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Comment by pintxo | Hacker News Reader

As I had a Canon DSLR lying around during Covid, I have repurposed it to a webcam using Canons webcam driver: https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/support/se...

Image quality is top notch and the ability to Zoom in/out using the zoom lense is nice. You also get some nice background blur, depending on your used lens. For power there are modified "batteries" allowing to plug the camera into AC for power.

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I've done exactly the same with a canon dslr. Everybody asks me if I am a streamer

Many are jealous, i think. It's hard to understand through their poor webcams haha

That's a good idea actually, especially older DSLRs are quite cheap on the used market.

The problem is I'm more of a Nikon guy and I don't own any Canon lenses. But my Nikon body is an ancient D50 which doesn't have any of this fancy webcammy stuff. Or even video recording for that matter. And I don't know if newer Nikons have webcam features. But thanks for the tip, I'll investigate.

Even that cam would provide excellent images though with its 5mpx sensor.

Nikon[1] and Sony[2] also released software during the pandemic that turns any of their video recording DSLR/MILCs into webcams. I think a D50 might be a bit too old though since it doesn't have video recording.

1: https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/webcam-utility...

2: https://imagingedge.sony.net/en-us/ie-webcam.html

> DSLR/MILC

Thanks, I'll have a look. But yeah I'll need a newer cam for sure.

The problem is that most of my lenses are 'screwdriver' models so if I upgrade I need to take one of the higher end models which can still drive this. This feature was removed on all the lower end ones over time.

If you have, like, 1960s Ai Nikkor 50mm F1.4 with a "crab nail", and if you don't need autofocus or program-auto aperture, they can be put onto basically any cameras by means of a passive adapter.

Oh yeah good point. I have a much newer 50/1.8 that does still have a manual aperture ring.

50mm is a bit too narrow on a crop sensor though for the distance I'm sitting from the display.

Would it not overheat after some time?

Yes, that is only one of the hassles with this approach. When it works it does look great however.

I have had no heating problems whatsoever. Mostly its been in use for 1-2 hour sessions at a time, occasionally longer. I do turn the camera off in between though, so it's not turned on 24/7.

Most annoying is a bug in the Canon webcam driver, if the camera is switched off, it displays a static image, which somehow fully occupies a single core on my machine. I would have thought encoding a still image into a video stream should be doable with less cpu cycles.

Not in my experience. I'm curious why you would you expect it to overheat?

Some cameras are not designed to record HD video during long periods of time.

Does it need to be recording? Perhaps you could just capture live HDMI output.

This is a confusion of terms. By "recording" people can mean both writing data to the card and activating the sensor to receive information. The latter is what overheats a camera, and the process is the same for both sending data directly to HDMI or recording it to a card. Some older sensors on Canon digital SLRs would actually begin to burn themselves out just by having the screen display what the sensor was receiving (also known as "live view") for more than about 10 minutes.

If the camera wasn't designed for video the sensor can over heat as it takes power to drive it.

Sony A6 series - yes.

Sony A7 series - no.

Fujifilm, any version - no.

Based on my (sparse) experience.

Some models definitely overheat. Some models also don’t have clean HDMI output.

Basically, you can’t just buy a random mirrorless or SLR camera and hope it works. You have to pick from a smaller list of known-good setups.

> You have to pick from a smaller list of known-good setups.

Any recommendations for the cheapest second hand SLR one can buy to have streamer quality webcam feeds?

Grab an old Panasonic GH3 and the 20mm f1.8 lens. It looks great. This is a pretty decent list: https://www.elgato.com/en/cam-link/camera-check

Thank you!

For those that want to make their canon work in linux, check this guide

https://maximevaillancourt.com/blog/canon-dslr-webcam-debian...

The problem is auto focus. Only modern mirrorless (and a few DSLRs) cameras have eye detection, and are actually good at keeping the focus.

Hopefully in a few years we will have cheap versions with excellent AF.

The lack of AF is a feature, not a bug. I replaced my AF lens with eye AF with a manual focus lens on my work webcam. The DoF zone indicates to other viewers if I should be conceptually "in focus" at that point in the meeting (i.e. I am speaking or directly engaging with the speaker). Otherwise I recline and go slightly out of focus.

Turn it to manual focus and set the focus and depth of field appropriately?

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