Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam
(romanzipp.com)989 points by romanzipp a day ago
989 points by romanzipp a day ago
Thankfully people have figured out how to add apps to some sony cameras https://github.com/ma1co/Sony-PMCA-RE
It's the same thing, one is just the out of box locked down Sony app-store controlled version, and this is the somewhat liberated side loading & build chain. It's some kind of Android layer running atop the base camera.
> It is possible to develop custom Android apps for supported cameras. Keep in mind that they should be compatible with Android 2.3.7.
https://github.com/ma1co/Sony-PMCA-RE?tab=readme-ov-file#wha...
I wish Samsung had had better success with their Android native powered cameras (as opposed to the thin shell Sony grafted atop), had decided to stay around. Cellphones have amazing & fantastic photo apps available, where-as the professional systems baked into cameras emphasizes post-production tools for computational photography. Being able to have app devs everywhere making your digital camera better & more usable should be such an obvious priority.
And the earlier Alpha cameras with their Android based shim they could run kind of got this. Sony did announce a new SDK 3 years ago for some of their highest end cameras, but it's a simpler remote-control only SDK. https://alphauniverse.com/stories/sony-announces-new-camera-...
Heh, your experience is not isolated. I needed the timelapse app when I was several days deep into Algonquin park in northern Ontario. I had barely a bar of service, so I had to hoist my phone up a tree with a rope to get enough data that I could tether the camera to it. Thanks Sony.
Wow, I had the exact same experience with a Sony Alpha 6. Also used a laptop to VPN back home ...
That does sound completely absurd.
How many people buy apps on their high end camera? Doesn’t sound like it was worth developing an App Store for it.
Back in 2010 the app store was the hot new thing and everyone had visions of how they would put on in their product. Most of them realized it was a stupid idea before they got around to writing code for it (much less release), but some of it escaped to the public.
Sometimes the idea of apps might make sense (this is arguable, but lets not go there) but the old buy it on a real computer (phone allowed) and then load it is correct.
The only app I’ve ever used with a camera was the Panasonic app on my GH5 for a shoot because it gave you full remote control of the settings/focus and monitoring (for free!) I find most apps for cameras are not necessary and often buggy but I get why some folks like them
Sony’s software is still terrible… but fwiw they have built in timelapse functionality in their cams since the A7 III released in 2018.
It's part of the enshittification cycle. I'd been a Nikon camera user and figured I'd upgrade...reviewing Nikon, Cannon and Sony, the new startup...Sony was the only body at that pricepoint that also had a motor in the body to let older class have auto-focus...that was a feature the other two were gatekeeping at higher priced bodies.
Now that they're established, its time to chip away and add shareholder value.
The classic walled garden approach - make everyone buy lense mounts that only fit their cameras, people collect lenses for their brand of choice, then make them regret ever making the purchase by racking up subscription costs and introducing 3rd party spyware to sell your data. Sunk cost fallacy makes people eat shit because they're already too deep. Capitalism at it's finest.
That is absurd and annoying - you might prefer to just get a USB remote shutter release for future work.
Pentax cameras are much better at the ui and do not have any of this shit. They are also bulletproof and nearly indestructible, favoured by war photographers, and tend to have excellent spec sheets (if a bit of a a slow autofocus).
The company went bankrupt and bought by Ricoh, which I sincerely hope will keep the brand alive. Capitalism does really seem to prefer the nickel and dime approach...
It required an app to be installed on the camera that was paid-for.
Apple had a similar situation once. I was among the thousands of people who paid Apple something like $10 to get a CD-ROM in the mail containing a single CODEC for something video-related.
Sorry for being vague, it was way back in the early days of OS X, so I can't remember exactly what the situation was. But I do know I still have the file in my archive, as I ran across it a few weeks ago.
Apple used to sell prorec and Sorenson stuff. Usually you could get them with a QuickTime pro license, final cut license, or similar
The penny-fucking behaviour of huge organization in parallel of pushing at you unwanted (actually obstructing) messages in various ways, email, pop-ups and tootip suggestions and advices, CI/CD pushed on the user on a prominent way are repelling. In parallel to the rubbish web presence not working reliably or at all, far from being easy for clients but usually having bells and whistles for distraction. I saved quite a bit of money thinking twice if I want to be abused by products made for the benefit of the organization mainly. Sometimes with side benefits for the user, but that is more like coincidence, side effect of addressing the organization's needs. Less and less point buying consumer products if it just makes your life similarly difficult, not better.
The thing is, nobody cares.
As long as consumers keep making uneducated choices and companies keep copying one another, that's what we will be getting, and honestly, that's what we deserve.
After all, people watch "reviews" of video gear on YouTube (pretty much all "reviewers" get the gear for free and then pretend they are objective). These "reviewers" use the gear for all of several hours before making the video and forgetting about the gear. But that's what people base their buying decisions on.
And then, "competition" doesn't exist, because companies seem to be hell-bent on copying one another's idiotic ideas. Everybody is afraid to take a bolder step and make something different because, you know, next quarter's profits, and bonuses.
So, nobody cares.
Louis Rossmann is putting together a Consumer Action Task Force. If people care, now would be a good time to show it.
The revenue boost you get from this dumb shit is easily measurable and attributable. “Let’s charge our existing customers $5 for some nonsense” -> bigger bonus that year.
The long term revenue hit you get from pissing off your customers is nearly impossible to measure or attribute.
Occasionally you’ll see a company where the leadership believes in the long term value of not doing this crap. They might do pretty well as a result. (Fans would point to Apple as a huge example, YMMV.) But even with an example to imitate, the incentives are almost impossible to overcome, especially since your revenue story will get worse before it gets better if you change course. And those rare good companies are vulnerable to change in leadership that takes them down the bad path.
> The long term revenue hit you get from pissing off your customers is nearly impossible to measure or attribute.
As people become accepting of this practice I worry there won't be a long-term hit.
Tech consumers don't understand what kind of services actually warrant a subscription because there's a recurring cost to the provider (renting CPU or storage capacity) versus those that are just rent seeking (ahem-- "recovering development costs").
I was heartened when mainstream media was up-in-arms over auto manufacturers trying to charge monthly fees for features like heated seats or remote start. I worry that consumers can't identify those kinds of gouging behavior with technology and will just accept and normalize these practices.
Where do you get that idea? It's in no way implied in GP's comment. These practices don't have to benefit the company at all. GP is just saying, as long as enough people keep buying despite the practices, then the practices will continue.
Is there a reason OP can't get themselves a $50 USB capture card and a $20 HDMI cable, and use OBS to capture the feed from the HDMI-out in the camera? Most decent capture cards also expose themselves as cameras to almost all applications. This is my setup, and it works perfectly. Nikon D7500 as a webcam. More professional setups use Atomos monitors with built-in NVMe drives mounted directly to the camera.
I generally find the camera manufacturers' in-house programs absolutely terrible. Nikon's webcam utility is free[1], but has significant limitations over the capture card setup. Likewise for Sony. Both have considerable resolution and framerate limits, and I'd rather feed a 4K 60 FPS stream into my meeting program and let it handle the compression than have an XGA 1024×768 15 FPS output from the camera.
[1]: https://downloadcenter.nikonimglib.com/en/products/548/Webca...
