I also discovered that I couldn't use my Canon SLR to record more than 30 minutes of video continuously.
The problem however wasn't Canon, but that I lived in a region (EU) that would have imposed a customs tariff on cameras that could do that, but by keeping it under that, the camera would be classed as a 'stills' camera and so was therefore exempt.
Admittedly this is different from the case in the article - but it would appear that owning something that could physically do what you want it to is only half the battle for numerous reasons, and in this case it would have been my government demanding extra money to 'unlock' this functionality.
Reminds me of when lawyers successfully argued that X-Men are not human, so that their action figures would be classified as "toys" rather than "dolls" and thus charged a lower tariff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Biz%2C_Inc._v._United_Stat...
That requirement is reversed in the last five years IIRC. My Sony A7-III doesn't have that, for example. Neither modern Canons, AFAIK.
The funnier thing is, you can't use the videos out of your camera for commercial purposes, because the video codecs inside your camera doesn't come with commercial licenses out of the box.
So if you are going to use your camera for production which you'll earn money, you need to pay commercial licenses for your cameras.
Hah.
If your camera is compatible with magiclantern you could lift that limit and add some really cool features:
This vaguely reminds me of the fact that in many countries, pure ethanol sold for industrial purposes is intentionally made poisonous, so you can’t drink it and thus merchants don’t have to charge the taxes on it that they would for spirits.
In Germany, all storage products (e.g. USB sticks) have to pay a canon "because you could use it to pirate media". Now, if I pre-paid the canon for pirating, does it mean I'm authorized to?
Funnily enough, I have actually used the 30 minute limit as a "feature" on my Panasonic Lumix G80 (the cousin to the unrestricted G85) as sometimes I would want to set up my camera and leave it recording for 20-30 minutes while I walked away to do things but wouldn't physically be able to return to switch it off. It would save me battery and SD card space because it automatically stops after 30 minutes.
Sometimes there are hidden menus or settings that might allow you to toggle those features. I used to work on TVs and we had a secret menu that toggles various features. Some of those features would be disabled for specific countries (mainly for patents)
That sounds like a relic left over from a bygone era. Like the digital storage levy we still pay despite music and movie piracy only being rampant from 1990s-2000s :)
I love the EU but it certainly has its idiosyncrasies.
It may have been a customs and taxation issue here, but manufacturers are constantly adding costs of their own onto software before often reversing track.
Examples: Leica (for Fotos) charged a princely sum for various trifles before removing these fees.
Naim: charged £35 for the control app - which I paid - before going free, and now the app is the only way to control whole swathes of their increasingly-execrable hardware.
These two companies’ kit is expensive, luxury, premium, however you want to refer to it, and so they probably felt comfortable wringing their customers a little more. Probably understandable in the case of Leica owners who will pay £250 for a viewfinder dioptre correction lens (puts hand up again) but less so for hifi owners.
It is not that audiophiles haven’t been shown to spent inordinate sums on the dumbest, snakiest, oiliest tat this side of an Oxford Street souvenir shop, but it has to be material and palpable.
That tariff difference between "video" and "stills" cameras having a 30 minute cutoff is funny. If you think about the vast majority of the time when shooting moving video with a handheld or tripod mounted camera it does not involve 30+ minute long continuous takes. You could have a professional movie camera with that restriction and it wouldn't be a problem in the vast majority of cases.
So the restriction ends up being between things like security cameras, vtc cameras, and traffic cameras vs all other times of cameras. The relatively shitty camera in a doorbell or on your dashboard end up being more expensive to import than the fancy DSLR just because it is used in a different application.
There was a custom ROM for canon available quite a few years ago... Now all I can find is https://www.magiclantern.fm/ but I believe the previous one was called CHDK or something like that
>I also discovered that I couldn't use my Canon SLR to record more than 30 minutes of video continuously.
My (now ancient) Canon 5D mk2 is limited to ~28 minutes of video due to file system limitations.
There's the well-known case of Spain in 1985, that would impose a tariff on computers with 64 KB RAM or less. At that time, Amstrad launched the CPC 464 with 64KB worldwide, but for Spain launched the special model CPC 472, wich had a daughter board with an additional 8Kb chip not connected to the main RAM and thus unusable, but enough for circumventing the tariff. That tariff was short-lived.
I wonder if 3rd party camera firmware will become more of a thing - e.g. https://www.magiclantern.fm/ or https://chdk.fandom.com/wiki/CHDK
The problem wasn't canon? Sounds like the problem was canon...trying to make more money.
I think the time limit is because of the way the imports are classified.
I believe that under 30 minutes, allows it to be a digicam, but over, requires it to be classified as a video camera.
Most pros generally take scenes as groups of short runs, so that doesn't matter (Canon is used extensively in professional entertainment).
This happens even outside electronics and software. I ordered some tevas recently to replace my old ones and discovered they now have a light felt layer over the rubber bottom. If I had to guess its like the converse reason of adding a similar felt layer: to classify them as slippers.
