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Comment by sjtgraham | Hacker News Reader

A couple of months ago I had a Zoom meeting with the CEO of another startup. I remarked his camera must be good because the capture was of incredible quality. His "webcam" was actually one of the Canon ones on the list.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1633519-REG/canon_379...

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Having a C for webcams is really over the top! The qualities of a digital cinema camera are wasted on such a compressed stream. A mirrorless and basic prime will give you the same effect for 1/10 the price.

That said it's entirely possible he needs to record serious footage on it for marketing and stuff and they sent him this because it shoots to their standards. Still, it's funny.

Maybe it's a pre-production prototype, repurposed to fit a need :)

I’m a hobbyist videographer and I’m not above setting up my lighting (3-point with octobox, strip box, and hair snoot) and camera (a7s iii with G lens) as a webcam to impress. I’ve recorded a few instructional videos at work with it, set it up for the first couple weeks after acquisition to meet the team, and I’d use it for job interviews if I was looking.

It’s not why I have the gear but… “smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.”

Canon released an app to allow most of their cameras to run as a fairly low-res webcam (it's a streaming capture from the liveview system rather than 720p).

This was really great for me with Zoom because I could get a sharp colourful image even in the low lights I had available, where a standard webcam would have dissolved into a grey mush of noise reduction.

I've got a 720p $50 (pre-pandemic price) Logitech at home. I regularly answer to the same questions about picture quality. This is because everyone are using Apple laptops with awfully shitty cameras and just used to it.

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