Unfortunately there is no port of ML to my specific model. I did some porting work myself by running the camera firmware in QEMU, but to be able to run it on hardware I apparently needed some signing key that only the Magic Lantern lead dev has. By the time I was doing all of this he was busy with real world stuff so ultimately I just borrowed a friend's Nikon camera.
The particular camera he's talking about, the G5 X Mark II, does support clean HDMI out. I used to use it as my webcam.
> Is there a reason OP can't get themselves a $50 USB capture card and a $20 HDMI cable, and use OBS to capture the feed?
This is how I've used my Sony camera since COVID. It works great.
I wasn't sure at first if OP was trying to do something nonstandard, because you get video to your computer with a video cable. Plus a way for your computer to capture that, which for me is CamLink.
Honestly, I'm surprised there's a relevant manufacturer app at all. Not surprised that it costs money.
This is a bit like not having power in your home to charge your camera with and asking the manufacturer for a generator. They may have a solution, but the price will be bad.
OP wants to just use the USB cable, which makes sense for me.
USB 2.0, that bog standard version from 2000 that is assumed to be the lowest common denominator possible for any new hardware...
Edit: 4am math correction...
480Mbit/sec transfer; Uncompressed, that's ~333333 pixels per frame for 60FPS. Not even considering overhead, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_video_device_class 1.1 support from 2005 includes Motion JPEG (low compression, all patents probably expired given it was developed in the 90s) and MPEG2 (also sufficiently old, to be unencumbered now).
However, if they'd use USB 3.0 ~ 5gbps, ideally over a USB-C port, the connection would be more modern, and easily able to handle even 4K video with now free from patents and well supported compression algorithms.
Why should the manufacturer raise the price of the camera for you and me just to implement something extra OP wants that they can already do through HDMI?
OP expects the camera comes with some decent convenience at that price.
OP is using a camera as a webcam that's not sold as a webcam. That's fine, I do the same with mine, but it's also fine of the manufacturer to allow for that by simply providing A/V interfaces instead of trying to account for every use case.
Exactly. But why does he need to buy a USB capture card and HDMI cable? He can just hire someone to come and record the videos for him. They'll also do the post processing.
Why does he even even record the videos himself? He can just hire actors to do what he wants, probably a lot better.
And what's the whole thing with buying a camera? He should just buy a studio and hire a crew to manage all that stuff.
Not a big deal at all.
The outrage in this thread is incredible. Buying a couple A/V adapters to adapt a non-webcam camera into a webcam is somehow seen as a terrible burden.
If someone doesn't want to do that, perhaps they should buy...a webcam. No adapters needed.
A camera comes with more power at the cost of simplicity for this use case.
This is what's called a slippery slope.
A capture card and HDMI cable together cost less than $100. Hiring someone will be at least an order of magnitude more expensive—and more so the more people you hire.
Whoosh.
That was the entire point of the comment, to point out the slippery slope in the HDMI/cable card argument in the first place.
Eh? There's no slippery slope. A capture card is standard equipment for any broadcaster.
There is an absolutely massive gulf between a one-time supplementary purchase of $100 versus a multi-million dollar studio, film crew, actors. The comment was ludicrous, sorry.
Would this approach also give you control of camera settings? I think the OP's situation, he wanted that.
How easy and slick this setup will be depends on the camera.
For example, my camera can't operate and charge over USB at the same time, so you need a supplemental power supply. And it won't autofocus continuously or keep the exposure and white balance stable unless you're recording a video. And videos can only be so long.
So I've got a HDMI-to-USB converter, a special HDMI cable, a special power brick and adaptor, a special tripod so all those cables don't pull the whole setup over, and I've got to restart video recording every 30 minutes or so, and wipe the microsd card regularly.
Your camera's probably better suited to this than mine :)
I've been using a Sony mirrorless (anything above a5100 will work) for over 6 years now; it needed a "dummy battery", and an HDMI capture card (about $25 for noname brands, or $80+ for Elgato, BlackMagic etc). It auto-focuses, doesn't write to microsd, and works flawlessly.
Even if you aren't buying Elgato, you can use Elgato's compatibility page to know which cameras work well: https://www.elgato.com/us/en/s/cam-link-camera-check
Weirdly I had the exact opposite experience. Elgato always felt laggy. I bought a no-name USB Stick format card and it looked great (once I got my camera settings dialed in) but would disconnect when I bumped my desk. I cracked the case open and soldered a USB cable I cut in half to the pads, and 3d printed a new case and it's been rock solid for the last 4 years. Only problem is the once in a blue moon I need to use Teams my video get's horizontally squished and I can't seem to fix it.
I can force my (canon) camera to autofocus while not recording but usually you want to avoid that. It really hits the battery because the lens is permanentely adjusting.
Most mirrorless cameras a hybrids and you usually do not need this feature while takting stills.
Makes sense. On my sony camera (a7iv), it does continuous autofocus in video mode. You don't need to hit the record button - just set the focus mode to AFC (autofocus continuous) and it does its thing.
I also just tried connecting it as a webcam over USB, and it does continuous autofocus when set up like that too. I'm sure it uses more power, but the camera can power itself over the USB port while connected, so thats not a problem.
None of my stills cameras focused continuously out of the box, probably to save power (moving potentially heavy lens elements around requires energy). My Olympus mirrorless can be told to focus all the time, but it's not the default.
They -can-, they just don't, unless you specifically enable it for power reasons.
To be fair, I also have the dummy battery + HDMI capture + desktop clamp mount + live view faff for my D7500, but once you set it up it's just... there. I don't need to fiddle with it much further. It's a bit of a cable mess but I intend to upgrade to the Z6iii together with an upgrade to a desktop (so I can have a PCIe capture card), which will cut down the number of dongles all over.
I have that setup too. I was referring to this:
> it won't autofocus continuously or keep the exposure and white balance stable unless you're recording a video
That basically defeats our setup as now they're worrying about their recording time running out in the middle of a meeting.
It's rage bait. People hate subscriptions, understandably so, and people without A/V experience might expect a camera not sold as a webcam to easily double as a webcam since they both can capture video.
It's just a really poor reason to be outraged at Canon (or Sony or any of the other companies whose non-webcam cameras don't seamlessly turn into webcams without some standard A/V adapters).
Oh, good to know! I didn't manage to find this one. But this one is $100 in the US, and $120 in some other places. Which is quite a bit of additional money to pay on top of your camera, which already has USB and should just provide a video stream there…
(this dongle is also USB-A, unfortunately)
I’ve been using this with a Fuji XT4 for last 2 years as webcam, working great. Though for stuff like google meet, I usually set it to 1080p 60fps since that’s the max res most meeting software will accept anyways, and frame rate is more important for live meeting than res.
Sure. I can do anything. It's the principle of the thing.
The principle is to use the right tool for the job.
USB can do just about anything. Video out is one possibility. But HDMI can already do that.
It doesn't make sense to expect the manufacturer to provide a free app to make USB do something you can already do over HDMI, and for which HDMI is intended.
This article is rage bait where there's no real cause for outrage. But it's adjacent enough to "right to repair" and "subscription fatigue" that it sounds outrageous.
The right too for the job most certainly is not HDMI.
The video feed should (depending on usecase, sure) be compressed on the device and sent over USB.
Sending uncompressed video just to be badly compressed in a capture device is most definitely not the right tool for the job.