I seem to recall that there is a special button sequence you can use on Canon cameras that disabled the restriction. It’s. Been many years, but Google should have something for your model.
> I couldn't use my Canon SLR to record more than 30 minutes of video continuously
Large sensors optimized for still photography overheat when operating continuously for video, so they feature safety limits. Sensor heat dissipation is a big problem and a major differentiating feature of top end cinema cameras.
Taxes Rule Everything Around Me
One of the obvious "wtf?" things about this regulation is that regulators believe 29 minutes of video doesn't qualify as video?
It would likely overheat anyway hah. Old Sony cameras have the same restrictions.
Silly restrictions aside, I feel that most use cases don't have takes longer than 30min anyway (I mean, on cameras that you actually start and stop recording manually)
But yeah technology evolves and the taxes remain. (Though don't complain too much or they will just pick the higher taxes for the newer cameras)
Reminds me of the Indian public discourse when the government wanted to tax caramel popcorn in movie theatres at 18% when the normal ones were taxed at 5%.
But the EU doesn’t do tariffs? I thought that was exclusive to the incoming US administration, because it’s stupid.
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.
Thankfully people have figured out how to add apps to some sony cameras https://github.com/ma1co/Sony-PMCA-RE
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 ...
Sony wanted something like 500USD to unlock 4k on my prosumer video camera. Kinda insane.
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.
Sony’s software is still terrible… but fwiw they have built in timelapse functionality in their cams since the A7 III released in 2018.
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.
I had a Panasonic GF1, which couldn't do timelapses as well (there was no such thing as apps for that camera, only firmware hacks). What I did was to buy a remote shutter release that had a timer and other functions, which allowed me to do so much more.
That's pretty wild for such a popular brand.
My panasonic G9 just has that stuff built in.
Welcome to the Enshitocene
As William Shakespeare said, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the MBAs".
That is absurd and annoying - you might prefer to just get a USB remote shutter release for future work.
Ha. That made me laugh.
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...
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.
I thought it's weird to have "fillérbaszó" to have such a direct english counterpart, but then I checked your username :)
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.
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...
This is hugely dependent on whether the camera supports clean HDMI output - that is, without overlays. My Canon camera for example insists on showing a focus square over HDMI no matter what, and it is impossible to disable.
> 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.
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.
You don't even need OBS for this - capture cards show up as digital cameras in macOS
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 :)
Sure. I can do anything. It's the principle of the thing.
This is exactly what I do. I'm also confused by this article...
> a $50 USB capture card and a $20 HDMI cable
Are there any USB-connectable capture devices that can process 4K?
Everything I see tries really hard to hide the fact that while they can input 4K, they can only produce 1920x1080.
At least with my camera the feed is low resolution and has the on screen overlays on it.
I mean why invest $70 (and a lot of ressources) in hardware when, in theory, you have everything you need, the software is just locked behind a paywall?
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.
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”.
The goal is to collect rent.
Find arbitrary reasons to justify squeezing customers on a regular basis. Customers are treated as assets. Often, but not exclusively, via software based subscriptions.
Because people pay them. If we refused to pay them and bought similar or even worse alternatives out of spite, they wouldn't exist.
Last cycle everyone thought adding an App Store to their product would bring developers out of the wood work to make them money.
Just envy at the big players and hope for that sweet recurring revenue.
The one metric that matters: Annual Recurring Revenue
>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
So that company don't have to make new products to get your money but print money forever, milk the cow to the last drop.
When interest rates were near zero it was necessary for inflation resistant portfolio growth.
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.
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.
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.
but the software has already been built so the budget was still found somehow. My gut feeling is that it's mostly useful for streamers, and some of them have big budgets so they went for a high price
But it sounds like Canon actually invested extra development time to create crippled firmware that deviates from industry standards.
This is because this behavior is simply not illegal, and companies can get away with it.
The Louis Rossman video on this, which hasn't been made yet - is already playing in my head.
Now he already has 2 views on a video he didn't make yet.
here it is: https://youtu.be/xYLMZuKWLfE
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.
Only disabling it in Canada sounds like a legal or licensing issue. Still Samsung’s fault for not working that out ahead of time, but probably not a cash grab.
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:
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)
The Dragon spacecraft uses Electron as well.
I have an EOS Kiss X4 (Rebel T2?) with Magic Lantern firmware. It uses the same software referenced in the article for MacOS and Windows. On Linux you can use v4l2loopback and gphoto2 but it requires loading an out of tree kernel module.
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?
Right there with the infamous $18 BMW heated seats subscription
The heated steering wheel software unlock on my X1 is a more reasonably priced £200.
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.
That's nice but is it worth spending so much to get natural boketh in over team calls?
> However, Canon is a hardware company, not a software company,
That probably makes it pretty easy to reverse engineer their software to bypass the restrictions.
