearly the best choice.

Edit: just saw your response to the other comment, thanks

Any mirrorless will have a better depth of field, color accuracy, and perceptual appearance than the small sensors employed in run of the mill webcams. I wouldn’t overthink it if you’re just using it as a webcam. My coworkers are all using their old DSLRs now that driver and firmware updates have enabled their use. They look better than the very expensive Logitec cameras they installed in office.

Can you tell us which?

Yeah, I use my Sony α6600 with the Sigma 1.4 56mm lens. And an Elgato Cam Link 4K to hook it up to the computer.

I certainly wouldn’t buy it just for a webcam, but I already have the camera and I got the Cam Link for my son’s violin performances that moved to Zoom for a while.

Oh, also I use the ECM-B1M mic even though I use Bluetooth headphones. I realized Bluetooth headphones (at least on a Mac) drop down to super low quality when transmitting both audio and mic, so I only use them for my sound and rely on the camera mic through the Cam Link for input.

Tangential for folks with more bluetooth knowledge than me - is there any bluetooth profile (or plans for a future high-bandwidth bluetooth version) which can support high quality audio while also supporting microphones?

HFS/HSP is one of the major reasons why I'm still reluctant to use wireless headphones as my default playback device.

Many proprietary wireless headphones do fine. “HFP but like A2DP” sadly don’t exist.

I use a Newer NW700 as my microphone attached to my standing desk with my wireless headphones. macOS makes managing this easy through either independent controls through the Sound control panel or as an aggregate device. For the road I found a pass through mic that plugs into my headphone’s line in and use it as wired headphones. The mic comes out on an arm and it does a much better job than an in line mic built into a cable.

I have a similar setup (a6600 with the Sony G 16-55mm f/2.8). Have you tried it without the cam link?

Like so:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24743842

I've been satisfied with the results, I'm wondering if you've done both and if you see a difference. I'll probably end up with a capture setup eventually, but I've been kicking it down the road.

Sorry, I haven't tried the direct setup so I can't compare. That software wasn't available yet when I started so I just got the Cam Link.

Thanks for sharing the software setup! It'd be nice to not have to carry the Cam Link if I want to use this on the go, so I might try setting it up when I get some time. Right now the Cam Link is working very well; it's totally plug-n-play and the quality is top notch.

Will try to remember to come back and share here if I do try the software setup.

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