But you generally don't have everything you need. As I've mentioned most cameras' USB webcam output (if at all present) is quite bad, even via the official programs or gphoto. The 'correct' way to access video output is through their, well, video-out port (usually HDMI), which almost necessitates a capture card or monitor.
The fact that its a subscription is what really rubs me up the wrong way. Not everything deserves to be a subscription. Why is everything a subscription these days?
The reason for subscriptions is because we've applied a debt based financial model to everything. And for whatever reason customers do not understand the model and how bad they're getting screwed.
$100 of one time purchase software is approximately $5-10 per year of recurring revenue. And so if they can convince you that $5 a month is "not bad" then you're effectively outlaying $1000 for the software. In return you do get massive flexibility like, say, using the software for 1 month and then never again.
Some of it is due to inflation, we'd choke if we saw the real capital cost.
a quick google suggests that maybe Black Ops Cold War (2020): Over $700 million in development costs, 30 million copies sold. Thats $23 just in dev, not marketing and distribution, operation of the servers etc. Whereas black ops 3 was about $10 a copy, but sold for $60. Most of us would balk at paying ~$140 for a game, but that's roughly the inflationary pressures.
Anyways long story, I dont like subscriptions either, but I also dont want to lay down $100s on a piece of software I might not use in a month's time, especially if there wasnt a free trial for me to confirm it's not total crap.
Don't forget the fact that, uh, you can't get away from it. Please stop blaming customers for this. Literally nobody wants it this way, we just have no power to change it. What are we supposed to do, just never buy cameras or cars or software or computers ever again?
The broader question of why companies are able to keep pushing us ever closer to the maximum we’d conceivably be willing to pay for a given good, is probably best answered with “we stopped trust-busting a few decades ago, so competition sucks and keeps getting worse”.
>Why is everything a subscription these days?
Software showed the world the incredible value of everyone being a renter instead of an owner.
Ironically HN (as an ad for Ycombinator) exists largely to enforce that new paradigm
If you're serious, it's called rent-seeking behavior, and it is an extractive component of modern financialism.
One solution is to make a law that says it's illegal, and then enforce that law, ideally with harsh penalties so executives and companies can't get away with it.
I hope this helps!
> and they should—due to the lack of standards—provide software that allows you to use their cameras as intended.
There is a standard:
Yes, the articles complaints (no free way to use it as a webcam, 30 minute limits etc.) doesn't seem to apply to many camera brands apart from Canon.
And Canon's marketshare has been declining for years
https://www.mpb.com/en-uk/content/latest-from-mpb/2024-chall...
Sony encourages their use for vlogging/youtube because that's a huge market and let's you plug in HDMI to your computer without using special software
devil's advocate, but this is not "using the cameras as intended". This is a camera for photography, I don't think a common person would see it and think "this is intended as a webcam".
On the one hand, perhaps this fixed software should be a one-time purchase and not a subscription. However, if this software was provided for free, what incentive would the management at Cannon have for investing into updating the software for MacOS when it inevitably breaks? I think there is a small subset of users using this camera as a webcam, and frankly I'm surprised Cannon even has an official app.
And this is probably because Canon corporate won't justify a budget for developing this software unless they expect separate revenue for it, even though it's clearly just value-add to the (already very expensive) hardware.
Bit of a weird argument considering you can use other brand cameras as webcams without any third party software. At least, all my Sony cameras can just be plugged in using USB and it works immediately. No drivers required.
Are you sure? The article talks about using it as a webcam and none of the Sony gear I've used supports that (A6500, A7 I/RI/II/SII/III/RIII/SIII).
They did make the "Imaging Edge Webcam" program, I think some time during the pandemic, but AFAIK it's just a PTP preview to webcam driver, so the quality is pretty terrible and you can do that with OBS+gphoto2.
A7RV + A6700 here. If you plug in a USB cable, it shows the usual "usb selection screen", but it includes a "USB streaming" option. It works immediately, flawlessly, on windows and macOS. For remote shooting, there's still the "PC remote" option.
My older Sony cameras (A6300 is my newest "old" Sony camera) don't have the feature (unless you use that terrible software you mentioned) Im surprised to read that even the reasonably modern A7SIII doesn't support it. It must be one of the last models without USB streaming support.
Fellow Sony a7iv owner here. I can confirm this works on my camera too.
For older cameras, probably the easiest way to do it (if you don't want to install anything) is to pick up a ~$20 usb HDMI capture card from amazon. Connect the HDMI output on the camera to the capture card. And then set your camera up to output a "clean" video source via the HDMI port.
As I understand it, modern capture cards work without drivers on every OS, just like the modern sony cameras do.
It reminds me a little of the time Apple charged $2 for a WiFi driver update, claiming some accounting rule said they couldn’t distribute it for free.
I guess they figured out a better way to do the accounting, since they never did that particular stunt again.
> For your "streamer" stuff, I'd expect them to use something appropiate to the job
They mostly don't, though. The standard "high-end" streaming setup is whatever second-hand mirrorless camera has a clear HDMI output, and an HDMI capture card.
This is because this behavior is simply not illegal, and companies can get away with it.
This reminds me of Samsung and the SPO2 the oxygen sensor on the S8+ (I think) phone. All was well until one day an update disabled access to the sensor. Worse it was only for Canada where it was blocked. The access to the physical sensor on a phone I had owned for a few years, gone. Oh but you could buy their new watch that had an SPO2 sensor on it.
Disabling a physical component on a device a person owns and has owned for a while shouldn't be permitted.
I'm not sure since I don't have any Canon gear, but it's very likely that the app just uses the PTP protocol, which is an old but stil common standard. The main ioen source implementation is libgphoto2 and there's an OBS Studio plugin to use it as a camera source, after which you can use its built-in virtual webcam mode to use it as a webcam.
Canon G5 X mark 2 does not seem to be supported by gphoto:
Worth a try compiling a custom version after adding to https://github.com/knro/libgphoto2/blob/master/camlibs/canon... Hopefully it's as easy as that.
I'm able to pipe gphoto2 frames to a pipewire sink or v4l2 device and it works great for making my Canon EOS 250D into a webcam.
Newer Nikon and apparently also some Sony cameras simply support USB UVC ("the webcam protocol"), which makes this pure plug and play, but apparently Canon doesn't. For older cameras there's a Nikon webcam utility or something like that, which does exactly what you suggest: grab preview frames via PTP and stuff them into a video source. Or you get an HDMI/USB dongle for 10$.
> Software development isn’t free
Part of the burden of this is on us.
If a digital camera OS is a small embedded system running on a microcontroller it has a fixed cost, and lasts forever, just like the electrical components.
If it’s an instance of chromium running on Ubuntu server or Android, with hundreds of dependencies in your program alone than the cost to stop it from bricking is effectively infinite. (I’m even aware of medical surgery devices using Electron these days)
As a Nikon guy, I'm using my Z50 as a webcam with little fuss. I've got a fake battery that plugs into AC power -- and my output is through HDMI to an Elgato Cam link 4k.
It doesn't overheat even after hours of use (unlike most full-frame sensors), and I've got it capturing in monochrome because I just really like B&W.
And because its face/eye detect autofocus is reasonably capable -- I can keep a wide aperture/shallow depth of field, which in turn, results in beautiful bokeh... So no Teams filters to blur my background -- I'm using optics instead.
Not sure its teams but half the video calls I am in feature someone's ear or hair flickering in and out of the focus mask. For me that can be quite distracting.