> 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.
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.
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.
Modern Sony cameras can be used as webcam without any software. Just plug in, select usb streaming, and done.
I'm running my full frame Nikon DSLR as a webcam using a $15 USB to HDMI dongle - works great.
Wow, you made me go check and Nikon still hasn't fixed the software. Supported OS:
macOS Ventura version 13 macOS Monterey version 12 macOS Big Sur version 11
It does work there is just a bit more effort involved in setting it up
Nikon's HDMI output works just fine on MacOS.
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.
I wonder when we'll reach a tipping point for the subscription hell that the world is moving towards. On the other hand, with the amount of consolidation and difficulty competing (especially with Lina Khan out) I'm not sure if that will ever happen.
Im still waiting for mass-piracy where large parts of the population walk out on the subscription systems leaving the vendors to starve.
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.
I tend to think of insufficient competition as a root cause.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
> I have cannon r5
what caliber?
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.
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...
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.
> 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).
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/
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.
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.
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.
Well, is there any camera that allow you do just that?
> Admittedly, it did not cost me the $6300 from the article's title, much closer to $900
I am confused, I assume the 900 dollars is the cost of his camera but where did the 6300 figure come from?
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 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.
Some foresaw this and add an OSD showing time/battery/etc to the HDMI output so you can’t get a clean feed.
HDMI output to 8 Euro USB-Grabber is the solution. However this is a case of: Why the fuck did they not just make it a class compliant webcam to begin with.
Why $6,2999 when the article says he payed around $900?
> 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 discovered this information about his $900 camera but has found that it also applies to other models, likely the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III.
Because it gets more clicks.
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.
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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...>
This doesn't fix the problems listed in the article, you'd still only get a 720p 30 fps feed out of a camera that shoots 4K at 60 fps. That thread helps with Zoom not finding the low quality feed to begin with.
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...
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.
DJI is a potential backdoor.
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
Today I had trouble using OBS Software with my suite of old MacBooks, IPhones and iPads… I thought keeping them would be useful
Eugh.
Meanwhile, the 30 bucks camera I bought works out of the box. I didn't even need to install any software. Decent quality, no frills.
It's actually worse than the title suggests. It's $5 per month! I wonder what justifies this recurring cost.
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 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.
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.
> 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.
5$ to unblock such a feature is already infuriating. But when you read the article, it explains it’s 5$ PER MONTH.
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.
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?
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.
I'm sure Canon would like me to also pay every cent I have for every sip of water I take, and the ones I do not.
Companies that focus on what they want, rather than what the customer wants, will cease to exist (or change hands).
This model is not listed as supported, but generally gphoto2 can do the webcam thing for DSLRs.
Not to be off topic but Apple needs to build a fully featured full frame digital camera with an iPhone slot. That would be game over for so many users.
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?
I know this isn't the point but investing in a usb capture card will permanently solve this issue for all future cameras.
> $5/mo, $50/yr
A one time payment would have been inconvenient, I assumed that based on the title; but that’s even worse.
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”
I wonder if you could just do it with the canon api?
They have CCAPI which is the camera control api, I believe it is rest based.
Yeah, that's pretty bad business practice.
I have a few fuji cameras, and sadly their webcam software doesn't work for me, but for a cheap fix I bought a low-cost (~$10) HDMI USB capture card on AliExpress, and it works wonders.
"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.
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
Is this like how I have to pay my mobile carrier to use my own phone as a wifi hotspot?
The software in the article looks like a fun little oldschool cracking/RE project.
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?
Amazing the market share Canon has considering how bad they are at software.
What sort of society are we careening toward? More power to the hackers!
It absolutely fascinates me that GoPro didn't dominate this space
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...
Is chdk still a 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-...
Yep, I'm on it. Thanks!!
>> 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.
What did you expect from proprietary software?
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.
During COVID, I was able to set up my 5DS (a ~10yo model now) as a webcam for free. Did they stop supporting the software they released to do that or just paywalled it?
I know, some things you don't know beforehand, but by buying this you endorse this greed. You make it perpetuate. Don't
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.
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
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.
Canon can GTFO, this nonsense profiteering should be illegal, and probably will be eventually. It's hostile to customers and will be received poorly.
Easy solution, don't use macOS.
It's the same experience on Windows, but you do you random internet rant guy.
Canon makes lots of software, so a little disingenuous to say that they are a hardware company that doesn’t get to charge for their software.
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.
This is misleading. You don't get a proper video feed, you get 720p at 30 fps out of a camera that shoots 4K at 60 fps. On top of that, no white balance, no color correction, no etc. My laptop's built in webcam does better than that.
People need to start referring to those products with the "Enshittified" suffix.
That's the Canon G5 X II Enshittified.
Wait until you hear about Canon printers.
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.
Enshitification, incarnate.
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.
Upvoted for hacking on hacker news
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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.
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> 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!
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.
