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I read that point as $20-80 is the cost for the _additional_ equipment required if you already have a good camera

But a used old dSLR. It'll still be light years better than a cheap webcam.

> better

For portrait photography, yes. For meeting with colleagues, no.

Audio quality and network performance is light years more important than focal length and bokeh of your talking head.

A mirrorless or even an older DLSR will be a marked improvement for meeting with colleagues as well. They use HDMI out, and they aren't really be suggested for audio, so neither of the factors you mentioned are even involved.

Of course if you sound like crap and can't stream at a decent bitrate, fix that first / as well. But with crisp audio and a decent Net connection, there's plenty of room to improve video quality from awful to decent, and your colleagues notice both, whether they realize it or not.

> realize

Perhaps you mean "care".

To not realize a visual quality difference, is to not notice.

A used iPhone - a iPhone 7 is an excellent webcam and is probably about $80, or less with a busted screen