One person I am in calls with regularly recently got a professional A/V setup for video calls and it is such a treat to get in a call with them.
So I think people would notice and appreciate a good setup?
I don't think too many people are buying a Nikon solely for this purpose, but rather they already have it and _also_ use it as a webcam. The main advantage there is - in my view anyway - that it allows you to control the field of view easily, compared to the built-in webcam. The far better image quality is just a bonus.
Absolutely but when you set up one as a webcam you usually leave it in place as a webcam setup unless you want natural bokeths only from time to time. It also depends on the line of work, if you're in some media related field and it is required to have pristine streaming, well, that is a whole different story.
For me it’s super quick to set up, I just put the 40/2 lens on, move two switches (photo/movie selector to movie and mode dial to a user preset position) and drop it into a quick release plate. Plug in HDMI and turn on/off as needed.
I have an old EOS 550D (I think it's called Rebel T2 in the US?) and I can use the webcam software for free. I downloaded a copy back in 2020 when Covid hit and Canon decided to release it. Maybe that would be the key to reverse engineer it and make it free for everybody?
Same model.
I've bought it in Japan so the model is labeled Kiss X4. Apparently they give it a different name for the product depending on the market: EOS 550D = Rebel T2i = EOS Kiss X4
Software works but you need to pay a recurring subscription (aargh I hate this model) to unlock features your hardware already supports.
I purchased a Canon M50 to use as a webcam during covid. I spend a lot of time doing remote training and quality video is paramount to me. At that time, the Canon webcam software worked fine on my Windows machine.
I later moved back to a Mac as my daily driver and the Canon software was never reliable on m1 chips. The camera didn't have clean HDMI out. I was pretty frustrated because my fancy webcam no longer worked. Canon showed little desire to support Macs.
I purchased a used Sony that had clean HDMI and it worked great with a cheap HDMI capture device.
I now use an Insta360 webcam with a large sensor. Image quality and focus speed are great. It has slightly less bokeh effect than the Canon and Sony, but folks always comment about how good my video looks.
They are also quite a bit cheaper than going the DSLR route for webcam.
CHDK back then had quiet a few people from Canon helping - as far as I remember the floor gossip.
There are things we could do with our time...
I suppose I'm glad some people find time to do this.
> However, Canon is a hardware company, not a software company,
Canon is a company that is in the business of making profit (not just software or just hardware).
If they realize that they can charge you $1 for every time you chew gum while taking photos, and people will actually pay for that privilege $1-per-chewing-gum-session (disclaimer: chewing gum not provided) they would charge you!
Remember BMW and heating in the UK (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62142208)??
Getting paid $6k for a camera once is good. Getting paid another $50 a year for doing nothing is even better.
I assume the great brain who came with the idea is: "we got 10 million cameras out there, if 0.5% of those camera owners pay $50 pa, then that's 10m x 0.5% x $50 = $2.5m pa. If I could get a 100k bonus for bringing $2.5m gross to my company I would also suggest this idea.
Sure, and that's why I don't think they'd invest heavily in anti-piracy measures. It requires a special skillset, your average developer isn't going to really know much about it. If I had to guess, there's a single "isProTier" function call that you just patch to return true. Maybe it's inlined and it's slightly more annoying. I doubt they did much more than that, but maybe I'm completely wrong.
Yunno, I wouldn't. Even for 100k on the table. I wouldn't suggest it. I have bills to pay, student loan debt, etc. but for one, I wouldn't want to suggest something that would have long term negative brand impact, and two, but more importantly, I wouldn't want to suggest developing something that if I were to use would piss me off. Make the world you want to see. Engineers share in the responsibility for things like this existing.
In case you are considering Nikon as an alternative, their Webcam Utility might be free, but it doesn't work on the latest version of macOS.
There are 3rd party utilities (paid), but I had trouble with autofocus when I tried them.
I wish camera manufacturers put half as much effort into usability as smartphone companies. Why does a camera need drivers to be recognized as a webcam at all? Why doesn't my 2000€ camera come with GPS and LTE built in? Why is the software still as crappy as in the 90ies?
> Why doesn't my 2000€ camera come with GPS and LTE built in?
2 seconds later on HN: why does my 2000€ camera spies on me? If you want a smartphone, use one, leave us be with our sane tools.
The problem is that right now, you need to install a Nikon Spyware app on your smartphone if you want geotagged photos.
If the camera had GPS built-in, you could have geo-tagged photos without needing spyware on your phone.
Geotagged photos are extremely useful, there's a reason why they sell GPS dongles for cameras. Cameras really should have that built-in (and I think the top-of-the-line models do)
Modern Sony cameras can be used as webcam without any software. Just plug in, select usb streaming, and done.
Nikon has been killing it lately. Z8, Z9, Z6iii, lots of cool lenses! If you're in the market for a full frame body and "the holy trinity" (16-35, 24-70, 70-200 F/2.8), you can't go wrong with any of the major 3. They're all very competitive.
(but I would go with the Sony because I like their designs the most, Nikon would be my 2nd choice)
Nikon users are missing out on a 16-35 2.8 though, but I'm sure Nikon is working on it.
I've only ever used Nikon starting with a D40 ~20 years ago. I regularly still use my D7100, but primarily use my Z5. The only time I'm ever envious of another camera system is when connection options like this come up. But then I go out and take pictures and I'm reminded why I'm probably Nikon for life :)
It does work there is just a bit more effort involved in setting it up
Talking about solutions: Camlink. I use it with a very outdated camera for my online meetings. Works great and gave new life to a camera that I would throw away otherwise.
At some point I feel like it just has to collapse. The thing I don't really understand is subscriptions like the one in the article, how many of those types of subscriptions are effectively dead, in the sense that yes the customer keeps paying, but aren't actually using the "service" anymore.
The gym revenue model.
The indie / startup space has been so all in on subscription revenue that I guess it's not a huge surprise that the big companies eventually tried to get in on the act.
And behind that at least in part is the tangle of bad laws, esp. in IP.
Im still waiting for mass-piracy where large parts of the population walk out on the subscription systems leaving the vendors to starve.
Canon truly is the HP of cameras.
Good thing there's Sony and Nikon.
The latest firmware update for the Sony A7S III has introduced unlockable licenses and a website where you can buy them. The first one (for DCI 4K) is free, but it looks like they'll be chraging for unlocking more "professional" firmware features in the future.
There is no reason to bend over backwards to make up excuses for bad behaviour.
It's just experience from a video monitoring project we made for a Telco operator - we had to pay up quite a few JPEG related tech, just to get a certification. Even despite that tech being free.
Historically video related field was one of the most patent and license encumbered. That's why AV1 exists.
Hah I am aware. There's a lot of shit in Sony camp, but Canon is a whole other level.
Nikon seems to be the "good guy" these days.
> Canon is a hardware company, not a software company
The problem is we commercially enable hardware companies to be shitty software companies by buying hardware that lacks basic open protocols. We accept single platform lenses that could work in any similar mount. Photographers invite this mistreatment.
It would be trivial for Canon to stream the live view out as UVC over USB and it would have Just Worked™ as a webcam on every platform.
This isn't just a Canon problem. It took Nikon several generations of dSLR to add standard USB ports. This could be Japanese hubris or a lack of competition or a lack of engineers actually talking to their customers.
