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Webcams. Worth it? (Read 1546 times)

jwi

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Webcams. Worth it?
March 18, 2021, 09:28:00 am
The webcam on my better half's laptop (ThinkPad) is kind of shit (not to mention that the camera angle is a bit unflattering). How much better would a cheapo webcam (<€100) be? I have an ok-ish microphone so sound quality is not an issue

RobK

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#1 Re: Webcams. Worth it?
March 18, 2021, 09:34:37 am
I bought a cheapo one off wepaynotaxes.com for around £25. I use external monitors so my laptop is off to one side so the angle was rubbish. Seems decent and you now don't see up my nostrils. Picture quality is maybe a bit better than my laptop (which isn't bad in itself) but realistically the image quality other people see is always going to be limited via your upload speed (and perhaps their download speed) rather than the camera itself.

steveri

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#2 Re: Webcams. Worth it?
March 18, 2021, 10:00:05 am
I haven't bought a laptop in maybe 8 years but the 1080P Nexigo webcam I've just bought for around £30 is much sharper. Seems better than most colleagues' when you're doing that 'What's in your living room' scan on Zoom.

jwi

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#3 Re: Webcams. Worth it?
March 18, 2021, 10:09:23 am
thx, that was the replies I was looking for. I figured it wouldn't take many gold coins to get a better camera than built in ones. A cheap mike is certainly miles better than the build in one in the laptop.

In my experience from still photo, if you have a badly lit, blurry and noisy pic and add low resolution on top it looks absolutely abysmal, whereas if you have a well lit sharp pic and add low resolution on top it still looks ok.

jwi

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#4 Re: Webcams. Worth it?
March 18, 2021, 03:31:00 pm
Follow up: I went into town and bought a cheapo webcam (€60) and the cheapest ring light I could find. Holy moly. I'd noticed that the built-in cam on the macbook was shit of course, but that it so utterly wank compared to a low-cost web cam even under near ideal lighting conditions was still somewhat surprising.

 

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