This article essentially boils down to “Canon is a hardware company, they shouldn’t be allowed to charge for software.” I’m surprised this is news to you, but Canon can make money any way they want (within the bounds of local law). There is no law saying a company known for their hardware cannot decide to sell software.
If Canon started trying to sell cameras that literally only work with their software (not the case today) then maybe you’d have a semi-valid beef, although such a camera would also sell very poorly in the market given the many alternatives that exist, including Canon’s own previous lineup. Even then it wouldn’t be illegal, just harder to justify from a business perspective. Perhaps they could give away a DSLR for a yearly subscription and the math would pencil out for some people. That would be mildly interesting. Canon would have to do a lot of work to close such a product, though, as all of their existing hardware is extremely open.
The whole real-camera-as-webcam field seems like a complete disaster. The few models that do work well in this scenario (clean HDMI output, no auto-shutoff, etc) became very expensive during the early pandemic days.
This article is missing some very critical details.
Do you have to use the software from Cannon? What about any other webcam software that runs on Mac?
Does Cannon's software support non-Cannon webcams? IE, is it standalone software that the author prefers to use over other webcam software?
Is this a case where most customers will never use the webcam software, thus Cannon is "passing the savings on to them" by charging separately for the software?
Canon, and yes you do, the camera is not recognized without the drivers installed. Actually, it barely works even with the drivers installed. There is a free version that I have had working in the past, to glorious success, with the Canon 1DX, but the current 5Div does nothing, and I don't want to pay to find out that it still doesn't work.
There's half a camera's worth of features in these things that people won't use, but they still pay for them.
I use a Canon EOS 90D via hdmi & streamlink, so yes there are alternatives.
I have cannon r5 and previously had sony cameras. I'm bamboozeled how in this day and age software connecting cameras with PCs is so bad, not to mention tethered shooting. And the fact that 5+k camera have slow wifi chips for no reason so you cant tether via wifi just angers me.
Software on the actual camera is yet another question for me, why don't we have cameras with full fledged modern OS-es running custom androids for example with installable apps so you can finish a lot of stuff on the camera itself or make sharing to wherever a breeze.
No professional wants to deal with wifi, maybe ethernet.
So it's at most a prosumer feature for which the wifi they have is fine.
For professional use we want SDI which can transmit uncompressed video at whatever frame rate the camera supports, and we pay for that... Maybe HDMI but that has it's own headaches...
And the moment you want Android with apps on it you run into all the problems that comes with Android with apps on it...
You are then also responsible for keeping said app up to date. If you think android solves that problem you purely need to look at the custom modding community for how annoying firmware support is, and these cameras won't have generic phone camera chips, they have custom processors which would then require custom firmware.
But my usual argument, if it's so easy go and do it. Many successful projects/companies has started exactly like that, why don't we have X? Go build it.
Realistically, a better wifi chip would add almost nothing to production cost, but there are a lot of professionals doing product photography that would like fast wifi tethering.
Well, that would prevent them from selling overpriced grips with integrated better wifis which is 999 usd from Cannon...
> why don't we have cameras with full fledged modern OS-es running custom androids for example with installable apps…
because then you end up something that is mediocre at a bunch of random stuff rather than great at something specific.
a multitool is rarely as good at hammering as an actual hammer. a multitool is almost never as good at screwing as an actual screwdriver.
> Software on the actual camera is yet another question for me, why don't we have cameras with full fledged modern OS-es running custom androids for example with installable apps so you can finish a lot of stuff on the camera itself or make sharing to wherever a breeze.
A little more than 10 years ago Samsung tried that with their Galaxy NX (a bona fide DSLR running Android). It flopped and most reviewer noted that it a generally sluggish camera; a deal breaker when one of the design constraint of all their other competitor is to be reactive.
We mustn't forget that the main purpose of a camera is to take pictures, not to connect to a network.
At this price point I suspect the camera goes from "nice tool of an artist" to "business expense ofa team". With that I think people with this budget prioritize modularity and reliability over the convenience of having a all-in-one device.
Like for the Olympics there's mention of using a gizmo (PDT-FP1) whose sole role is to connect to the camera and transmit the picture wirelessly (even though the A9 have some wifi connectivity). And of course this wireless transmitter is quite expensive.
In cinema they have the same approach, as you don't buy "a camera", but you rent a sensor, a lens, a monitor, a focus pull, a storage disk, etc.
Doesn't help the op, but I use my Nikon Z6 II as a webcam under Fedora and have been doing this for a few months now, mostly without any problems.
Here's a guide for those interested (not by me): https://www.crackedthecode.co/how-to-use-your-dslr-as-a-webc...
Can't you still use the European site to download the EOS Webcam Utility for free? https://www.canon-europe.com/cameras/eos-webcam-utility/
What setup would people recommend? I've tried using an old android phone as a webcam on macOS but it kept flaking out and needing to be reset.
What webcams, if any, have higher quality optics?
Do other SLRs do the same thing as Canon and charge a subscription?
Some thoughts based on my anecdotal experience — but it depends on the price you are willing to pay.
You can get quite good webcams for $100–300 (from Insta360, Obsbot, Logitech maybe …) which work out of the box with USB-C and have mostly okayish software that supports changing things like brightness, white balance, etc. These however still have small sensors and cannot achieve a good shallow depth-of-field (bokeh). Running them at higher sensitivity (ISO), e.g. in darker environments, inevitably causes noise. But if you just want to participate in meetings, it does not matter. I had a Logitech StreamCam and upgraded to an Insta360 Link 2C, which is definitely much better but still not on-par with a proper camera. You should at least get a good keylight or ring light.
The next step up would be mirrorless cameras with built-in or interchangeable lenses made for vlogging, which also can be used like a webcam. They have much bigger sensors and better image quality at a pricing point of $400-1000, e.g. Sony ZV-E10 II, Fuji X-M5, Canon EOS M50 Mark II, … most of them claim webcam support with the provided software. Fuji's software is bad though, so I wouldn't recommend it on a Mac. I can't talk about the other ones. The benefit is that they also have a flip screen that you can use for better framing. They all support webcam modes.
If you have a camera that has an HDMI output and that outputs a clean HDMI signal (without any overlays), you can also buy an HDMI USB capture device and feed that into OBS, which allows you to set up a virtual webcam. There are cheap no-name USB capture cards that produce mediocre images, and more top-of-the line ones like the Elgato Cam Link. This should be the most device-independent variant where you're also not dependent on any vendor's proprietary software.
Thank you for a comprehensive answer, I appreciate the time you put into it.
MSRP for the EOS R1, the flagship camera - but apropos of anything, that's not a camera ANYONE would use for a webcam (its focus area is event/sports, and high shooting rates. For anyone else, generally, the R5II is effectively the high end.
Don't buy Canon. They've also been very shitty about third party lenses
> Companies squeezing every last penny out out their customers is no news. And Canon is no stranger.
In relation to the rent-seeking behavior of Canon they allegedly nudged a certain open-source camera firmware project not to support some of their most high-end cameras. But with Canon losing interest in DSLRs I hope the situation changes.
This is another case in point that people should research the software capabilities of the devices they purchase.
Typically, that can be reduced to one simple question: Can it run custom firmware or custom operating system?
If it cannot, you have to make do with whatever restrictions the manufacturer has imposed in their software. Be it a subscription for webcam mode. Or even completely disabling your device if they so decide.
If it can run custom firmware or operating system, there is a fair chance that the community creates software for this device that is actually good. One that allows you to do what you want with it.
I am not sure. I am unfamiliar with the consumer camera segment.
I have heard about some "firmware enhancements" like Magic Lantern or CHDK for Canon which, if I understand correctly, are some kind of extensions that could be loaded by the camera's main firmware on startup and then provide additional functionality.
It is not a custom firmware. But it offers similar functionality.
> Software development isn’t free
Given how long digital cameras have been around (more because that says it can be done with a codebase that fits in context rather than anything about memorisation), I wonder how good LLMs are at coding this specific thing.
(I don't have a camera to try it with, or I'd give it a go myself).
Don’t most of these cameras have an hdmi output? During the pandemic, I assisted a local church with streaming after their plea for help reached me. We initially used a fairly cheap video camera’s hdmi output with a cheap HDMI to USB dongle to get a feed to OBS. It worked extremely well, although it was later replaced with a professional camera that had actuators to allow it to be moved via a remote during their services.
It's just a business model like segmentation IMHO. BMWs or Tesla's having the hardware but require a payment for enabling it or CPU manufacturers disabling certain features to sell them at a lower price. IIRC the idea is that to let people pay what they can so you can have larger profits when allowing lower price points. In this case it appears to directly charge for a service(a software that needs to be created and maintained) that you may choose not to have.
I don't have problem with these practices at all as long as they don't try to prevent it you from running your hardware through alternative means. If the camera police isn't trying to get you for writing your own software to avoid paying Canon 5$ a month, its all good.
With CPU manufacturers it at least makes sense for them to have a market for partially faulty chips. That's not what's going on here.
It absolutely fascinates me that GoPro didn't dominate this space
I use my Sony a7iv as a webcam. Plug the USB C in and it is recognized as a webcam. I got asked a lot im teams calls what webcam I use
Out of nowhere comment, but I somehow stumbled upon this thread which seems to point to OBS for making it work. FWIW. <https://www.reddit.com/r/canon/comments/skdz89/experience_so...>
I've been eyeing the R6 mark ii, which is u understand correctly will connect to a computer and present itself as a video device so you don't need any additional software. I only run Linux, so that sounds great!
I haven't pulled the trigger on it, can anyone who owns it confirm or deny this?
> Why $6,2999 when the article says he payed around $900?
In the fifth paragraph:
“Admittedly, it did not cost me the $6300 from the article's title, much closer to $900. Nonetheless, everything I'm describing translates to every other Canon camera model!”
He likely bought an old model second-hand :)
Edit: The camera he uses is a 2019 pocket camera. The 6299 must be another model that has the same restrictions.
Not all companies. The DJI Action camera has a built-in webcam mode that you can select whenever you plug it in via USB, and it just works.
Reasons like this is why the Japanese companies are eating sh*t and are VERY interested in pushing for a US-China war just like the western companies.
Everything coming out of China is way more customer friendly, usually way cheaper and getting better and better to a point that they are surpassing everything else that exists. If DJI releases a full-frame mirrorless camera with L-mount (which they are going to), Canon, Nikon, Fuji and all these companies with firmware from the 90s will die and I am not going to miss them.
They have made absolutely no effort to provide any value and a whole lot of tacit collusion is going on. They still sell you SD cards instead of including an SSD which would be MUCH cheaper and faster. Same with battery technology. Compatibility, apps, software... everything.
Regarding products from China being cheaper: remember that Japanese, Korean, and Western companies are the ones mostly innovating and absorbing the R&D costs. Remember how modern OLEDs were made feasible basically by LG and Samsung? Having stolen that IP[0][1][2], without any R&D costs but with dirt cheap manufacturing due to direct and indirect subsidies like relatively almost nonexistent labour protection laws, PRC companies could of course immediately flood the market with cheaper alternatives.
You can choose your suppliers by other measures than merely price. Arguably, you should if the market you are particupating in is not free and fair in this way.
Personally, as a happy owner of a Japanese-made under-$2k camera that works perfectly well for all purposes and even has official CAD files published for accessory 3D printing enthusiasts, I see no reason to switch to a Chinese brand (well, also there is no product that beats it on both specs and price, but even if there was I would think twice). People tend to over-generalize, but reality is not as simple as “all manufacturers from %country1% are better because X and all manufacturers from %country2% suffer from issue Y”.
[0] https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.amp.asp?newsIdx=113...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/south-korea-indic...
[2] https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2024-07-19/busines...
What you say about innovation has been true mostly in the distant past and mostly for technologies that are used in business-to-business products.
For consumer products from recent years, like smartphones or computers, the vast majority of innovative products are Chinese, even if the quality or documentation is frequently subpar.
Now I see very frequently cases when US companies or Japanese companies should better start to copy the Chinese if they want to stay competitive, but instead of doing that, they push for the same kind of tariff protections for which the US heavily criticized any other country in the past and blackmailed them in various ways to force them to remove the tariff protections against US companies.
"Long before the United States began accusing other countries of stealing ideas, the U.S. government encouraged intellectual piracy to catch up with England’s technological advances. According to historian Doron Ben-Atar, in his book, Trade Secrets, “the United States emerged as the world's industrial leader by illicitly appropriating mechanical and scientific innovations from Europe.”
Everyone is a thief.
https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-eur...
Weren’t people in the US doing so at that point actually fresh English/Irish themselves who just moved or were moving to the new world? Can you elaborate how it is similar to the situation with PRC now, unless you suggest it’s freshly founded by Americans?
> Personally, as a happy owner of a Japanese-made under-$2k camera that works perfectly well for all purposes and even has official CAD files published for accessory 3D printing enthusiasts,
Which camera is that?
Samsung is not exactly averse to IP theft eg [1, 2] ... If you are responsible for 22.4% of South Korea's GDP [3], one may wonder if we even hear about all other cases ...
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2015/08/25/tsmc_samsung_espionag...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/legal/samsung-hit-with-303-mln-jury-...
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1314374/south-korea-sams...
>Remember how modern OLEDs were made feasible basically by LG and Samsung?
That was Japan's game to lose and their loss was absolutely deserved. Japanese companies are more interested in bickering with each other, while Korean and Chinese companies have bigger worldly goals.
Japan Display[1] and Renesas[2] could have been the LG/Samsung had Japan realized much sooner that there are better things to be doing than dragging each other down.
> They still sell you SD cards instead of including an SSD which would be MUCH cheaper and faster.
I don't think the power draw of an SSD plays well with the current battery tech.
Plus most user value the fact that you can rapidly swap those thing. The last thing you want to do during a wedding is having to wait for the data to transfer and/or the battery to recharge.
Yes, I'm so completely fed up with recurring subscriptions for things with negligible or no recurring costs for the seller. This one is of course particularly obnoxious given the hardware itself is expensive and the recurring cost is 0. But for example I would've gotten an Oura ring by now if they would just charge twice the price for the ring itself and not require a subscription, even though the subscription fees over the lifetime of the hardware would probably add up to a significantly smaller amount. To me it's just incredibly off-putting -- it reeks of greed and feels like a blatant attempt to fool customers by obscuring the actual cost. I guess it must be working for them, but for me, the cost of anything with a recurring fee gets mentally rounded up to "approximately $infinity".
I firmly believe this is the branch digital cameras are dying on, and at this point, probably must die on.
If these opened up, at least to the level iPhone did in 2007, they'd have an ecosystem as people still used them. As-is, for most purposes, my Android phone is a better camera than my full frame interchangeable lens camera.
I think I disagree on every point you've raised here.
First, my sony camera (and all sony cameras released in the last ~3+ years) support USB video streaming out of the box, with no drivers. I suspect other brands are the same. It looks like canon is just stuck in the dark ages on this one. They also support remote camera control over USB, and all sorts of other things. Mostly - but not entirely - in an open ecosystem. I have several devices which can control the camera over the USB connection - so it can't be that hard.
Second, are you sure your android phone takes better photos? What camera & lens do you have on your digital camera? Have you upgraded from the kit lens it came with?
I got a sony a7iv last year. If I take the same photo with my a7 and my iphone, the photos are wildly different. The iphone's photos are lovely, but they have this very slightly AI generated gloss about them. Everything is slightly too clean somehow. Its like I'm looking at reality plus. In comparison, The photos from my sony camera feel like real photos. Dark things are dark. Light things are light. If I crank the ISO at night, the photos are noisy. If I blow out the aperature, the depth of field hits you like a truck made of clouds. The photos look like what I pointed my camera at.
In short, I massively prefer the photos I get from my dedicated camera. I suspect if I showed you, you'd prefer them too.
> I suspect other brands are the same.
My research shows Sony is the outlier here. Fuji, Canon, Nikon and Panasonic all require software or drivers to be used as a USB camera (or at least did as of a year ago or so).
Also, the camera control software these companies put out, for a computer or a phone, is almost always awful.
Buggy, slow, unreliable.. It's a real problem.
> Also, the camera control software these companies put out, for a computer or a phone, is almost always awful.
That’s definitely true of Sony too. Just - thankfully - you don’t need to install any of it to do most stuff. (With the one exception of sony’s gyro based image stablisation).
There’s also several apps in the App Store which let you remotely control Sony cameras. I assume people have reverse engineered the protocol Sony’s offical app uses.
> my Android phone is a better camera than my full frame
I'm probably a terrible photographer and I shoot with a "budget" kit (Canon R10, RF 100-400mm F5.6-8 IS USM, RF 35mm F1.8 IS STM), but looking at the 10 last photos I've taken and liked (so going back a year basically), I don't think I'd be able to retake a single one of them on my iPhone and get something comparable.
> As-is, for most purposes, my Android phone is a better camera than my full frame interchangeable lens camera.
The smartphone ate the market segment that was previously occupied by point and shoot cameras, not pro / enthusiast camera. I don't think dedicated / non-smart cameras as we have today will die. You will still need dedicated camera for wedding, sports, wildlife, etc. For these you don't need a software ecosystem, you need a robust hardware.
I agree that for sharing to my family a photo of my dog looking cute my phone is a better camera. However for the use case I mentioned, I don't see how I can decently edit a 50 Mpx image on a screen that's not even a quarter of the size of my laptop.
Not to say that better software/feature is not needed though; I would love to be able to do an efficient initial culling/sorting of a given shoot in-camera.
I agree with your comment.
But as phone cameras are reaching limits due to the physical amount of light that they can capture, “computational photography” ML models are essentially making up details that aren’t there.
So your Android photos may have the look you want, but be worse for many purposes.
> As-is, for most purposes, my Android phone is a better camera than my full frame interchangeable lens camera.
Any Android/iOS flagship phone right now is MILES behind current full-frame mirrorless technology, and I doubt they will ever be truly comparable. There are too many technical limitations.
I am pretty sure we will eventually have consumer cameras with an Android-like OS and the equivalent of today's full-frame sensors, delivering awesome footage, but mobile devices will never come close to a (semi-)professional camera.
I saw people using Sony cameras as webcams, probably because of the easy plug and play setup.
My Canon EOS R8 can be configured to connect via USB-C as a webcam and works perfectly.
The EOS R8 was released less than a year ago and that output is still capped at 2K and 30 fps. Meanwhile the camera itself shoots 4K at 60 fps (if you go Full HD, you can even shoot 180 fps). So saying it works perfectly is not quite accurate, you still need either extra hardware or extra software if you want to actually use it to the full capacity.
This model is not listed as supported, but generally gphoto2 can do the webcam thing for DSLRs.
In fact, the problem is that you have to buy a subscription, with all the implications in terms of loss of control, privacy, security, etc...
$5 on a $6299 camera is nothing, just pay for it, petty but not really infuriating. Even at $500 I would simply pay should I need it. If I had reasons to buy a $6299 camera, it probably means a budget in the tens of thousands, for lenses, lighting, accessories, etc... $500 is peanuts by comparison.
But I certainly wouldn't want my very expensive setup to fail just because some server is down.
What do you mean by "an iPhone slot"?
As in, so you can plug the camera into an iPhone and transfer photos from camera to phone?
but you are using their software and they can choose how to sell that to you however the want. You're options is to vent and not buy another Canon. This subscription-based purchase is not new and will only get worst. Opensource FTW
"Yeah, we equipped your car with heated seats prior to transferring its ownership to you, but heating your seat is a license-protected comfort which requires a subscription"
https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/7/23863258/bmw-cancel-heated...
Many of those "features" were walked back on backlash, just to then be bundled "free" for the initial buyer only...
> Many of those "features" were walked back on backlash, just to then be bundled "free" for the initial buyer only...
Like Tesla... buy FSD? It doesn't transfer with you OR the vehicle, just ... vanishes.
Yikes. Searching around a bit, it seems people frequently use an Elgato capture card or similar to interface with OBS
I guess someone higher up said “well, someone who has forked out over $6k won’t even blink for an additional $5”
This reminds me of HP turning printing into a monthly subscription [1], BMW experimenting with heated seat subscriptions [2], and countless other manufacturers trying to rent us physical features or products we’ve already paid for. It’s as if owning something outright is becoming a relic of the past. Honestly, this trend is getting out of hand.
Imagine if we live to the day where fresh air becomes a monthly subscription—with tiered plans, of course! Basic air might be free but stale, while premium plans offer "mountain-fresh" or "ocean-breeze" options. And heaven forbid you forget to renew your subscription or your credit card expires—suddenly, breathing might not be in your favor!
_____________
1. https://www.pcworld.com/article/2251993/the-nightmare-is-rea...
2. https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscription...
>> Software development isn’t free, and I’m happy to pay for software I use regularly. However, Canon is a hardware company, not a software company, and they should—due to the lack of standards—provide software that allows you to use their cameras as intended.
Software development isn't free, but everyone needs to hammer the message home to everyone they know that the marginal cost of software is ZERO. Any company continuing to charge for software is probably rolling that money back into enshittification which nobody wants anyway.
This Canon software would actually make their product more valuable like the software inside the camera that they don't charge subscription for. Perhaps a one time price for an app, but this whole subscription and advertising trend is one I have not and will not join.
v4l2-ctl on linux allows me to change such settings on a global level, maybe that might work if a version can be found on his OS.
We seem to be passing the point where we discover new things that software can do and entering a phase where development is primarily going to be about gatekeeping, paywalling and eliminating capabilities. After all, why would you sell something when you can sell a subscription to that something and get paid every month? Even better, why not sell the thing and then rent the ability to use the thing?
Great article, yeah it is quite sad with these things. Louis Rossman talked extensively on these issues.
By the way, your images go to a weird url for me, maybe it is because it is Brave browser.
For example
https://romanzipp.com/blog/[%7B%22id%22:%22assets::blog//no-...
Ugh - the continual "enshitification" of products and offerings. (Betchya 5-6 years ago this would have worked without issue)
Am sick of basic features being pay-walled, or subscription-only - or abandoned/bricked when the company decides to "end-of-life" them after a couple years.
While it ain't pretty - or small - at least it doesn't require a subscription... "CinePi"... (https://github.com/schoolpost/CinePI)
Software development isn't free, but someone buying a camera shouldn't _need_ to pay the manufacturer to ship them custom software for scenarios such as this. The manufacturer should include documentation so that anyone owning the camera can write software to integrate with it.
TBH, this is true of pretty much any form of consumer hardware. But this isn't a technical problem, it's a social one. So we can't solve it with tech; we need legislation around this kind of BS.
This one behavior was the reason I bought a Sony instead of a canon, and will never buy a Canon. I’m just too old to fuck around with this type of bullshit anymore.
I’m willing to offer so much loyalty to companies who aren’t in the business of fucking over their customers.
Fuck Canon, fuck shady ass business practices.
The question I have is why not make interoperability mandatory so both Apple and Canon have to make products that work with eachother instead of weird useless arbitrary rules?
It's like people love the horrible experience lol rather trauma than education type shit Leibniz was so beyond wrong about this smh
Sony's "webcam" app that does the same purpose is free but buggy as fuck and not available on Apple M CPUs (at least not the one for the A7S2).
I don't understand why this is necessary in the first place anyway. These cameras all have USB interfaces to expose the card content or even remote control, it wouldn't have cost them much engineering effort to add an UVC descriptor...
Proprietary software is just one part of this issue. There seems to be a growing trend in attempting to entrap a servile subscriber base within your own walled enclosure.
To be successful you need to keep your buyer unaware of the trap until they have too much invested within your walls to cut their losses emotionally. Here the poster has bought a high cost camera (even at a discount) without realising there would be an on-going recurring cost.
Expensive propriety hardware, tied to propriety software, tied to an online account with telemetry, where nothing works without all the other bits is a wonderful trap. It works great for John Deer and I guess will soon be coming with your next vehicle.
Personally, someone bought me a Fitbit Sense 2 watch for Christmas. It can't even be used as a watch until you have signed in with a Google account and "consent to Google using my health and wellness data". Of course you don't get to see this before you break the seal on the box. And although the watch gathers lots of your data, you can't see it until after it has been upload to Google, and some of it is only available once you have signed up for Fitbit Premium.
But wait, it gets better. The time on the default watch face is tiny (for an old fart like me). I could download a larger one, if I signed up for Fitbit Premium. I could sign up to download the developer kit and write my own for free (a new watch face is a simple example). However, if I go too far and accidentally break the data collection, they reserve the right to suspend my accounts and turn my £200 "watch" into a brick.
I am still deciding if I can return my sanity using a hammer.
Proprietary software is absolutely the issue. Once you open that door you are just waiting for the long list of abuses to run down on you over time. Proprietary software puts the power on the publisher's part and therefore you are completely at their mercy.
> It can't even be used as a watch until you have signed in with a Google account and "consent to Google using my health and wellness data". Of course you don't get to see this before you break the seal on the box.
Fitbit is not supported but for many smart watches you can use gadgetbridge to avoid sending your data anywhere
I had an oherwise perfectly fine Canon camera which I spent hours trying to make work as a webcam by downloading this and that and configuring this and that and in the end discovered it was not possible for some reason and got rid of the camera.
If I buy a camera again (probably won't), #1 selection criteria will be connectivity.
So, uh, has anybody noticed that the headline is false?
You can use your Canon camera as a webcam without having to pay for it. It even says so in the last image in the article! You plug it in via USB and you get a webcam. It's just that you can't use any feature other than reading the video feed. But you can get other software for that.
I guess "You can't use Canon's webcam software to adjust your video feed, or remote control the camera, or get 60fps video; that will be $5/month" would make a less catchy headline.
You're arguing past me. What I'm saying is that without paying, the Canon is a webcam: it's a camera that plugs in and gives your computer a video input. It may not be the best possible webcam that it can be, for sure. And paying a subscription for the extra capabilities does suck! But nonetheless, the central point of the headline - "you cannot use it as a webcam" is false.
I gave up on mine. It's more than obvious to me that it doesn't care if there's ink in the cartridge after some time and just starts malfunctioning.
Canon can GTFO, this nonsense profiteering should be illegal, and probably will be eventually. It's hostile to customers and will be received poorly.
I know this isn't the point, but here's my nixos script for using a canon DSLR as a webcam
https://codeberg.org/traverseda/nixos-config/src/commit/ee3f...
To get this out of nixos you need to create 4 files
dslrWebcamConfContent goes into your modprobe config
dslrUdevRule goes into your udev rules
dslrWebcamScript goes somewhere, probably /opt
dslrWebcamService is a systemd service.
I use my global shutter Sony A9 III as a webcam as well and it's amazing, but Sony has it's own WTF moment. It has a feature of showing custom grid line / frames in the camera screen (like for passport photo) and it costs $149 [1] :-)
Quote from [1]: "At $149, this may be the most cost-effective camera accessory ever."
All other features (including selection of on which eye - left or right - AI human tracking autofocus should focus on) are free :)
I can't believe the license is permanent! Sony is leaving so much on the table. I'd introduce a gridline-lite for 2 gridlines and then a middle tier for 3 gridlines and a box.
Another option would be to use blockchain and wifi so that customers (affiliates) could earn extra cash on vacation by pairing their camera with other tourists that see the feature and like it.
That same blockchain technology could also enable off network usage based billing of say 25 cents each time a picture is taken. Pixel noise water mark cryptographic hashes to track compliance, of course.
The lad is using an Apple computer which is a closed walled garden architecture designed specifically for whales. I'm sorry, but this is an invitation to be fleeced. A loud cry to everyone around to put their hands into your purse and grab some money.
Now you understand why people fight for open source software and use Linux. Join us or keep dealing with the walled garden scams.
> I've tried this at first in 2024 with macOS 14, which did not work.
Why not blame Apple for not providing drivers? It is pretty normal in Linux to check hardware compatibility. You mainly buy hardware with good software support.
Apple does not support this camera, so do not buy it!
That's reminds me when I was in South East Asia a few years back and wanted to do some time lapse or series photography with my Sony Alpha a7ii. A camera that I had paid close to 2k€ for (just body, no glass).
It required an app to be installed on the camera that was paid-for. Which in term required the camera to be connected to a WiFi.
Imagine discovering this while on a trip in the jungle or the desert or whatever ...
It was a one time purchase (I think around 10€) but it was still a complete wtf.
You had to purchase the app through the camera's app store. You read right.
Ofc this failed as my CC was declined because I live in Germany and the transaction got marked as suspicious, coming from SEA.
So I had to go to town and hunt down a wifi USB dongle so I could turn my laptop into a WiFi hotspot for the camera, while using the VPN masking the built-in WiFi to be connected to a German IP.
You had to enter the CC details through the camera's on-screen keyboard that was operated with the joystick on the camera's body. It took me a good ten minutes.
No words.